Back in May, we published a story called Build A Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC On A Budget, which showed you how to construct a low-cost system using AMD's Athlon X4 750K CPU and appropriately-quick graphics cards, all housed in an attractive case. After all, just because you kept an eye on your budget doesn't mean your gaming box needs to be ugly.
This time around, we wanted to do something similar on the Intel side, particularly in light of the good press its Pentium G3258 has been receiving. Our own coverage (Intel Pentium G3258 CPU Review: Haswell, Unlocked, For $75 and The Pentium G3258 Cheap Overclocking Experiment) shows that, even though the Pentium is a dual-core processor lacking Hyper-Threading technology, overclocked, it's still able to out-perform the quad-core Athlon in a great many workloads. It's cheaper, too, which we like.
Component vendor Deepcool has been offering to send us hardware for years, and we typically declined because the company's products weren't readily available in the U.S. More recently, however, it scored a spot on Newegg, and so the Steam Castle enclosure we're using today is something you can actually go out and buy. We thought we'd give the $100 enclosure a test run.
In addition, we have the company's Maelstrom 120 closed-loop liquid cooler. That one isn't available yet, though we're assured it will be soon.
The core of this DIY project is MSI's H97M-G43 motherboard, which sells for about $90, and Intel's overclocking-friendly, multiplier-unlocked Pentium G3258, available at $70 on Newegg.
We don’t blame you if you do a double-take: overclocking on a H97-based board? Yup. You've already seen us do this on an inexpensive H81-based platform using beta firmware. So we can't guarantee that Intel won’t kill this feature through some upcoming microcode update. But given the overwhelmingly-positive community response, we've only heard a token protest from the chip giant (and not even through official channels).
Our overclock was an overwhelming success, peaking at 4.7 GHz through a massive voltage increase. This is neither reasonable nor practical, though, and we've trolled the G3258 user reviews, noticing a great many power users hitting ceilings around 4 GHz, too. As a result, we settled in on a 4.4 GHz clock rate, which requires very few changes in the BIOS and should be possible with most Pentiums.
Then we added a $160 MSI GeForce GTX 750 Ti Twin Frozr Gaming graphics card, completing our well-proportioned budget-oriented gaming machine. It has no trouble handling AAA titles. Just don't expect to run at the highest resolutions with overly taxing detail settings. Not everyone needs a high-end system and its associated price tag. With that in mind, we're happy to present this alternative to our previous AMD build, which should give you years of great performance, despite its conservative cost.
- Building a Budget Intel-Based MicroATX Gaming Cube
- Deepcool Steam Castle
- MSI H97M-G43 and Intel Pentium G3258
- Deepcool Maelstrom 120: Closed-Loop Liquid Cooling
- Storage Installation
- PSU Installation and Cabling
- Installing the Graphics Card and Finishing Touches
- Overclocking Temperature and Sound
- Picking Parts For Your Own Build




I would get a X4 760K with a better GPU instead of a G3258 with a more expensive motherboard...
Yeah a I5 would totally be better, but as for gaming, it would not push a 750 TI much more than a G3258 would. But you are right to think that a water cooling is not a good idea budget-wise
AIO $ 80, ODD $16 , RAM 8GB (2x4GB) $73
Most of these budget build makes no sense when there is no strict budget cap. Next time when there is another budget build and there is something that just got to have it, but cost like $100 more, let's up the price cap and still call it a budget build!
exactly my first thoughts. I'd go with a Fractal Design Core 1000, an EKL Alpenfohn Sella, and just get a MX100 256GB instead of the HDD. If you really need more space, you can always get a big HDD later, or just buy an external USB 3.0 one, or use an NAS or cloud. Also a good 300W PSU should be more than enough for this system, even if you overclock to 4.5 GHz.
exactly my first thoughts. I'd go with a Fractal Design Core 1000, an EKL Alpenfohn Sella, and just get a MX100 256GB instead of the HDD. If you really need more space, you can always get a big HDD later, or just buy an external USB 3.0 one, or use an NAS or cloud. Also a good 300W PSU should be more than enough for this system, even if you overclock to 4.5 GHz.
Yeah, but in a budget build I would use a HDD only. Games these days are about 20-40gigs. That's a lot. SSD's will only increase the loading times, nothing else, no graphical improvements. I would just go with a WB black and spend the saved money on a better CPU/GPU.
And a 400-500W PSU would be the better way, since good 300W PSU's are hard to find everywhere. Plus if the graphics card gets pumped up, the power will too. The Seasonic S520II is the best budget PSU right now.
G3258 $79
MSI Z87M GAMING motherboard $179
Kingston hyper x fury black $99
western digital caviar blue $69
2nd hand 500W psu $15
2nd hand GTX 660 $140
3 coolermaster sickleflow x green fans x3 $12 ($36)
1 bitfenix spectre pro 200mm green $27
gigabyte k7 force keyboard $59
razer naga hex green $79
and a generic cd rom $19
this is a nice looking budget build and performs really well
and if you where to buy a new GTX 660 it would be $199
and a new 500 w psu it would be $49 so it would be $895
and the G3250 can be overclocked to 4.5 on the stock cooler for me.
I play watchdogs a lot high textures and ultra graphics setting and I get between 25-50 fps average is around 40fps
this is a high performance budget build and stays really cool