I want a budget gaming PC.

[R4L]

Is there a possible thing? Probably not. I was referred to cyberpowerpc.com and so far I like what I see, particularly The MegaSpecial III for $775. The thing is, it's liquid cooled and I've never had a PC liquid cooled before, and not sure if it's something I would want to monitor over time.

I guess the question is, for $775 is that a good gaming PC? I don't plan on playing Crysis II at extreme settings or anything, but I'm getting sick of playing System Shock 2 and emulators on my laptop that I paid almost $600 for. :p

The website says that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 plays at a great 74 FPS on ultra settings on this machine. While that game is dated, that's still great. If I can play modern games for that price with maxed settings and have no stuttering, that's like godsend to me. The only thing that turns me off is the GPU, but if it will handle modern games, then it's not a huge concern. Just fanboy-ism on my part (go Intel!) because I have AMD now, and I seriously think my 2.1 GHz Dual Core is a lie; it's horrendously slow.

I want a PC because I'm sick of consoles, and I haven't had a great PC ever, so help me out people!  

[Igor Hardy]

I don't understand your problem - the most demanding AGS games should work fine even on 6 years old PCs.

[Babar]

[R4L]

I don't understand your problem - the most demanding AGS games should work fine even on 6 years old PCs.

[Wonkyth]

Yeah, it looks pretty good.
Liquid cooling isn't a must, but sure makes the thing run quieter.
TBH, I reckon the Mega Special I would do you fine. It'd certainly run games like BF3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution very well. Spend the extra cash on something to test it out! 

[SpacePirateCaine]

If you really plan on saving money on your gaming rig, building the machine yourself is the best way to go. I've got a pretty decent gaming PC here that I only spent aroung 40,000 yen on (Something like 500 dollars US). If you already have a good monitor, keyboard and case, then there's little to no reason to replace them unless you really want to upgrade everything. I'm using my old monitor (Acer H223HQ), a relatively generic keyboard and a Logicool (Logitech) laser mouse, all of which I had before, so didn't need to re-buy.

I'm not sure about the availability outside Asia, but Asrock makes some great motherboards, including a low-cost board that supports crossfire for the GPU, which can be combined with a decent CPU - I use the AMD Phenom II X4 955.

I had to buy a new power supply, in my case I got a Corsair TX650W, bought a 1TB hard drive since my other drives were only 80 and 60 GB, respectively, and the PowerColor Radeon HD5770 for my video card, with the intent to pick up another one in the future to take advantage of the above-mentioned crossfire capability.

8GB of memory should do you just fine for an average gaming rig - I bought ADATA XPG Gaming Series DDR3 2000mhz memory for about 7,000 yen and haven't felt my computer sluggish in the least.

If you're relatively familiar with hardware, you'll note that none of these are brand-new, bleeding edge, but they're good enough that I probably won't need to upgrade again for a few years. That's kind of the level you want to go for if you're building a computer on a budget. Of course, the lower your expectations are, the better stuff you can get. If you really want to spend money on one thing, make it your motherboard/CPU - the rest of the stuff can be upgraded later on down the line.

Now, there are some issues with putting your computer together - foremost being that you have to know how to put a computer together. If you have a friend that's good with hardware, it can even be a bonding experience (One of my programmer buddies helped me put my rig together). I did about a week's worth of research making sure that all of my equipment was compatible (If you can get your hands on all of the hardware listed above, I can at least guarantee that it will work) and shopping around looking for the best deals, but in the end I got the equivalent of probably a thousand dollars' worth of hardware for about half that much.

I have a friend that works for Microsoft, so I managed to get a copy of 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate without needing to buy one in a store, but even if you have to pay for it, there are some stores that sell OEM copies of OSes, if you know where to look.

Edit: The US dollar just keeps dropping doesn't it? make that 500 USD.

[Turtiathan]

I think an optimized PC costs about $2000 but I heard it is cheaper to make your own. You must also remember that technology develops quickly so you want to make sure the investment is worth it.

[ddq]

Build it yourself. You'll get way more for way less.

[blueskirt]

Yes, make your own. A bunch of tips I lived by when I bought my computer five years ago and I will live by when Hitman Absolution comes out and I need a new computer ASAP:

Latest hardware tend to cost twice as much as the previous generation hardware just for what, 10 to 15 percent more performance? Never buy latest hardware no matter what, buy the hardware that got its price cut in half because the newest hardware just came out.

