Budget PC recommendations

[Snazzishoez]

I'm not exactly computer savvy.  I bought a package deal through Dell which cost as much as I'd need to get a great gaming rig and got junk.  Now I intend to try to build a PC.  I've done a little research and found that I could get something to handle the best graphics Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas can toss (for the most part) and run it at top settings with no problems for about $700.00.  That doesn't include monitor, keyboard and mouse.  Hopefully that's all I need to worry about.

 

The set up is so:

CPU Intel Core i5-4460

VIEW

MOBO ASUS H81M-E

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GPU XFX Radeon R9 280

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RAM Kingston HyperX Fury 8GB

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HDD Western Digital Blue 1 TB

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CASE Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus

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PSU XFX Core Edition PRO550W

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ODD Samsung 24x SATA

 

It runs a little over $700, but hopefully it will do the trick.  Probably closer to $800 with Windows 7. 

 

Anyone could possibly give better advice on similar budget?  I mean I could save more, but really don't want to spend a lot just to enjoy a few games.  Is it worth it, yes, but don't really want to wait. 

 

My current PC runs okay on medium graphics, but I hate passing up mods that make the experience so much better.  So many good ones that I want to try out.

[woodenstick]

If your current pc is running on medium why not just upgrade the graphics card?
Also would highly recommend upgrading that PSU to 750W in case you want to crossfire in the future.
 

[bjornk]

I recommend the one below as RAM, instead of Kingston. Lower voltage and lower latency.

 

Crucial Ballistix Tactical Low Profile 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3-1600 1.35V CL8 $79.99

 

 

Also, as a micro ATX case I'd recommend one of these:

 

- Nanoxia Deep Silence 4

- Cooler Master Silencio 352

- Fractal Design Define Mini Black Micro ATX Silent PC

[Fuzaki]

I have a 280 also but I paid $170 for it after rebate (I believe this was more than 7 months ago), actually should have gotten it for $150 since I had another promotional rebate from TigerDirect but they wanted to make things difficult. Anyways I would say that for that price you could probably get a 280x. Although I think they might be having a promotional deal for 280 at Newegg or some other electronic retailer, should just take a little look around (I'll try to see if I can find it again); Amazon's electronic deals aren't exactly the best around, sometimes you can get a really good deal though.

 

From what I just read, the MOBO you have isn't SLI/Crossfire compatible. I wouldn't recommend it anyways since there can be issues from it and you can usually find a single GPU to match it by the time you want to Crossfire.

 

Not a bad budget PC but you might want to look around some more, you'll probably find some cheaper, equivalent parts on other sites. PCPartPicker has a lot of preset builds (including budget builds) that might help out.

[Snazzishoez]

Awesome suggestions guys, thank you.  I'll spend a little time looking around before making the purchases.  As long as I can keep the budget roughly the same, I'll hopefully get this going soon.  I appreciate the information.  It's very helpful.

[ТigегШооd]

Consider getting the gigabyte Radeon R9 280X OC windforce 3X, it has much better cooling, 1000 MHz & it's quiet, etc with the FX-8350, weaker cores but mops the i5 in multitasking n& in future games, multi-threading shines. I have an older system with these. If you're willing to go over budget, get the Xeon E3 which is basically an I7 without the on-board graphics

& a 650W power source

[bjornk]

Have you thought about getting a GTX 770 with 4GB VRAM? If it isn't over your budget then it would be a better graphics card choice. Better performer and more "future-proof" with 4GB VRAM.

 

You may also consider buying a H97 series motherboard.

 

 

P.S. People might recommend the following graphics cards, but they all have issues IMO.

 

- GTX 970 (widespread coil whine, recently discovered memory issue (i.e. you now have a 3.5GB VRAM instead of 4!))

- R9 290 (very high power consumption & heat, instability & black screen issues)

- GTX 960 (decent card but 128 bit memory interface and only 2GB VRAM, it's basically a GTX 760 that requires less power)

- R9 285 (better power consumption but it's not much better than an R9 280 and only 2GB of VRAM)

 

So, I think within this kind of price range, a GTX 770 with 4GB VRAM or an R9 280 with 3GB VRAM are still better options.

