1300$ per PC build need expert advice for LAN gaming/internet cafe project

Azizinum · Sep 3, 2014

Hi , my mate is going to establish a gaming/internet LAN cafe ,and am wondering what PC build would be great to last for like 4-5 years ,and game setting will be on medium/high ,most games played out here CS:GO/World of Warcraft/battlefield "rarely" / DOTA2/Heroes of newerth/League of Legend and call of duty +few other steam games .
am confused what to pick for him as should i go for the i5 or i7 ? since games are getting more demanding ,750ti or 770? as GPU , 8gb ram or 16 ?
expert advice is really appreciated , many thanks

keep in mind he's putting original windows .
and the 1300$ is only for the PC , any monitor suggestions would be great 27 or 24 inch.

FloppyNacho · Sep 3, 2014

Likely you wouldn't need 1300 dollar computers. Look forward to these components to run some games:

CPU: i3 or i5 or proper FX series
GPU: 750Ti or R9 270 or R9 265
Basic Hard Drives
Business style cases with good ventilation
8GB RAM no need for more unless developing media
600+ Watt power supply for extended use, takes in consideration loss of efficiency in old supplies...

Will be posting some builds soon.

Azizinum · Sep 3, 2014

FloppyNacho :

thanks for the reply , my mate considering buying this alienware desktop , the x51 .
http://www.alienware.com/Landings/promotions.aspx
but i think he can get better with this amount of cash .

FloppyNacho · Sep 3, 2014

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/36djRB

This setup is $800 and should start running games at very high to high settings and by 3 - 4 years you'll probably be on medium settings. The power supply is very popular and proven to last, the motherboard is cheap and very easy to work with.

spentshells · Sep 3, 2014

intel I5 or AMD 8320 cpu

660 or a 760 from NV

270(x) or amd 280 which is getting cheap or a 285 which is pretty new

These cards are overpowered for what you listed for games but sometimes you want to dial up the settings.

An AMD 265 or a NV750ti would both be enough for you but sometimes tastes change and moving up settings is addictive. New games come out and you always want to keep up at the very least.

Want is the enemy of a builders. I cheaped out before and regretted it for a few years. When I finally upgraded again I spent the money and actually bought what I wanted.

I occasionally build and sell.

For what you have listed for games.

an i3 and a 7790/r7 260x would be good enough and quite cheap.

It leaves you with tons of room to upgrade. When you have locked cpu's don't waste cash on expensive motherboards. Find a cheap one with most of the features you want.

Internet cafe's usually don't have 1300 dollar setups. What I suggested below could get you approximately 2 machines that meet your graphics requirements. Above would cost about 800 per machine.

Antec NEW SOLUTION SERIES VSK-3000 Black
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129186

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148840

EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti Superclocked 2GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487024

CORSAIR CX series CX500 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027

Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile Blue 8GB (2 x 4GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220836

MSI H81M-P33 LGA 1150 Intel H81 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130731

Intel Core i3-4150 Haswell Dual-Core 3.5GHz LGA 1150 54W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116995

Subtotal: $522.93

These come to 520 minus rebate. Tack on the windows license and they come out to about 600 even. Buy the license directly from MS or a local retailer for a multi machine license. Get a deal.

If you don't like it, I can spend the full 1300 per machine for you, proper.
If you choose this option I`d love to come play games at your café. 1300 dollars far exceeds your requirements.

If you take either of my builds I would hope I could at the very least have access to your gaming server if you plan on building one.

Azizinum · Sep 3, 2014

FloppyNacho :

i was thinking something like this build
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/MDNkHx

the case will be picked depending on the market we have here , and PSU am not sure what is good with the 750Ti .
beside which windows 7 "64bit" to pick ? home ? professional ? or ultimate ?
what do you think ?

Azizinum · Sep 3, 2014

spentshells :

intel I5 or AMD 8320 cpu

660 or a 760 from NV

270(x) or amd 280 which is getting cheap or a 285 which is pretty new

These cards are overpowered for what you listed for games but sometimes you want to dial up the settings.

An AMD 265 or a NV750ti would both be enough for you but sometimes tastes change and moving up settings is addictive. New games come out and you always want to keep up at the very least.

Want is the enemy of a builders. I cheaped out before and regretted it for a few years. When I finally upgraded again I spent the money and actually bought what I wanted.

I occasionally build and sell.

For what you have listed for games.

an i3 and a 7790/r7 260x would be good enough and quite cheap.

It leaves you with tons of room to upgrade. When you have locked cpu's don't waste cash on expensive motherboards. Find a cheap one with most of the features you want.