Keep an eye on RAM price, it varies as much as petrol, one month it's dirt cheap, the next not so much. Inform yourself how much it is these days, if it's cheap, buy as much as you want, if it isn't, buy just enough and wait for the price to drop in the following months.

Keep your monitor. It's crazy the number of people who buy new monitors when they change their computers. Ya don't need to change your living room set every time you buy a new console or TV. A monitor alone is 400$. If yours is still fine, keep it, that's 400$ more in your pocket.

If you live in a city, visit the small computer shops in your area and ask if they sells refurbished parts, parts that are perfectly fine but they can't sell at full price because the box has been opened or because they've been used once, you might find a few bargains.

Good luck with your new computer.

[monkey0506]

I don't understand your problem - the most demanding AGS games should work fine even on 6 years old PCs.

Clearly you've never met General_Knox. 8)

Yes, building your own computer is absolutely the smartest and most intelligent route. That way you know exactly what's going into it. There's nothing worse than buying a prebuilt computer and hoping to upgrade it down the line only to find out that the hardware was specifically manufactured to prevent you from doing so. That and it's cheaper too.

[Igor Hardy]

Clearly you've never met General_Knox. 8)

I don't think I have. Why do you bring him up? Did he create an AGS game that takes advantage of the newest generation of PCs?

[monkey0506]

He's making a game that would make the most top-of-the-line computers think twice, and probably go home crying to their mother..boards.

[R4L]

Great replies so far!

I'm not sure about the availability outside Asia, but Asrock makes some great motherboards, including a low-cost board that supports crossfire for the GPU, which can be combined with a decent CPU - I use the AMD Phenom II X4 955.

I had to buy a new power supply, in my case I got a Corsair TX650W, bought a 1TB hard drive since my other drives were only 80 and 60 GB, respectively, and the PowerColor Radeon HD5770 for my video card, with the intent to pick up another one in the future to take advantage of the above-mentioned crossfire capability.

8GB of memory should do you just fine for an average gaming rig - I bought ADATA XPG Gaming Series DDR3 2000mhz memory for about 7,000 yen and haven't felt my computer sluggish in the least.

If you're relatively familiar with hardware, you'll note that none of these are brand-new, bleeding edge, but they're good enough that I probably won't need to upgrade again for a few years. That's kind of the level you want to go for if you're building a computer on a budget. Of course, the lower your expectations are, the better stuff you can get. If you really want to spend money on one thing, make it your motherboard/CPU - the rest of the stuff can be upgraded later on down the line.

Now, there are some issues with putting your computer together - foremost being that you have to know how to put a computer together. If you have a friend that's good with hardware, it can even be a bonding experience (One of my programmer buddies helped me put my rig together). I did about a week's worth of research making sure that all of my equipment was compatible (If you can get your hands on all of the hardware listed above, I can at least guarantee that it will work) and shopping around looking for the best deals, but in the end I got the equivalent of probably a thousand dollars' worth of hardware for about half that much.

I have a friend that works for Microsoft, so I managed to get a copy of 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate without needing to buy one in a store, but even if you have to pay for it, there are some stores that sell OEM copies of OSes, if you know where to look.

Edit: The US dollar just keeps dropping doesn't it? make that 500 USD.

I don't have a choice in buying Windows 7. It's a must. HP sent me a disc for it, but it's only for HP products. It was a free upgrade because I bought my laptop at a certain time when Vista was around and HP sent me a disc for Win 7 for free. Too bad I can't get the same.  

I really have no idea about hardware... well, I don't know much. I know I want a HDD with 7200 RPMs and at least 1 TB, at least 4 GB of RAM, a decent graphics card that will at least let me play Call of Duty: Black Ops on highest settings at 60 FPS, a decent case and power supply, a nice processor that I can overclock if needed, and some kind of cooling. Also, a decent sound card would be great, since I also record music, and watch movies. The trouble is I'm not sure about a motherboard. I've never had to look into those, so it's something I gotta research more.

