Budget Gaming Rig

[jellyrole]

Hey guys! I've been out of the loop for a while now and one of my friends asked me if I could build a rig for $500 bucks to play games. He has all the accessories like mouse, keyboard, monitor and all that so I'm just looking for the core components. I will be overclocking the components of this computer, so keep that in mind as well. What would you guys suggest?

 

[JrRacinFan]

Hiya J!!! Long time no talk.

Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, L...
MSI R7770-PMD1GD5 Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB 1...

Don't worry about overclocking. Would have enough grunt.

EDIT:

If you don't mind refurb'ed add this in
Refurbished: Hitachi GST Deskstar E7K500 HDS725050...

 

[jellyrole]

Looks pretty good! I'd like a few more suggestions from some other people to maybe give my friend some options on the build.

Hit me up on Steam man! It's been forever!

 

[STCNE]

I just installed that very MSI card in my system today. It's a great card and silent at idle(just swapped a passive 6850 for it, I don't notice any extra noise) but it doesn't overclock well. It won't go past 1075mhz which is a pretty low OC for the 7770s and has no voltage tweaking. Put the extra money into one of the long 7770s with a beefy cooler if you love tweaking or pick up a used card from one of the last gens. for gaming I wouldn't go lower than a 5770 in the 5 series, a 6770(rebrand) in the 6 series, or a 7770 in the 7s. You also may want to tell us what res your friend is running. A 6870/5870 will pretty much max out anything at 1680x1050 except a few AAA games. Even with the 5770 I had a few years back I could play Crysis near maxed out and have it still be playable. Ultra with 2xAA gave me a steady 20FPS, good enough but not ideal.

I'm not too sure what to recommend you CPU wise. The i3s from Intel don't OC, but they still hold up well against Bulldozer. I'm not sure how an OCed BD would compare however. You may just want to go with a Phenom II, they seem a good value these days and would be a good match for a 7770.

For motherboards, try and get an ECS or an MSI(Not if you go AMD!). I've had some really nasty support from Gigabyte and ASUS's CS actually went far enough to try and extort me for repair work, when I refused they ripped the CPU bracket near off of my board and sent it back. I've been running ECS ever since and everything has worked perfectly.

And take a look at some MATX cases, Fractal and NZXT have some really nice entry level cases that won't leave you with cut wrists and a nest of wires like most of the cheapies.

As for the drive, with the prices as high as they are don't go too crazy. Get your friend just what he needs, I bought a 1TB and I use maybe 250GB at max. And that's with about 10 games installed and 60GB of music.

 

[xxdozer322]

^yeah might wanna looking into an Amd x4 965, mines over clocked to 3.9 and its been hold up really nice, i know they were on sale for like 89 bucks, over on frys or new egg.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Not discrediting you guys at all. I have been on an unlocked 555 and a few s1156 chips. I can safely say the i3 21xx chips are a touch snappier even if the 555/1156 chips were overclocked (all were overclocked at 3.7Ghz+). The board in the combo I linked to wouldn't be the greatest, but the i3 chips don't have Turbo nor overclock so wouldn't need the greatest in that dept.

They scale well if his friend decides to ever want to change out the motherboard and say go with a multi gpu system he can. Proof in the pudding?? My wife's current i3 2120 was paired with gtx460 768mb sli config, it smoked my unlocked 555@3.8Ghz in gpu scaling and beat out an i5 655k@3.8Ghz by not huge a margin, but a difference you could notice.

If there isn't go to be many cpu multi-core intensive tasks then as you can see, intel made me a beleiver that overclocking isn't needed. Never had the inkling to want to push my clocks at all on the i7 2600k, it's more than enough with it's stock turbo values.

 

[eidairaman1]

Just save up till u can get a mainstream machine built. I would only recommend Core i5 or higher for Intel and a 965 or Higher for Amd

 

[JrRacinFan]

Just save up till u can get a mainstream machine built.

Hate to call u out; what do you consider mainstream?

 

[jellyrole]

Why would you suggest saving more money when I specifically stated my friends budget? He has saved up for what he can afford to spend on a PC and that's why he has the budget stated above.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Just go with a Core i3 LGA 1155 system for now with like 4GB of ram, HD6870 etc.

A CPU and Mobo combo like this Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, L...

throw in a cheap 4GB DDR3 1600 memory kit, HD6870, 500w power supply, Cheap Antec or Cooler Master case, 500gb+ hard drive etc.

 

[STCNE]

I'd say to go with a motherboard like this.

ECS H61H2-M3(1.0) LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Micro AT...
That board can handle a 65W CPU like one of the i3s and a single GPU just fine. I don't see any reason to put more than $70 into the mobo for a budget build like this unless your friend is planning on upgrading in the future.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I'd say to go with a motherboard like this.

ECS H61H2-M3(1.0) LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Micro AT...
That board can handle a 65W CPU like one of the i3s and a single GPU just fine. I don't see any reason to put more than $70 into the mobo for a budget build like this unless your friend is planning on upgrading in the future.

Why not give them the option to upgrade later? I would not touch a ECS board especially their low end ones with a 10ft pole.

 

[STCNE]

Because it's a budget build. He would get more performance for the dollar putting money into the CPU and GPU. A budget board like that would still take any single card out there, it just wouldn't be able to do dual GPUs. And when you're talking dual GPUs you're usually talking putting over $1000 into the PC.

The only thing you really need to worry about mobo wise is if the power circuitry can take your CPU/overclocks which isn't a problem with the i3s, if you have enough slots for your expansion cards, and if you have enough plugs for USB devices and hard drives. Beyond that it's just leaving room to upgrade.

ECS has come a long way in the past few years, one thing I lookout for on budget boards is the kind of mosfet used, ECS is one of the few companies that uses the same kind on all their boards, just not as many on the budget boards. They don't use the cheap stuff like MSI and Biostar that are known to blow out with higher wattage CPUs. Plus ECS has a 3 day turnaround RMA time(not that I've ever had to test it out) while ASUS and Gigabyte have about a month 1/2 turnaround and you'll be lucky if you don't just get the board you RMAd shipped right back.

It's something that I've done with pretty much every one of my builds and regretted. I go overboard on the case, mobo, and PSU in case I want to upgrade in the future but I don't need to and can't afford to upgrade my PC any more. I could have saved some more money, or put in a beefier GPU in the first place if I hadn't gone overboard on the base components.

 

[eidairaman1]

Hate to call u out; what do you consider mainstream?

Core i5 h67. 660Ti/670/7770/7850 4 gb 1333 ram windows 7 home premium.