Helping my brother build a $700-$900 gaming PC

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Rubber Ducky

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Sep 20, 2012
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Approximate Purchase Date: e.g.: this week (the closer the better)

Budget Range: $750-$900, after shipping and taxes

System Usage from Most to Least Important: gaming (League of Legends), surfing the internet, watching Netflix

Are you buying a monitor?: No

Parts to Upgrade: All except monitor

Do you need to buy OS?: Yes

Preferred Websites for Parts: newegg.ca and ncix.com

Location: Nova Scotia, Canada

Parts Preferences: no preference, except Intel CPU

Overclocking?: No

SLI or Crossfire?: No

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080

Additional Comments: Nothing really. He has two kids, so a sturdy case is preferred. Keyboard and mouse not needed.

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading?: My brother wants to play League of Legends at 60 FPS, but his laptop only gets ~20. He asked me to pick the parts and I'm turning to you guys for help, since I've never played LoL and don't know how hard it is to run.
 
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Under $900 before rebates. Will give you great performance at 1080p :)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ NCIX)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($104.99 @ NCIX)
Memory: Mushkin Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($79.99 @ NCIX)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($64.99 @ NCIX)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270X 2GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($234.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Case: Enermax ECA3253-BW ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ NCIX)
Power Supply:...
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Traciatim

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LOL will run on pretty much anything. Maybe he should play a good game like DOTA2 instead though? ;)


Something like this would do pretty well, especially with a mild overclock on the CPU:

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/zqH3mG

It also leaves the option open to replace the CPU with an i5/i7 and the GPU with something beefy in 2-3 years and extend out the life of the machine a few years. The SSD is in there just to allow for SRT so that the machine boots super fast and feels snappy when you run the programs you run every day, you can cut that out if you don't really care about boot/load times.
 
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Traciatim

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Also, keep in mind that NCIX has an open box store on E-Bay that you can sometimes score great deals on video cards or other components if you don't mind the 15 day warranty. It's a good option for getting a couple of pieces that have better performance for cheap if you are willing.
 
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BleedingEdgeTek

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May 29, 2014
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Under $900 before rebates. Will give you great performance at 1080p :)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ NCIX)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($104.99 @ NCIX)
Memory: Mushkin Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($79.99 @ NCIX)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($64.99 @ NCIX)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270X 2GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($234.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Case: Enermax ECA3253-BW ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ NCIX)
Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ NCIX)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($109.99 @ NCIX)
Total: $899.91
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-11 10:50 EDT-0400)

If you do the rebates, you can get up to $70 back :)
 
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Traciatim

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This is a pretty great build too. The trade off being that it goes for performance now without the expandability later. It also doesn't support SRT and drops the SSD for more CPU/GPU performance which is arguably better for gaming but not for overall machine responsiveness.

At least you have a few options of what kind of gear to pick and what kind of stuff fits in your budget.
 
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BleedingEdgeTek

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Why wouldn't you pick performance now over expandability? The Pentium is pretty weak these days for gaming, and that motherboard can't SLI, and the 750 Ti can't anyway. The i5 will be substantially better for gaming, and adding an SSD in the future is easy.
 
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Traciatim

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Possibly, but the i5 runs at 3.2Ghz, and the unlocked pentium will probably run at 4.0Ghz or even up to 4.4... which in a large number of games will perform at or the same as the locked i5 anyway. It would really depend on the game which one performs better. I was under the impression that LOL was pretty single thread performance dependent, but again, LOL runs on pretty much anything well, so it's not like the CPU matters all that much.

The Z97 also allows for SRT and overclocking while the other rig you couldn't stick a 4690k in it in the future and overclock it without replacing the motherboard. SRT will make your machine feel super fast, since things load when you click on them rather than waiting around for programs to open. When you can boot your machine and be running your games in under 30 seconds it makes your machine feel fast.

The 750ti is more for low power, you'd essentially replace that in 2-3 years anyway no matter the machine you are choosing. You could replace that with an open box 270x from the ncix and keep the price similar or even increase the budget here to match the other machine and go with the same 270x, it was more an example. In 2-3 years in my machine you just plop in an overclock able i5 or i7 and replace the video card with whatever beefy card you have at the time and you turn the machine in to a serious enthusiast level machine, where in order to do that with the other rig you'd have to replace the MB too . . . so it's a trade off, one isn't really better than the other.

Like I said before, it's more a trade off between overall performance and gaming performance. You could even just drop the SSD out of the one I picked and throw an i3 and a 270x in there if you don't care about load times or the machine responsiveness.

I personally like to build budget machines with a future upgrade in mind so that the cost now plus a few hundred in a few years makes the machine last 5 years or so without needing a complete replacement.
 
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Traciatim

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Also, just wanted to point out the 750ti (or 760 if you were to drop the SSD for more video performance) supports shadow play so game recording doesn't really effect game performance . . . that's a pretty huge advantage in reviewing your games or streaming them live to others. It might be important for his use.

SLI/Crossfire is pretty special purpose stuff unless you are running at extremely high resolutions or multiple monitors it's generally better to just get the fastest single card you can afford and avoid teh hassle, especially if it's for someone that isn't going to like tweaking settings and playing with drivers every time they want to have a new game perform like their other games.
 
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