Overclocked G3258 mATX setup for around 600$ - please critique this plan.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
F

FreeSombrero

Reputable
Sep 8, 2014
3
0
4,510
I've been out of the PC racket for a while now (enjoy MacBooks more for day to day stuff, and I mostly game on consoles), but I've been thinking about getting some sort of living room friendly PC set up now that my 360 is getting a little long in the tooth. Spent some time with an old friend who told me he got back into the whole overclocking thing with the G3258, and that kind of got the old nerd juices flowing. Went home, got online, came up with this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($69.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus H81M-K Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 270X 2GB DirectCU II Video Card ($165.25 @ Newegg)
Case: Silverstone SG09B (Black) MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($39.99 @ Micro Center)
Total: $608.17
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-08 11:28 EDT-0400

Now, obviously, this isn't a straight up console replacement/htpc as far as form factor, but the idea is to build a machine that can run current games on 1080p with relatively high settings, without being too ugly or big for my girlfriend to let it into the living room. Also, I should note that I live in Israel, which means some products are unavailable (AMD CPUs, for instance, cost as much, or nearly as much, as Intel around here - so that's basically out of the picture).

Some questions that I already have (feel free to point out other possible problems - like I said, I haven't really considered any of this stuff over the past 5-6 years):

- I'm planning on overclocking the CPU; will this heatsink allow me to do that safely in this case? Would it be worth it to invest in an AIO liquid cooling setup?

- Even after OC, will the CPU be a major bottleneck? In other words, would it be better to spend more on a different CPU with hyperthreading, and less on the GPU?

- Looking into the near future, I will probably be adding an SSD within the year. Other than that, it seems like this build doesn't have alot of room to upgrade or expand. Is that true? If it is, do you think I could at least get 3-4 years of solid gaming out of this setup (with minor upgrades to GPU, RAM, etc here and there)?

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
geofelt
Love the case. It shows similar elements to the TS08E and PS07 which I have used.

1. The hyper212 is a great budget cooler and should be as good as you need. No way would liquid be better unless your case could not handle a tower cooler.
Why spend an extra $100 to get a few more ghz at a unsafe vcore? It would be better to buy a i3 or i5 up front.
Very few games use more than 2-3 cores. But, if one of your games does, then a quad would be better. Still, an oc'ed G3258 is so strong per core that it will have the performance of a lesser quad.
2. I experimented with a G3258 overclocked on my backup pc and am impressed. It is a great budget chip. What I like is that eventually, you can replace it with a very strong cpu. Bit...
Sort by date Sort by votes
geofelt

geofelt

Titan
Oct 9, 2006
54,290
4,142
174,240
Love the case. It shows similar elements to the TS08E and PS07 which I have used.

1. The hyper212 is a great budget cooler and should be as good as you need. No way would liquid be better unless your case could not handle a tower cooler.
Why spend an extra $100 to get a few more ghz at a unsafe vcore? It would be better to buy a i3 or i5 up front.
Very few games use more than 2-3 cores. But, if one of your games does, then a quad would be better. Still, an oc'ed G3258 is so strong per core that it will have the performance of a lesser quad.
2. I experimented with a G3258 overclocked on my backup pc and am impressed. It is a great budget chip. What I like is that eventually, you can replace it with a very strong cpu. Bit, to do that I would want to spend a bit more up front for a Z97 based motherboard. I think asrock has a m-atx anniversary edition z97 for $100 or so.
3. I will never again build without a ssd for the "C" drive. It makes everything you do much quicker.
120gb is minimum, it will hold the os and a handful of games. If you can go 240gb, you may never need a hard drive.
I don't.
I would defer on the hard drive unless you need to store large files such as video's.
It is easy to add a hard drive later.
Samsung EVO is a good choice
4. I would spend a bit more use a 600-650w quality psu up front. Seasonic, antec, xfx for example. Corsair CX is only middling quality and will not support a graphics card better than a GTX750 or R9-260
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm
5. I do not much like the amd drivers, and the R9 cards tend to be noisier and hotter than their nvidia alternatives. A R9-270X class card would be appropriate.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
F

FreeSombrero

Reputable
Sep 8, 2014
3
0
4,510
Wow, thanks.

1) As far as the SSD/HDD situation, I do like to store a whole shit ton of stuff locally (this will also be serving as an HTPC, and will probably host most of my music), but it's probably better to reverse the order - start with an SSD and throw in an HDD down the line. Thanks for the tip.

Edit: How's the Seagate line of hybrid drives?

2) The Z97 is more than triple the price of the H81 around here (the gaming/enthusiast market here is pretty small), which would mean downgrading the GPU. Guess it's a matter of short term performance vs. long term flexibility

What kind of life expectancy, assuming good maintenance, should I expect from my build? Can I still expect it to be a solid gaming machine - that is, to run new games at console graphics quality - 3-4 years from now? If I can, I'll probably just stick with the cheaper board and maybe an upgrade here and there, and just get a brand new computer in 3-4 years (when, hopefully, I'll be able to afford something more high-end).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
geofelt

geofelt

Titan
Oct 9, 2006
54,290
4,142
174,240
1. Hybrid drives are not a good product unless you have room for only one drive, like in a laptop.
The reason is that the ssd cache portion is not usually large enough to hold what you need.
Much better to use a ssd for the "C" drive and a hard drive for video storage.

2. This is the Z97 motherboard I was thinking of:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157529
Where is "here" that prices are so high?
If you buy other than Z97 you exclude some of your upgrade options.
If you buy Z87, you exclude the broadwell upgrade. Not that big of a thing I think.
If you buy H series, you may exclude other "K" overclocking upgrades. That is more important.
At the very least verify that overclocking of the cpu you buy will be supported.
Intel may well force a future change to limit overclocking on non "Z" motherboards.

My guess is that you will want to upgrade both cpu and gpu in the future. 3-4 years is a long time and there will be skylake cpu's and stronger graphics cards by then.
More games will use 4 cores, and the advent of 4k monitors and TV's may well require much stronger graphics cards.

To plan for a possible upgrade, you want to only have to sell the upgraded part, not the underlying part that supports it like a psu or motherboard.
Hence my suggestion for a good psu and motherboard up front.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

FreeSombrero

Reputable
Sep 8, 2014
3
0
4,510
Here is Israel.

After digging extensively, I found these boards within my price range:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128727
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128717

It'll stretch my budget a little, but it's probably worth waiting a bit if it significantly improves upgrade capacity in the future.

As far as I can tell, the difference between them is that one has a PCI-e 2.0 slot while the other doesn't. Am I correct in thinking that means I won't be able to use it for Crossfire/SLI? Should I care?

One way or the other, thanks a bunch, dude, this really helped.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom