Budget Gamer Assembly

Thanks for the warning. Any gaming suggestions for around $66?

will and nash. i should have been clearer in my original post. my $500 budget included LED and peripherals, so my tower budget is closer to $370. I'm not trying to get a super machine or anything, just something serviceable for a shop where no other gaming machines are anywhere near by. A lot of the games could even be played at the lowest settings and still be totally acceptable here.

Unfortunately the AMD FX 4300 (without fan) is outside of my price range.

i'll look a bit more into it and wait for more responses now that i've cleared up what my budget restraints are.

Nikola, Nash & Will,

Well, thanks for all the great advice. The more I dig in the more I realize that $500 is a little low for the type of setup I want. In any case, here's where I am (again, ordering through http://thesystem.co.th, now with a total budget of $600, including tower, display & peripherals):

Gamer Version 3:
CPU: Pentium G3220 (Box Ingram/Synnex) - $66.00

Mainboard: ASROCK H81M-DGS 'SYNNEX' - $58.00

GPU: 1GB (V) PCIe ATi 7770 'Power Color' - $109.67

Case: Tsunami i-robot (Black-Red) - $35.00

RAM: Hyper-X DDR3(1600) 4GB. Kingston 'Ingram/Synnex' - $51.00

HD: 1 TB. SATA-III Seagate (64MB, SV35, STrek) - $78.33

Power: PS (FULL) 520W Seasonic S12II (Box/Cable) - $69.67

Display: LED 19.5'' PHILIPS 200V4LSB2/00 (DVI, B) - $99.67

Peripherals: $40 give or take

TOTAL: THB 18,230 $607.67



Thanks for the info & recommendation of the 7770. The ASUS HD7770 is not available but the PowerColor AX7770 is. I'm guessing the consensus between you and nash is the 640 spu, which both of these cards have.

It seems the major difference is that the HD7770 has 2 DVI ports. The ASUS HD7750 is available to me for the same price as the AX7770, but only has 512 spu. I'm assuming it's not worth giving up 640 spu to get that model.


I chose the case because i like the big 20cm side fan and the 12 cm top fan with places to install fans on the front, bottom and back if necessary.

I chose the power supply because that seemed to be the popular choice here in Thailand after looking at a couple forums. It's expensive but my guess is that it handles the crazy electricity here better (220) and runs cooler. After thinking about it it seemed to make sense investing in a better PSU. Any advice on this would be helpful. I could save over $30 by getting a cheaper PSU.

I upgraded to an HD that should run cooler based on it's specs. I also upgraded to 1600 higher performance RAM. The only HD's available are Seagate and Western and for RAM it's Kingston vs Blackberry. I'm trying to keep things simple by sticking with this one dealer.

I upgraded to a larger display as well with a DVI port. $10 more.


So back to the CPU. The Phenom II X4 and FX-4300 are not available to me through this site, but the Athlon X4 740 is. Vs the Pentium G3220 is an interesting debate: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1897689/intel-pentium-g3220-amd-athlon-750k.html

One could argue either way. I do like the discussions supporting the strength of the new Pentium. The biggest concern I have for the AMD is that it sounds like it runs hot and needs an aftermarket cooler, whereas the Pentium runs much cooler. This shop could get pretty hot without AC in April/May. Adding the fan puts that CPU over budget considerably.

The debate between the two could be a long discussion, ultimately, and possibly not worth going into since only the 740 is available, and not the 750. And then there's cost. Just thinking this through. Unfortunately there aren't many AMD options available from the shop I'm using and I'm not seeing any other quad core budget viable alternatives.

Ultimately I think I'll lean towards the Pentium as the best all around computing choice, even if it means sacrificing gameplay for some selections. I'm still sure there will be plenty of alternatives available (older games are not uncommon here). http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-G3220-vs-AMD-Athlon-X4-740

The AMD A10-5800K without a GPU sounds like an interesting alternative. I might consider that for a 2ndary gaming machine. That would be a box which would just play older games, and probably Bluestacks type stuff which is very popular here. I might just use Pentiums with no additional GPU on other general use machines. Flash gaming, facebook and youtube would probably be the primary uses.


Any further comments are welcome. Particularly if they can help me get costs down, and not up.

Thanks to everyone.

Nash, heat issues aside, would having a dual core instead of a quad core limit all of my gaming experiences or just some high end games? I've seen a lot of praise for the Haswell G3220, particularly for it's single threaded performance. It's my guess that a lot of games out there don't depend on 4 cores to perform optimally.

Nash, Thanks, that's encouraging to hear. And again, I appreciate the help.

I bet as time goes on 4 cores will be more necessary. Hopefully this gamer will pay for itself and have a little left over so i can upgrade the haswell to an i5/i7 quad in the next year or so and drop the pentium into a youtube box.

Nikola, it's probably going to happen this week, but I'll check before making the final purchase. Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks again for the input. It seems like you guys helped me find the best options for the price.

gawd this is getting over budget. i might do the apu build after all

nevermind. with the recommended parts the apu system here in Thailand would cost me exactly the same price as a build with an Athlon 740 and a GTX650 ($3 more in fact)

Thanks for the tip. It wouldn't do me any favors costwise anyways, not in this market. The extra, faster ram and the higher price of the cpu offset the cost of the graphics card