Building a cheap gaming pc

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Tevans1233

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Mar 21, 2013
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I'm looking to build a cheap (£300-400) hopefully capable of running simcity 2013 on max settings. I only use macs because of my job and don't have a clue what to go for. Btw I don't know if its possible to do this on a small budget I could probably make it £500 at a push but only if I had to ;)
 
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stickmansam
Both of the builds are pretty upgradble
The mb is decent and AMD has a long upgrade path for CPU's

I would take the second build I posted as it can play at med/high settings

For medium, just get the first build I linked
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Kindredsouls

Kindredsouls

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Mar 4, 2010
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First off, take a look at this link: http://www.logicalincrements.com/

From looking at the system requirements for Sim City 5 (2013) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_(2013_video_game) I don't think its possible to max it out with a computer within your budget. I do think you can get medium settings out of it. The game is going to be fairly CPU intensive, while still asking a fair amount from a GPU. It takes very little just to run the game though.

I hope that helps!
 
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stickmansam

stickmansam

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Oct 30, 2011
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brb

This build should handle Simcity 5 at medium settings

You can spend a extra 20 pounds to get the 2gb version of the 7850 if you play at 1080p (in other games it will be useful)
mb allows a large range of CPU upgrades and OC
The wd black 1.5tb is on a massive sale right now
PSU is a xfx brand, seasonic made quality unit

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£69.99 @ Maplin Electronics)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£64.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Patriot Intel Extreme Master, Limited Ed 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£36.23 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£45.45 @ Ebuyer)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7850 1GB Video Card (£125.98 @ Dabs)
Case: Cooler Master Force 500 ATX Mid Tower Case (£32.60 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£36.18 @ Aria PC)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-222BB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£12.22 @ Dabs)
Total: £423.64
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-21 19:32 GMT+0000)

1680_Medium.png


performance scaling is a bit of an anomaly at 1920x1200p
1920_Medium_1.png


2560_Medium.png


CPU_03.png

 
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stickmansam

stickmansam

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Oct 30, 2011
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Maxing out your budget gets you something quite a lot more capable
The 7870XT is about the old 7950 performance [not the 7950 boost version]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£99.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£64.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Patriot Intel Extreme Master, Limited Ed 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£36.23 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£45.45 @ Ebuyer)
Video Card: Club 3D Radeon HD 7870 XT 2GB Video Card (£171.62 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master Force 500 ATX Mid Tower Case (£32.60 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£36.18 @ Aria PC)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-222BB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£12.22 @ Dabs)
Total: £499.27
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-21 19:39 GMT+0000)

With this build you can hit max quality
(seems like AMD has not optimized drivers for the 78xx yet) [7870xt is actually from the tahiti chip so is technically an 7930 and likely to have better drivers than rest of the 78xx cards]

1680_Max.png


1920_Max.png
 
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Tevans1233

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Mar 21, 2013
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Thanks this is all great :) Perhaps I will go for something that will run at medium instead of max settings. I'd like to have the ability to easily upgrade though. Is there anything I should look out for in terms of the upgrade ability of a pc? Sorry for what might be a stupid question :p I'm new to this stuff.
 
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