[Snazzishoez]

Yeah, I looked at all the post advice you guys were giving me and decided to make some changes.  Budget went up a little, but not too bad.  Originally I wanted to stay at 700 and with original build it was about 720.  With some changes it went up to about 850.  Of course it's worth it.  Sadly 850 might be the highest I can go.  That's changing the RAM, Case, GPU and the CPU.  These were the pieces you recommended (all very reasonable, thank you) and TigerWood's CPU recommendation.  The GTX 770 is nice.  I'd love to get that, but with an original budget of 700, the 515 dollar tag eliminates that option. 

 

I'm hoping in 2016 I'll be able to get a proper rig that will take care of all my gaming needs.  This year things are tight.

[Lendova]

There are many game which runs pretty badly on an FX. Just to name a few: Diablo 3, StarCraft 2, Heroes of The Storm, ArmA 1-2-3, DayZ. Thats something you should consider.

[bjornk]

FYI. Recommended specs for The Witcher 3 as a reference:

• Intel CPU Core i7 3770 3,4 GHz Passmark Score: 9382
• AMD CPU AMD FX-8350 4 GHz Passmark Score: 8996
• Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 770
• AMD GPU Radeon R9 290

Looks like i5s are below the recommended specs.

 

Intel Core i5-4690K @ 3.50GHz Passmark Score: 7763 (<- Currently the fastest i5)

Intel Core i5-4690 @ 3.50GHz Passmark Score: 7616

Intel Core i5-4460 @ 3.20GHz Passmark Score: 6714

 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

 

If you're going to buy an AMD CPU you'll definitely need an aftermarket cooler as the stock fan is very crappy.

[bjornk]

The Corsair micro ATX case looks cool, I've been ignoring it thinking that it's an ATX case, as they have indeed a similarly designed ATX case. Corsair also has another cool case "Obsidian 350D", although probably costs too much for the budget. Anyway, there's another micro ATX case with an interesting design "Aerocool DS Cube". You basically mount the motherboard horizontally, although it lacks the front fan dust filter.

[bjornk]

The cubic Corsair case doesn't have any external drive bays, so you won't be able to install an optical drive, which is, I think, bad. Cubic cases, no matter what form factor they support, would always take up more space on your desktop, one should also keep that in mind.

 

Cooler Master isn't a brand name that I like, but overall, I think I'd go with the Silencio 352 for the case.

[Snazzishoez]

Thanks for the new input.  More to think about.  With new options and almost forgot the operating system, Windows 7, my budget is being stretched towards $1000.  I'll have to see what I can do.  I probably won't be able to make all the changes I want, but hopefully I'll make the right decisions.  I've got 4 to 8 weeks to decide what I'll do.  I'm going to do my best to stretch the budget, but I have a feeling I won't be able to get what I want.  

 

From the original build I posted I'm going to do my best to work on the CPU, GPU, Case and RAM.

 

That's a really cool looking case you posted, ritualclarity.

[I'm The Wabbit]

You could get Windows 7 "allegedly" from someone. "Allegedly"

[bjornk]

You could get a Windows 7 or 8 for free either from dreamspark.com or microsoftstore.com, if you're a student in an institution working with Microsoft, or you may at least get a discount.

[Snazzishoez]

Alright, I'm rethinking this.  I know, I need to do some more reading.  I've been doing a little and watching some videos.  Now, I'm considering updating my current PC.  It may not be the best choice, but I'm wondering if it's possible to replace the GPU, RAM and PSU.

 

This way I can get a decent graphics card, add or replace RAM and get, what, a 650w PSU?  Or is the 750w preferable?  I know it would be much easier to just make a new PC, but it sucks when I'm worried I'm going to go over budget and still end up very short. 

