First $600 Gaming PC Build Help

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Andrew23374

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Apr 13, 2015
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Hey everyone! I want to build my very first gaming PC, and I need some help picking out parts! My budget is $600, and I'm looking for a pc that can play most new games at amazing fps, and have high quality graphics as well. Thanks! (Post PcPartPicker links below!
 
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damric

damric

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Sep 17, 2010
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.98 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($68.98 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($53.10 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX100 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.00 @ B&H)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 280 3GB TurboDuo Video Card ($172.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cougar Spike MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($26.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Windows 10 Preview
Total: $531.02
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-16 23:00 EDT-0400
 
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damric

damric

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Sep 17, 2010
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Slower CPU for gaming, slower storage, slightly better graphics card (I could bump you up to that), poor quality PSU.

This is with the 280X instead of the 280.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.98 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($68.98 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($53.10 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX100 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.00 @ B&H)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cougar Spike MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($26.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Windows 10 Preview
Total: $548.03
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-16 23:08 EDT-0400
 
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thor220

thor220

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Dec 15, 2009
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.98 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($68.98 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($53.10 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.49 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cougar Spike MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($26.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Windows 10 Preview
Other: SATA Cable ($1.99)
Total: $533.51
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-16 23:14 EDT-0400

I took out the SSD. No one can game with that little space.
 
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Andrew23374

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Apr 13, 2015
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Do you think this build will give me little lag and good fps? :D

 
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damric

damric

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Sep 17, 2010
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Solid State drives use flash memory just like what you would find in a USB stick, phone, or mp3 player. SATA3 SSDs like the one above are about 10x as fast as 7200RPM mechanical hard drives, so they are preferred for faster OS loading and game level loading speed. SSDs were very expensive when they came out several years ago but now they are dirt cheap considering the performance output. Generally people buy a SSD when first building a system, load windows and favorite games on it, and add a HDD later for bulk files like movies and music. Alternatively you could store bulk files on the cloud.

tl;dr get a SSD. It will make you happy.
 
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damric

damric

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I'm doing it right now. I have Windows 8 and six triple A games loaded on my 120GB Vector150.
 
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thor220

thor220

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Yes. If you plan on playing MMOs, you should tell us. If so, we need to upgrade the CPU instead of the GPU. As it stands performance will be excellent in all games except MMOs.
 
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Andrew23374

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Apr 13, 2015
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Yes, I do plan on playing mainly MMOs, such as Tf2, CS:GO, etc.
 
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thor220

thor220

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SSD performance decreases as the drive fills up. It's surprising that you can fit six "AAA" game on there as the average size of a modern AAA game is well above 30 GB each. With new games coming out at 60 GB, no I would not recommend an SSD if he wants to play anything remotely new. Even more so if he plans on consuming any media on the drive.

SSDs wear out quickly when used as the sole drive, so they are not advisable as a single drive in a low budget build.
 
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damric

damric

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1) That was true with older SSDs. Newer controllers and Windows can adequately collect garbage, and there is overprovisioning.

2) Not all triple A games are huge.

3) I could still fit even a 240GB SSD into that budget.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.98 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($68.98 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($53.10 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($108.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cougar Spike MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($26.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Windows 10 Preview
Total: $588.02
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-16 23:29 EDT-0400

 
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thor220

thor220

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Dec 15, 2009
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($226.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($68.98 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($53.10 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.49 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 270X 2GB Dual-X Video Card ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cougar Spike MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($26.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Windows 10 Preview
Other: SATA Cable ($1.99)
Total: $600.52
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-16 23:37 EDT-0400

Newer SSDs still die for certain after a certain number of writes. He has to be writting less than 2 GBs a day for it not to fail in 2 years. If he's playing MMOs, that's a definite no go. Guild wars 2 alone takes 80 GB. This is all aside from the fact that you can't really store files and you have to be careful how many programs you install.
 
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Outlander_04

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Nov 18, 2008
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Almost all new games can use multicore processors and need them when you play online . The i3 will not cope .
This will handle multiplayer games like BF4 and play them at 1080p resolution somewhere between high and ultra

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($94.89 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.95 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($78.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($59.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($46.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($159.99 @ Micro Center)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($64.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($60.98 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($87.79 @ OutletPC)
Total: $683.55
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-16 23:43 EDT-0400

Drop out the copy of win 8 for the ten preview , brings the cost to $600ish
 
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damric

damric

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Sep 17, 2010
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Could you show/link me any evidence that the FX-6300 is faster than the i3-4160 in a game?
 
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thor220

thor220

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Dec 15, 2009
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Well it really depends on your usage patterns. I've found that SSDs will die really quickly on me when I have a couple of MMOs that update every day with 1-2GB files. Had to throw one out it had gotten so many bad NAND cells.

@Outlander_04
Very high quality parts but I don't know if the OP wants to spend that much. I like the AMD processor for most MMOs but for certain poorly optimized ones, it will lag. I would choose intel just to avoid that issue.
 
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Outlander_04

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Nov 18, 2008
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Yeah easily .
drop buy with your i3 build and we will go play a 64 player BF4 map .
My FX 6300 wont choke , but the i3 will .

Now of course website benchmarks are tightly controlled and always single player because you cant reproduce multiplayer scenarios exactly making comparative benchmarking impossible .
But when there s a lot going on , in a computer that is also running other software ...network , firewall , AV [ and perhaps other things ] then the dual core will always lose
 
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damric

damric

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Sep 17, 2010
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My wife is an MMORPG addict. She only uses a (250GB I think) Crucial m500. No problems for the last couple years at least.
 
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damric

damric

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Sep 17, 2010
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So uh basically...

*crickets*
 
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thor220

thor220

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Dec 15, 2009
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The m500 is an excellent drive and uses high quality flash. I just don't like the MX100 in the build as it uses MLC, which has much less writes. It's really up to the OP if he/she needs the space though. I would highly recommend a build with the m500 if space is not needed
 
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damric

damric

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Sep 17, 2010
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I'll keep that in mind. I've personally never used the MX100, though I haven't seen much problems with it other than the rare total controller failure.
 
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thor220

thor220

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Yeah this thread has kinda gotten off track, we kinda need some feedback from the OP at this point.

Right now the question is if the OP actually needs allot of space or can they deal with 256 GB.

@Damric
Aside from the HDD in my build, do you agree with the swap from the i3 to i5 and the lowering of the graphics card? I made this adjustment so the build can handle MMOs well.
 
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