Internet cafe's usually don't have 1300 dollar setups. What I suggested below could get you approximately 2 machines that meet you graphics requirements. Above would cost about 800 per machine.

Antec NEW SOLUTION SERIES VSK-3000 Black
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129186

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148840

EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti Superclocked 2GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487024

CORSAIR CX series CX500 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027

Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile Blue 8GB (2 x 4GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220836

MSI H81M-P33 LGA 1150 Intel H81 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130731

Intel Core i3-4150 Haswell Dual-Core 3.5GHz LGA 1150 54W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116995

Subtotal: $522.93

These come to 520 minus rebate. Tack on the windows license and they come out to about 600 even. Buy the license directly from MS or a local retailer for a multi machine license. Get a deal.

If you don't like it, I can spend the full 1300 per machine for you, proper.
If you choose this option I`d love to come play games at your café. 1300 dollars far exceeds your requirements.

If you take either of my builds I would hope I could at the very least have access to your gaming server if you plan on building one.

hmm but wouldn't it be better if he invest more money for now , and decide to change some PC specs after 4-5 years better ? instead 2-3 years? since a lot of gamers out here plays world of warcraft mostly , and the game is about to launch soon ,so better get some better build i guess , what do u think?

spentshells · Sep 3, 2014

You are overspending for a café, What about a 900 per machine budget? Sound good? I'd always LIKE to get an i5 for this but what you stated you wanted could easily be done by my or the other builds. I don't really like the value of the AMD 6300 performance wise it's really no better than sandybridge i3's. Multitasking is better but gaming, not so much.

Should I be including monitors and peripherals and speakers or headsets? if so 1000 bucks should do it. But even still that's a lot of cash per machine. If you want to see what 1300 gets I can do that as well.
Let me know Im free for a lil while.

Azizinum · Sep 3, 2014

spentshells :

i think 1000$ per pc is totally fine for gaming/browsing in the back ,and for the case/monitors/headphones we will see what's available in our market in a decent price ,beside you might think 1300$ is a lot for 1 PC but the income for the project is quiet nice so it's not a huge deal about the cost but over all it's all a suggestion , it can go a bit higher or lower who knows

James Mason · Sep 3, 2014

You only need to spend $500-600 per machine: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/jamesmason/saved/YJrYcf (example of performance)

Actual Build:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock H81M-HDS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($49.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: A-Data XPG V1.0 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($39.66 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($58.00 @ B&H)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Video Card ($145.04 @ B&H)
Case: Cougar Spike MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 380W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.72 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0 DVD/CD Writer ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $614.26
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-03 17:41 EDT-0400

I'm not sure if you'd want to actually have optical drives on them, as that allows people to easily install/copy software onto them. You could buy a single External Hard Drive like this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136267&cm_re=external_optical-_-27-136-267-_-Product) to install the OS with. Although you would probably be better off using hard drive imaging software like Acronis True Image to just copy the image from the master hard disk to a new one.

You'll also need a lot of knowledge of secure networking to not get your stuff wrecked by hackers.

This i3/750ti build is also energy/heat efficient, which is important if you're gonna have a lot of these, but it also runs games really well. (within reason, if people want to play ultra games they need to buy their own systems)

manofchalk · Sep 3, 2014

Unless your friend has his own IT department or is willing to do it himself, I would be looking at pre-built options. Quite simply, he is going to be busy, if one of these fails he wont want to have to troubleshoot, fix and/or replace parts from these machines. At the same time, you want all these machines to be identical so you dont run into random problems because of different hardware (which will happen over time when your custom building these and replacing parts with new ones).
Same with assembly, your going to lose a lot of manhours assembling 20 machines even if they are fairly basic.

Azizinum · Sep 3, 2014

manofchalk :

yeah , he got the IT department covered , and all PCs are the same build .

Azizinum · Sep 3, 2014

James Mason :

the build performance you built is impressive but shouldn't we get a quad-core CPU over dual-core ? as for future games ? might need a quad-core , i know there is like no game in need of quad right now but just saying .
Thanks for pointing out the external hard drive i forgot about it

thinking to go with this http://pcpartpicker.com/p/8gWn99
ASRock sadly isn't available in our country ,and since my mate isn't going below i5 and a 750ti gpu ,the reason is there are other LAN cafes with better PC specs so you must be better that's his point of view .
but take it from this perspective ,money is not the big deal , but we don't want to go for the ultra build nor the budget build , something average ,and the income for LAN cafes in here is quiet awesome that's why cost isn't a big deal.

James Mason · Sep 3, 2014

Azizinum :

The only future game that requires a Quad Core is Star Citizen.
And the i3 can make a quadcore (sort of) due it it's hyper threading if needed.

That's fine, an "average" build would be these basics:

CPU: i5 4### (Replace the #s with the numbers after)
MB: H97 chipset
RAM: 8 GBs DDR3 1600mhz CAS 9
HDD: 1TB 7200 RPM
GPU: GTX770
PSU: 500W+ (Seasonic and XFX are the best PSU makers, lot's of cheapo brands (raidmax) have been known to CATCH FIRE, so cheaping out on the PSU can destroy your whole system)
OS: 7 or 8 is fine. 8 has some noticeable performance differences in a select few games. For 7 or 8 you'd need to go with a Pro version (or above) to be able to join a Domain. (so you can be manged by a server). Microsoft Volume Licensing is cheaper than individual retail or OEM copies.
Case: Whatever fits and is cheap. (but not too cheap, there are cheap well made cases)

This will play all games at Ultra, or at least high, (and that depends on whether the game is poorly made or not, like GTA4 is currently and GTA5 will be likely)

This is just an example of what it would look like:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($184.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: MSI H97M-E35 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($82.99 @ Mwave)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($77.40 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($58.00 @ B&H)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 2GB ACX Video Card ($299.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cougar Spike MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($55.99 @ NCIX US)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($128.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $918.33
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-03 21:26 EDT-0400

spentshells · Sep 3, 2014

Ill build one later tonight and you can see what you want, as it is a cafe do you think an ssd is really needed?
Do you want to include windows in each build? That cna be done but group or enterprise copies would be much cheaper.
Headsets, keyboards or monitors are best bought localy just to see what it looks like before you buy.

Samsung 32" TV's are deadly for monitors but asus monitors are pretty nice too.

Ill sort it out tomorrow if thats okay im kinda watching kids

Azizinum · Sep 3, 2014

spentshells :

first of all thanks for all the members who supported me so far with the nice suggestions , and i always wondered about the group/enterprise copies , where to get them from ? as for windows 8.1 pro "64bit" ,also ssd isn't needed for LAN cafe , i think i finally agreed with what James Mason said as the final post he wrote , 27monitor from asus am thinking to go with since they're available out there in our market ,maybe benq , depends , any other suggestions is also appreciated spentshells .
many thanks for all the efforts .

spentshells · Sep 3, 2014

if you want them to really last spend the extra cash maybe look at a 780, it's quite a bit more powerful. But that's ultra settings in all current games it would be worth it.

manofchalk · Sep 4, 2014

Azizinum :

One man isn't an IT department when your talking a LAN cafe, and those machines arent going to remain identical forever.
Year or two later, a mobo, a graphics card, a CPU, a networking card are all going to fail in these machines and have to be replaced. If you buy from Dell, they have the means to keep pumping out old hardware, on the consumer market, not so much. Just try buying a GTX 560Ti or a Z68 board from Newegg.
That is the situation he will face when something fails in these machines (because he has 20 or so of them, stuff inevitably will).

James Mason · Sep 4, 2014

Dell's only good for bottom of the barrel PCs or servers. (so you don't have to replace the parts yourself) The also can't build a balanced pc to save their life.

In the mid and high range they really screw you over on the prices.

Though in theory you could just buy a bunch of optiplex's with i5s in them and then put in a good graphics card, as you can always get a newer version of the grahpics card when they come out.

But yeah, computer systems aren't really designed to "last" for more the 4-5 years anyways.

USAFRet · Sep 4, 2014

beside which windows 7 "64bit" to pick ? home ? professional ? or ultimate ?

You seriously don't need Ultimate.
Either Home Premium, or Pro, depending on how the whole network and server is set up.
Are you going to have a domain server? RDC into each box for maintenance?

This also applies to Win 8. Pro, only if you're going to join them to a domain.

How IS the network going to be set up?

USAFRet · Sep 4, 2014

As for licensing....if you buy from Dell or someone like that, talk to them about Volume licensing. Otherwise, talk directly to MS about it.

Azizinum · Sep 5, 2014

USAFRet :

am no expert when it comes to networking and setups , but am sure we are going to use a software like this one
http://www.cybercafepro.com/
my mate gonna hire an IT company and do the setup for him ,mostly the internet provider company IT team will do it ,they do offer business solutions for this kind of stuff as LAN/internet cafe .
and of course there will be a tech guy in the shop working full time , for PC+games updates/customer service/and anything the job requires .

1300$ per PC build need expert advice for LAN gaming/internet cafe project

Distinguished

Honorable

Distinguished

Honorable

Judicious

Distinguished

Distinguished

Judicious

Distinguished

Titan

Glorious

Distinguished

Distinguished

Titan

Judicious

Distinguished

Judicious

Glorious

Titan

Titan

Titan

Distinguished

Share this page