 

I've got a Intel Core i5 CPU 650 @ 3.20GHz 2 Cores 4 Logical Processors.  I know, not the best.  My graphics card is what's killing me.  I've got a Radeon HD 5450 (a $30 card running the show ; ; )  I bought this PC as a package deal from Dell because I didn't know squat about PCs, still don't really.  I just know I got a bad deal.

 

The GTX770 is $300, the Crucial Ballistix Tactical Low Profile 8GB Kit is about $80 and  the XFX 650W PSU is around $78 (750W $94).  I could pick that up now.  Whatcha think?

[AKM]

It's been mentioned to me that you want to over power the system.  I'm not sure by how much, but if it requires say 500W to run, and you've got a 520W power source, that source is going to be running flat out as hard as it can go all the time, and will thus likely fail sooner.  Getting more power than you need lets the power unit not work quite so hard so it'll last longer... of course you're using more power in the process.

 

Solid state drives are like sports cars.  Fast, but when they crash, they crash hard, and with little to no warning.  If it's important, don't put it on an SSD, or at least back it up onto something more stable.

[Snazzishoez]

Okay, so, focus on the GPU and PSU since I have 8GB RAM?  I know I can install the graphic card easy.  I've done it for a friend.  That's about all the experience I've got.  As long as it's easy to replace the PSU, I'm golden.  Thanks guys.

[Mister X]

There is a list that gets updated regularly, it's a German website, but still there are all the parts: 750€ (~ 550-600£) PC part list. The next pages are for a higher budget.

[pinky6225]

It's been mentioned to me that you want to over power the system.  I'm not sure by how much, but if it requires say 500W to run, and you've got a 520W power source, that source is going to be running flat out as hard as it can go all the time, and will thus likely fail sooner.  Getting more power than you need lets the power unit not work quite so hard so it'll last longer... of course you're using more power in the process.

 

Solid state drives are like sports cars.  Fast, but when they crash, they crash hard, and with little to no warning.  If it's important, don't put it on an SSD, or at least back it up onto something more stable.

 

I wouldn't worry so much about the reliability of the SSD, yes it has a average life span of 4 years but allegedly we can increase that by about 40% by having a good amount of RAM

 

I didn't see any performance gain during gaming from having a SSD though (boot time is brilliant, it takes windows longer to accept my password and load the desktop than it does for me to boot up now) and none of the bench mark i ran with 3dmark had better scores so if we are building on a budget i would skip getting a SSD as you can always get one later and clone the existing HD and just replace

[Occultdrake]

after reading most of what ya'll have been saying, i was wondering if anyone has ran skyrim using an nvidia geforce 750 ti 2gb card. if so how did it run framerate wise at high graphics settings? 

 

just got a new comp before christmas and it has only the onboard video chipset which runs skyrim at like 5 fps or lower and looking to get a dedicated video card thats not gonna break the bank.

[slamdunk]

Here is the absolute budget PC http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/

[Mister X]

Here is the absolute budget PC http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/

 

If your lucky and you don't use too much mods you may even have even two digits at you fps count

[asavage00]

pcpartpicker and logicalincrements are both good sites for beginners. 

 

a higher power psu was suggested so that you can use two graphics cards in the future - so either have enough power for a system with two gpus or stick with enough for your current one (ensure you have some extra power in either case)

[legendarytoyou]

Everything looks good save ONE small detail; The GPU.  Radeon still makes good cards don't get me wrong but you're working with an Intel MOBO.  You MIGHT run into some issues, bottlenecks and incompatibilities.  AMD products and Intel MOBO's usually don't like each other (they function but not as optimal as one would like).  Surprisingly the counter to that is quite the opposite; Nvidia GPU's lay down for AMD boards like lovers.  This mainly stems from Nvidias INCREDIBLE driver support.

 

I would suggest getting an Nvidia GeForce 750 TI (same one I'm sporting; plays everything at max settings without a problem) or if you want a larger budget go for one of the 900 series.  Don't get me wrong the GPU is good (shit I wish I had a x280 Radeon) but your MOBO could potentially say, "bleh I hates Radeon!"