System Builder Marathon, Q3 2013: $650 Gaming PC

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Motherboard And Memory

Motherboard: MSI 970A-G43

MSI's affordable 970A-G43 Socket AM3+ motherboard gives us the basic necessities for our lightly overclocked gaming PC. Outfitted with the AMD 970 northbridge and SB950 southbridge, it offers a comprehensive suite of I/O, including six SATA 6Gb/s ports, four USB 3.0 ports (two in the back and two via internal header), and up to 12 USB 2.0 ports (six around back and another six via headers).

On-board, you'll find six expansion slots, including two single-lane PCIe links, two legacy PCI slots, and a pair of second-gen PCIe x16 slots. You even get support for CrossFire, though only in a x16/x4 arrangement that we wouldn't recommend using. Other noteworthy features include solid capacitors, four DDR3 memory slots, and an enthusiast-friendly UEFI.

Read Customer Reviews of MSI's 970A-G43 Motherboard (opens in new tab)

Memory: 8 GB Kingston HyperX XMP Blu Red Series DDR3-1600

Working within a tight budget, we put our money into doubling this quarter’s RAM capacity, rather than seeking high frequencies and low timings. Kingston’s HyperX Blu Red series was one of the cheapest name brand 8 GB DDR3-1600 kits available, although an XMP profile with CL9 timings at 1.65 V doesn't bode well for manual tweaking. The price we're paying per gigabyte is far better than the 4 GB kits, and we liked the feedback this kit was receiving on Newegg.

Read Customer Reviews of Kingston's 8 GB HyperX XMP Blu Red Kit (opens in new tab)

Paul Henningsen
131 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Darkerson
    Not a bad little entry system. Im sure it will get picked apart here in the comments soon, but for the price, its not that bad at all.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    I think this time you chose the perfect balance of cpu and gpu at this price point. The Athlon 750k is far too weak, please don't use it next month, even an fx41xx or 43xx would be a better choice. The Haswell i3 would be interesting as we might be able to get some overclocking wby increasing base clock strap settings
    Reply
  • Onus
    It looked great until I saw the mobo, then I thought "oops..."
    Based on http://www.overclock.net/a/about-vrms-mosfets-motherboard-safety-with-high-tdp-processors and https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgN1D79Joo7tdE9xMUFlMEVWeFhuckJEVF9aMmtpUFE&gid=0 I would have gone with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138372 instead; it has a heatsink on its VRMs, and it currently offers free shipping and is $2 less (it's been that way for a while now; I've had my eye on it for recommendations). I'm concerned that the cheap MSI will pop in the middle of a long gaming session. Did you by chance point an IR thermometer at its VRMs during your testing?
    Otherwise, it's nice to see the FX-6300 get a workout in which it performs in the same ballpark as its competition, maybe a little less "raw," but with higher bang/buck.
    Reply
  • noob2222
    its crazy how fast memory prices change, that kingston kit is now $84 and the team vulcan 2133 and 2400 are <60.
    Reply
  • designasaurus
    I'd be interested in seeing an FX 8-core more than the FM2 Athlons. In general though, it would be nice to see an AMD processor in these quarterly builds more regularly. I know you guys treat it as a competition, but, for readers like me, it's more informative to see how the competition shapes up rather than seeing 5% boosts from the latest Ivy-to-Haswell iteration. The higher budget guys are pretty much exclusively using Intel these days (I'll get my Haswell comparisons there), so your lower budget builds are the only place to reasonably see how a good AMD build stacks up. FX-6300 is definitely the best value AMD processor though, so it's going to be tough for you to beat this if you go up or down in cpu budget to get the Athlon or octocore.
    Reply
  • Novuake
    Yeah, I would not touch that board...
    Reply
  • m32
    I would have to put an fan over the VRMs to feel safe. That is just me. designasaurus, nice read and I agree.
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    nice build. though i probably would have went with a 7950, and took the $50 saved to get a cpu cooler like the hyper evo 212, and a better overclocking motherboard like the m5a97 R2.0... you probably would have been able to give that fx a bit better of a chance to hit mid to high 4s on the overclock then. if you can get a 6300 up around 4.7-4.9 (obviously not all of them can get there) you can pace an i5 pretty easily... so spending a little on the board and cpu cooler is a good option.

    the 8 core 8320 is getting pretty cheap. the problem is in order to unleash that type of power you're probably going to NEED to go with a hefty cpu cooler and hefty overclocking board. so for the future i suggest you keep with the fx 6300 unless the prices on the 8320 come down a little more.
    Reply
  • Lee Yong Quan
    would love to see how well does the $350 pc compare with the Q2 $400 PC! then i would know how well my pc would perform when gta 5 is out!
    Reply
  • bemused_fred
    Why is everyone saying "go with the HD 7950" when they clearly said in the article that it only became cheaper after they finished the build?
    "AMD's Radeon HD 7950 now sells for even less. But at the time we picked our parts, the GeForce GTX 760 was more affordable."

    Honestly, read the article before commenting!
    Reply