That graphics card is amazing! Runs almost below 160 watts, and almost below 20 watts at idle! I can see why you only need a 650w power supply; my build on that website I listed earlier had me up to 800w minimum. With this, I can play almost any game at maxed settings, for around $160. That's pretty amazing. I'll have to look into that and see where I can acquire one.

SPC, I think that card isn't compatible with the Crossfire for that motherboard. I just read the support list for it on your link, and it lists the supported models and the PowerColor HD5770 isn't listed for Win 7 or XP. However, I don't know what that Crossfire thing is anyway. Is that like the dual SLI on geforce cards?

Also, I will be doing this myself. I don't know anyone who can do it. Everyone I know comes to me when they have computer problems. Ironic huh?

So I think I have a general idea now. I'll probably just buy those components you listed, and find a decent sound card to fit in there, and a nice case. Is there a rule to finding a case too? Or just find one that looks easy to manage?

[SpacePirateCaine]

About Asrock motherboards, they're pretty idiosyncratic, but very popular with DIYers here in Japan. By all accounts I've heard, everything about my particular motherboard is all wrong, but it amazingly does support my card's configuration.  - it's one of the cheaper boards on the market but behaves like a board 3-400 dollars its superior.

For the Radeon HD5770 and CrossfireX (The current generation of Crosffire), it's a system of basically daisy-chaining GPUs together so you get double the performance. The way I understand it, it slaves the second GPU to the first, so it's not a traditional 2-GPU configuration... Similar to the nVidia SLI bridging setup, but the application and logic are different.. apparently. But I'm not really a hardware guy myself - feel free to take a look at the CrossfireX entry in Wikipedia for a bit more in-depth description.

But yeah, I'm really happy with my cheapass - but surprisingly awesome - gaming box. If I were more of a hardware guy myself (I like building 'em, but suck at doing the research) I'd offer to help you build it, but I bet there are a few other members of the community who would be a much more reliable source of information than me.

[R4L]

You've been more than helpful mate! I'm sure with a little research I can figure out how to put this all together. If not, I can take it to a shop around here and they can do it for cheap. I'll probably end up doing the crossfire if I feel it's necessary. You already have the price much lower than what I had on that build in my first post. I'll probably pick all the parts up next paycheck.

Another question though, how noisy is your rig SPC? Also, does it get hot enough to be a problem? I'm just asking because I'll probably look for all the components you've listed or ones that are similar in price/performance.

[SpacePirateCaine]

I'm all about the helpfulness, my good man. To be honest, once you have the right parts, and compatibility sorted out, it's a real cinch to get the machine itself put together - if just a little nerve wracking touching the parts and worrying about static electricity destroying your motherboard, or whatnot. You may want to check some videos about computer assembly, if you're unsure. This video even uses a lot of the parts that I have installed in my own machine, so might be a decent frame of reference.

As far as sound, my computer is still audible, but by no means loud enough to distract or bother my sleep (Though to be honest, my last desktop before this one was ridiculously loud, so my frame of reference may be a little bad). It's not very hot at all, though I like to keep my apartment relatively cool, with an air conditioning unit in the same room. According to speedfan, my processor seems to run at an average of 44 degrees celcius, which is not bad at all. I'll have to check the temperature when it's running a game at full spec, but I have as of yet to notice a marked increase in fan speed or heat output.

[R4L]

Well, after researching all these days for the above parts, and a good monitor and case, I've come to a grand total of $939.20, not counting shipping fees and taxes. Also, that doesn't include a copy of Windows 7.  

The case and monitor are the cheapest I could find.

I'm not satisfied with the total. If anyone wants to go through my list here and find alternatives or cheaper solutions, I'd be more than welcome.

Here's my list:

Motherboard
Processor
Power Supply
Graphics Card
RAM
Monitor
Case
1TB HDD

As you can see, I copied SPC's setup. I didn't really know what else to search for though. I tried looking for other motherboards that would be cheaper, and support all my components here, or ones that are similar, but I ended up with higher totals than what I have here.

I'm starting to think that this is only cheaper only if you know what you're doing.

[LUniqueDan]

If you're lucky You'll find have an open-ticket to London for less than $500 

[R4L]

If you're lucky You'll find have an open-ticket to London for less than $500 

But that's not as fun as playing PC games for 10+ hours a day!

[InCreator]

I would never, ever, even at gunpoint buy a video card made by ATI.