Building a gaming rig for $500

[fliphusker]

I am new at this and getting my feet wet as not only does my laptop give me crappy fps but it is also on its last legs. I am wanting to build a gaming rig that is definitely not high end, unless it is for around $500. I only play world of tanks right now, which is very graphic intensive. And wanting something that will handle at least 40-80 fps in my budget.
Am I on track with this build for medium graphics at least?
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j793

Am I going too cheap on something? Just looking for a starting point with my budget. Thanks in advance.

 

[DarkSable]

For your price point, and that game (which I believe scales with cores), I would highly rec commend going with a 6-core phenom black. AMD isn't making an amazing showing in the market recently, but that chip is one of the best budget CPUs out there.

For the RAM. If you aren't going AMD, get cheaper ram that runs at 1600. AMD chips scale with ram speeds, intel doesn't nearly as much.

Take the money you saved with that, and buy an SSD - I would recommend a 90GB one. (Make sure it's sata 6GB/s)


The biggest worry about that rig, for me, is the case. It's got not particularly good airflow, and, here's the biggest thing. _Never buy a case with a PSU in it unless you scrap the PSU._ You're getting a PoS with it - non brand name, badly built... the sort of thing that could easily brick your entire computer when it decides to die.

Buy a case and a seperate PSU of a reliable brand.

 

[tiny voices]

Your build is a bit sporadic. This is a nice round build with a good quality PSU. I have the same system basically and it will run all modern games at high settings. Should be excellent for your needs.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j7td

 

[Deleted member 362816]

best budget amd cpu for gaming is the phenom x4 965

 

[tiny voices]

Also, the GPU you listed is pretty weak. You need a GDDR5 card for any decent graphics in modern games. The 7770 is an amazing budget card and will suit your needs well. I have one in the build I listed for you. I also game with one myself.

 

[fliphusker]

Can others comment on Youngsters b build please?
I appreciate the comments. world of tanks just started supporting dual/multi core, i believe with their new graphics engine.
Any idea on if waiting till black Friday or Cyber Monday would make any kind of difference?

Thanks, its all very appreciated

 

[dscudella]

The build I came up with is pretty close to Tiny Voices'. His build is pretty spot on.

 

[jaudain]

I'll be honest and said that a 500$ build including the os which like -85$ so we are left with around 400 buck to work with which is a bit hard (at least more me) which lead me recommend you to maybe addint a 50$ more for the budget. Next up, i agreed on getting at least a 7770HD tho i don't agreed with the phenom 965 , from a strictly gaming point of view alot (if not all) of intel chips beats amd's in term of gaming performance at alot of price point, which leads me on recommending the following build => http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j7DZ

Squeezed abit while keeping it balanced and a g860 does better than a 965 in gaming performance.

 

[tiny voices]

He said he only plays world of tanks. The phenom 2 x4 965 will blow away the pentium chip in all multitasking aspects. (multiple internet tabs, video/photo editing, screen recording, stuff like that.)

 

[smorizio]

with a desktop pc if the parts are picked right and the budget done right you can have a game pc that last you 4 or 5 years with little upgrading. on the intel cpu intel just put a lot of sandy bridge chips on there eol list and replaced them with a few ib cpu. in a few weeks you may find a good price on a sb cpu. also around the holiday rush amd may drop there new gpu line. myself i look into i5-3450. with 8g of ram (ddr-3 1600). and a 500g sata drive as a min for storage. one of your one g drives now are 80-120.00 in price and the price is slowing dropping back on hard drives. i would put in an ssd later if you want more speed. but i would use the ssd money for a better gpu and power supply. the 7770 not bad for an entry card but the 7800 line for a little more money has some "balls" if your want to play a mmo or a higher end game. look at gpu charts and look at the game frame rate. if you buy to cheap of a video card then you may have to run the game on low or turn down the video size of the game to make it playable. gaming does make a lot of heat so you want a case that mid size and has some fans to it. (pull air in and shoot it out). like the antec one cases or the r300/r400 case. the r cases made to hide the cable and make a more neater gaming rig. also larger case fans..run slower..less nose. the same goes for buying a good cpu heat sink with a cpu fan that the mb can spin down to 300/400rpm and up to 2100 or more rpm when needed. dont cheap out on the power supply..as you can look under power supply help..bad power supply can just die on you.(lucky it does not take out your mb or hard drive.) or it causes blue screen or causes the system to reboot under load.min i look for in a bronze rated power supply. the seasonice or one of the rebranded sea's will last a long time.