Building An Intel-Based MicroATX Gaming PC On A Budget

How-to
By Arne Weigold, Igor Wallossek
published

Installing the Graphics Card and Finishing Touches

Picking the right graphics card for a low-end PC can be tricky. Some inexpensive boards even work without an auxiliary power input. If your card of choice does need more than the PCIe slot's 75 W, they're going to be too short to run behind the motherboard. You need to run them up and over instead. If your card doesn't need that much power, run the leads from your PSU where they won't be seen using cable ties.

Mounting a graphics card is easy: loosen the slot bracket’s screw, remove one or two slot shields (depending on the width of your card), and then carefully insert the graphics card. Clamp it into place using the slot bracket. Finish by tightening the bracket's screw.

MSI's surprisingly long GeForce GTX 750 Ti Twin Frozr Gaming card demonstrates that longer high-end boards would bump into the obsolete and useless externally-facing 3.5” bay.
Deepcool Steam Castle
MSI GeForce GTX 750 Ti Twin Frozr

Arne Weigold
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67 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Amdlova
    What i can say. Ugly. Prefer the bitfenix cage... all that cheap plastic...
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Promoted by DeepCool. and MSI.
    Reply
  • bernie456
    Anyone in their right might is not going to spend $100 on the case in a budget build, let alone one as ugly as that one.
    Reply
  • Ben Van Deventer
    It's not ugly, it's "steampunk"
    Reply
  • TheMentalist
    AIO watercooler, $100 case, $150 SSD in a budget build? Nice joke.
    Reply
  • pierrerock
    And this is why i would not buy a G3258 if i have to get a Z97 Board. I know H81 Boards can now overclock this CPU, but there is a lot of chances that this board would not have a bios recent enough for this CPU. and since you buy a G3258, there is little chance you have another LGA 1150 CPU in your sleeve to flash the bios.

    I would get a X4 760K with a better GPU instead of a G3258 with a more expensive motherboard...
    Reply
  • Ethan Feinhaus
    The only problem I have with this is that you're trying to describe a budget system with a water cooler. When one is building a budget system, there's no reason to have a water cooler when the stock cooler would function well enough.
    Reply
  • Nestor Turizo
    Noob question: Isnt a stock, on air i5 for 200 usd aprox. a better option than a cheap processor + fancy cooler for 200+ usd?
    Reply
  • pierrerock
    14114978 said:
    Noob question: Isnt a stock, on air i5 for 200 usd aprox. a better option than a cheap processor + fancy cooler for 200+ usd?

    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
    Reply
  • lp231
    Why isn't the total mentioned for this budget build? Also the price for the ram, aio cooler, optical drive are missing. I had to add those in by guessing the most acceptable price for those missing parts and total with what was price listed came out to almost $840. At that price, it's not a budget build. Budget build is suppose to be around $500 or less. $600 is consider a huge headroom.
    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!
    Reply