General Use/Light gaming Budget Assembly

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Jay Jenkins

Jay Jenkins

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I'm putting together some budget general use machines. Primarily they will be used for basic web surfing, youtube, MS Word, flash games, some older pc games (optional) and most importantly, i'm expecting, Bluestacks. (I'd also like to run Win 8.1, but Win7 would be acceptable)

The biggest question is, do you think the 4th Generation onboard Intell HD 4400 that comes with the Pentium G3220 will be enough for those purposes? Any other advice is welcome also.

Am doing this in Thailand with the site http://thesystem.co.th. ... Thanks in advance!


Total system budget (monitor, peripherals, tower, no software) $300

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

Mainboard: BIOSTAR H81MG 'STrek' - $51.00

Case: (NP) ITSONAS Curve (Black-Red) - $24.67

RAM: DDR3(1600) 2GB. Kingston 'Ingram/Synnex' - $28.67

HD: 250 GB. SATA-III Western (16MB, Import) - $44.67

Power: PS 590W ITSONAS Kingkong (Box/Cable)- $19.00

Display: LCD Square 15'' (1-3 Dot) I-View (C15NS, SPK, B)- $50.67

Peripherals: $30

TOTAL: THB9,450 $315.00
 
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IInuyasha74
Yea unless I am mistaken the Intel HD 4400 will do better than the Radeon 4500.
Given these extra details I think you are right and the 4400 will do you well. I had fun testing the Intel HD 4000 when I got it. The difference between the one I used and the Intel HD 4400 is that the Intel 4000 has 16 EUs, and the 4400 has 20. So the Intel 4000 has 20% less shader power. I got by playing Fallout on a mixture of low and medium settings, the 4400 should do it completely on medium. I was playing at 1080p too, so if you drop resolution down to whatever that monitor is limited to, you will probably get high settings.

Yea 17 inches has a good bit extra space. With warranty and all it is probably not so risky.

Yes the RAM is definitely...
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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May 1, 2013
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Hello,

Personally I would say yes the Intel HD 4400 would be fine. I used the older Intel HD 4000 graphics for a while which are a good bit slower. With that, I was able to play Fallout New Vegas. I could play a lot of games really, I even played around trying new games like Bioshock Infinity on it, though only with lowest settings. Pretty much, how I look at the Intel graphics at present, if you its from 2010 and back, you shouldn't have any problem playing at decent settings. If its newer, a lot of stuff should still be playable but with lowest quality settings.

Here is a list of games with FPS you should expect.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4400.91979.0.html

That is the laptop version of the graphics chip, which has a lower clock speed but otherwise its the same thing.

As for your build. I would personally recommend you double check AMD's offerings before ordering. I don't know prices there and don't know how things are, but for a light system and integrated graphics they have some excellent offerings with good gaming chips built in. If Intel is the best priced there though, then get it but double check everything carefully. Make sure you have the best parts for the price. Your build looks pretty good to me, but going so cheap sometimes you can get big jumps in performance with just a few dollars difference.

The areas you mostly want to look closer at is your monitor and RAM. RAM is most important here, as 2GB is a bit too lite. Best to try and get 4GB at least, that will be a lot better to keep from suffering from RAM shortage. The display is just a little small, but honestly its not so bad.

Hope this helps.
 
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Jay Jenkins

Jay Jenkins

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IInuyasha,
Thanks for the reply. I think if it can play games of that quality (Fallout Vegas and better) it should be more than enough to serve my needs here. I've gone through extensively all the shops here and this processor is definitely the best value for the quality. It's a significant jump to go with an AMD quad core or an i3 (another dual core). In fact, decent budget AMDs seem to be in short supply in Thailand. I just wasn't sure how good the Intel HD was. I have an old i3 330M on my Toshiba notebook but it also has a Radeon HD 4500 for graphics. I've been able to play GTA 4 on this as well as Bluestacks. I have a feeling the new Haswell Pentiums with the HD 4400 will perform better, or at least I'm hoping for comparable performance.

Thanks for the tips. I've found extremely limited options, going through many sites, looking for a budget LCD. Just this one site seems to have them, and most of the LCD's are rebuilt. If I go with a rebuild model I can upgrade to 17inches for the same price. Since there's a warranty I think I might do that.

I think your advice on RAM is sound.

Thanks for the feedback and the encouragement about INTEL HD. Any other comments/experiences from users on the HD or on this system design are welcome as well.
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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May 1, 2013
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Yea unless I am mistaken the Intel HD 4400 will do better than the Radeon 4500.
Given these extra details I think you are right and the 4400 will do you well. I had fun testing the Intel HD 4000 when I got it. The difference between the one I used and the Intel HD 4400 is that the Intel 4000 has 16 EUs, and the 4400 has 20. So the Intel 4000 has 20% less shader power. I got by playing Fallout on a mixture of low and medium settings, the 4400 should do it completely on medium. I was playing at 1080p too, so if you drop resolution down to whatever that monitor is limited to, you will probably get high settings.

Yea 17 inches has a good bit extra space. With warranty and all it is probably not so risky.

Yes the RAM is definitely important. Again you can get by with 4GB without too much trouble, but thats really as low as you want to go with it. Also remember that having two RAM sticks that are 2GB each is better than having just one that is 4GB. Having two will let you run in dual channel mode, which means your CPU and graphics will have a 128-bit interface instead of a 64-bit. In applications, i don't know if this will really show too much, but in gaming with the integrated graphics it should give a performance boost of a few FPS. I also didn't do this when I tested the Intel HD 4000 and should have lol.
 
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Jay Jenkins

Jay Jenkins

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Feb 17, 2014
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I had no idea about the RAM and the advantage of getting 2 sticks vs. one and the dual channel mode. I guess that only benefits a machine without a separate GPU purchase, such as the one I'm assembling here on this thread, or does that also affect a real gaming machine, with say, and Intel Pentium G and a Radeon HD 7770 GPU?

I appreciate all the great info and experience. I spent some time on some gaming sites today perusing over requirements and took some comfort.
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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May 1, 2013
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It gives a boost to the computer in general in many applications, its just much more noticeable when you are using integrated graphics. So if you are doing an integrated graphics and switch to two RAM sticks, you might get 5 or 6 FPS improvement, while with a system as you said above with the 7770, you might only get 1FPS improvement.
 
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