- Jun 14, 2007
- 36
- 0
- 18,530
So right now I'm in a pretty crappy situation. I lost my gaming PC about a year ago (it's a long story) and all I have left is a cruddy laptop that struggles to pull 25 FPS even in Half-Life 2 at the lowest possible settings at 640x480. Yeah, it's that bad.
However, the good news is that I have some leftover parts that I can put to use. These are as follows:
Since I have the case, memory, and power supply covered, I'm looking to get back into PC gaming by spending as little money as possible.
I'm not by any means looking to build a "beast machine." I just want to be able to play games at 1080p/medium settings while maintaining 30-60 FPS. Think of it as a temporary build--something that gets the job done until I can find work and save enough money to build something truly special.
Ideally, I would like to spend $250 or less. At most I'll spend $300, because that's all my finances allow for at this time.
After doing some research and fiddling around on PCPartPicker, here's what I've come up with.
To make it easier on you guys, I'll also list the parts here:
At the time of this post, those parts come out to about $280. If I could cut down on the price while retaining performance, that'd be awesome. I also wouldn't mind going with another GPU (I've heard AMD's R7 265 and R7 260X are two good alternatives).
I'd also like to make it clear that an objective of mine is to buy parts that are as cheap as possible, but also future-proof. One example is the 1 TB hard drive. It's just a regular old HDD, but when the time comes I can pair it with a SSD. The other, more important example is the LGA 1150 motherboard. Since Intel's most powerful CPUs, the i5s and i7s, are compatible with it, that means I don't have to buy yet another motherboard when I build a much more powerful PC a year or so from now.
Conversely, the G3258 and GTX 750 Ti are more or less throwaways. They'll get the job done for now, but when I build a proper full-fledged gaming PC they'll be tossed out. That's the part that stings. I'd even considered dropping the GPU all-together and trying to live off the G3258's integrated Intel graphics, but I realize the chances of that working out are probably slim to none, even at low resolutions, therefore it would seem that a dedicated GPU is a must.
So what do you guys think? Is there anything I could do to save more money and still get good performance while being future-proof as far as the motherboard goes? How about the GPU? Is there truly a flat-out better option than the GTX 750 Ti for the type of performance I'm after at 1080p/medium settings?
EDIT: I've since replaced the GTX 750 Ti with the R7 260X, as it seems to be a better value.
Thanks in advance!
However, the good news is that I have some leftover parts that I can put to use. These are as follows:
Since I have the case, memory, and power supply covered, I'm looking to get back into PC gaming by spending as little money as possible.
I'm not by any means looking to build a "beast machine." I just want to be able to play games at 1080p/medium settings while maintaining 30-60 FPS. Think of it as a temporary build--something that gets the job done until I can find work and save enough money to build something truly special.
Ideally, I would like to spend $250 or less. At most I'll spend $300, because that's all my finances allow for at this time.
After doing some research and fiddling around on PCPartPicker, here's what I've come up with.
To make it easier on you guys, I'll also list the parts here:
■Intel G3258 CPU
■Gigabyte LGA 1150 MOBO
■Hitachi 1 TB HDD*
■AMD R7 260X GPU
At the time of this post, those parts come out to about $280. If I could cut down on the price while retaining performance, that'd be awesome. I also wouldn't mind going with another GPU (I've heard AMD's R7 265 and R7 260X are two good alternatives).
I'd also like to make it clear that an objective of mine is to buy parts that are as cheap as possible, but also future-proof. One example is the 1 TB hard drive. It's just a regular old HDD, but when the time comes I can pair it with a SSD. The other, more important example is the LGA 1150 motherboard. Since Intel's most powerful CPUs, the i5s and i7s, are compatible with it, that means I don't have to buy yet another motherboard when I build a much more powerful PC a year or so from now.
Conversely, the G3258 and GTX 750 Ti are more or less throwaways. They'll get the job done for now, but when I build a proper full-fledged gaming PC they'll be tossed out. That's the part that stings. I'd even considered dropping the GPU all-together and trying to live off the G3258's integrated Intel graphics, but I realize the chances of that working out are probably slim to none, even at low resolutions, therefore it would seem that a dedicated GPU is a must.
So what do you guys think? Is there anything I could do to save more money and still get good performance while being future-proof as far as the motherboard goes? How about the GPU? Is there truly a flat-out better option than the GTX 750 Ti for the type of performance I'm after at 1080p/medium settings?
EDIT: I've since replaced the GTX 750 Ti with the R7 260X, as it seems to be a better value.
Thanks in advance!
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