I put together a basic gaming system for my children for xmas for the heroic price of <$300 including the monitor.
(Can't touch those prices now though...)
They've been very happy with it so far, playing steam games and Minecraft.
My son especially likes to play Left4Dead2 and once in a while when the zombies are really bad he gets a bit of lag. (Settings are high/med)
It's not bad, but we went in knowing we would upgrade anyhow when taxes came in and that system would get them through from xmas until then. Plus I plan on using the parts we swap out to make another cheap computer for Minecraft and general internet use.
We use Linux exclusively.
Here's the Xmas system:
Rosewill Challenger case
Rosewill Stallion 400w PSU
1 TB Toshiba 7200rpm HD
2 - 4Gig GSkill Ripjaw 1600 ram
ASRock FM2A55M-DGS R2.0
AMD A4-4000 APU
24 inch Insignia monitor (5ms refresh)
My budget is $200-$300 but has to include a few things for the new computer as well as the upgrade. So I need the following for that price:
APU
(or possibly CPU+GPU if it's truly better and fits in or under the budget)
Motherboard
Ram - 8 Gigs
PSU
Here's what I've picked out so far -
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2R6Sq
I'm putting the new computer into an old HP Pavillion 700 case that I've stripped down, and using a HD from one of the kids old Asus laptops.
(Can't touch those prices now though...)
They've been very happy with it so far, playing steam games and Minecraft.
My son especially likes to play Left4Dead2 and once in a while when the zombies are really bad he gets a bit of lag. (Settings are high/med)
It's not bad, but we went in knowing we would upgrade anyhow when taxes came in and that system would get them through from xmas until then. Plus I plan on using the parts we swap out to make another cheap computer for Minecraft and general internet use.
We use Linux exclusively.
Here's the Xmas system:
Rosewill Challenger case
Rosewill Stallion 400w PSU
1 TB Toshiba 7200rpm HD
2 - 4Gig GSkill Ripjaw 1600 ram
ASRock FM2A55M-DGS R2.0
AMD A4-4000 APU
24 inch Insignia monitor (5ms refresh)
My budget is $200-$300 but has to include a few things for the new computer as well as the upgrade. So I need the following for that price:
APU
(or possibly CPU+GPU if it's truly better and fits in or under the budget)
Motherboard
Ram - 8 Gigs
PSU
Here's what I've picked out so far -
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2R6Sq
I'm putting the new computer into an old HP Pavillion 700 case that I've stripped down, and using a HD from one of the kids old Asus laptops.