Is this a good budget gaming PC?

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cryoburner
For the price range, it seems like a reasonably good setup for gaming. The main limitation will likely be the dual-core CPU, which could hurt performance in some newer and upcoming games, as 4+ physical cores are becoming the norm. The processor does have hyper-threading though, which could help.

Of course, to move to a decent modern processor with 4 cores, you would currently be looking at spending upward of 3 times as much for the CPU, and in most existing games it wouldn't improve performance all that much. This CPU is probably a good fit for a $500 gaming setup, at least for now. If it became a problem a couple years down the line, you could always upgrade to a quad-core processor then.

I don't know if it's the absolute best...
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cryoburner

cryoburner

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Oct 8, 2011
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For the price range, it seems like a reasonably good setup for gaming. The main limitation will likely be the dual-core CPU, which could hurt performance in some newer and upcoming games, as 4+ physical cores are becoming the norm. The processor does have hyper-threading though, which could help.

Of course, to move to a decent modern processor with 4 cores, you would currently be looking at spending upward of 3 times as much for the CPU, and in most existing games it wouldn't improve performance all that much. This CPU is probably a good fit for a $500 gaming setup, at least for now. If it became a problem a couple years down the line, you could always upgrade to a quad-core processor then.

I don't know if it's the absolute best gaming build possible for $500, but I can't see anything major that I would change with it.
 
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adiec

adiec

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Dec 4, 2013
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power supply decent enough . cpu is fabulous for the price compared to an i3 6100/7100 (performs within a few %). im not a supporter of using 1 stick of ram (if you run into problems when you first put the build together .. how do you test if it is the ram or not .. if you only have 1 stick? ) it will run games such as bf1 gta v watch dogs 2 hitman2016 @ 1080 high/ultra settings .
 
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cryoburner

cryoburner

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Oct 8, 2011
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I would normally agree, but since he's going for a lower-cost gaming build, 8GB will likely be enough for the time being, and since the motherboard only has 2 RAM slots, leaving one open will provide room for an upgrade to 16GB later on without having to replace the original module. Of course, another option would be to move to a different Micro ATX motherboard with 4 RAM slots, then getting a 2x4GB set.
 
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