Super Cheap Gaming Computer

[Flatliner]

So pretty much I'm a super poor college student trying to make a semi casual gaming pc. After looking around everywhere trying to find a custom build I wanted and trusted, I decided to just say screw it and build the thing myself. However, until about a month ago, I knew nothing about the hardware of computers so I wanted to post my build here and ask yall to help me make sure all my parts are actually all going to play nice together. Also I have no idea what to look for in a mother board.

Case and dvd drive: I got from my friend from an old computer of his for free

Processor: AMD Athlon x2 250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-681-_-Product

Video Card: Radeon 4670, 1GB on-board memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-277-_-Product

HDD: 500gb, 16mb cache
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-215-_-Product

PSU: 650watt, Corsair
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-005-_-Product

RAM: 2x2gb, ddr2. Picked it up from Fry's with an awesome sale
http://www.frys.com/product/6011558

MOBO: As I mentioned before, I have no idea what to get for this, and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to keep it under 80$ if its at all possible, with ddr2 ram, and with the ability to match the above mentioned processor(Think AM3 socket is the part thats important for mobo matching?) I'm also going to be using a tv with a hdmi port as a screen, so if it can have a hdmi port (I already have a hdmi>hdmi cable) or a dvi port for a dvi>hdmi cable (as was mentioned in a recent thread on here) that would be super. Its just everytime I look for a motherboard I feel overwhelmed with the plethora of them out there, and all the different specs I need to look for.

Thanks ahead of time for any help yall can give me, it will be greatly appreciated.

[fishstix]

For a motherboard, the naming scheme can be a bit confusing, but you need something that's AM2/AM2+/AM3 compatible. If it doesn't mention AM3, it should still be compatible with the Athlon IIs but I'd double check on the manufacturer's website to see the CPU list. Actually though, checking out that CPU, newegg lists this combo deal If you bundle the $80 mobo, you'll save $20 so it'll be more like a $60 mobo. The only problem is that it's a microATX, not sure if that bothers you or not. I replaced my current motherboard for the Phenom II x4 chip (same socket) and I shopped around, found a Gigabyte MA790x-DS4 for $50 at Fry's, been working well.

I cant say for certainty, but I think the AM3 name is just for show, to make things seem new. I know motherboards that only advertise AM3, tend to have only DDR3 ram slots though, but my Gigabyte AM2/AM2+ board came out before the Athlon II line, yet it says it's compatible with the Athlon X2 64 chips... idkkkk

btw what games are you wanting to play? The 4670 is kinda weak, I'd try to go for at least an nvidia 9800GTX or ati 4850

[Pikarya]

Power supply is overkill (imo) for that video card & setup.

edit: 400/450w Corsair will do for that. Also will save you money if that is the bare-end direction you're looking for.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139008 $49

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139003 $69

[Kurp]

What is your budget?

I agree that your listed PSU is more than you need.

[Olo401]

As mentioned you can cut back on the power supply to as low as 450W and be fine.. but on the HD you should try to get as close to 1TB as you can manage because once you start loading up programs and downloading music & video, that half a gig will get eaten up REAL quick.

BTW Do you happen to know if the case can hold a full ATX motherboard? If it's mATX only that really limits your option and it might be worth considering a Core 2 Duo build.

Let's go with this:

CPU : Athlon II X2 250 (linked in OP) - $67
Motherboard : Foxconn A7DA-S 3.0 - $99
HDD : WD Caviar Green 750GB - $70
Power Supply : BFG Tech 450W - $40
Video Card : XFX Radeon 4770 - $115

That puts you about $110 under budget which you can save, divvy up into minor upgrades (The Phenom II x2 550BE is only $32 more and absolutely worth it!) or use to purchase a copy of Windows 7.

[Flatliner]

My budget is pretty much as low as I can get it without sacrificing tons of quality. I'm not super hardcore gamer, to which I mean I'm mostly going to be playing DDO on this comp until FFXIV comes out. I'm not looking for super graphics either, just medium range.

I don't think a bigger harddrive is for me, I have a 6+ year old laptop currently that has every computer program/song/video/game I've ever owned on its 100gb hd and it only has 70gb so far (Thats with 3 fully updated mmo's too). If anything I was thinking of dropping it to a 320 lol(Its not quite worth the 5$ for a downgrade though). I just don't download enough things to justify it.

I'd also like to stick to the corsair line psu, or something equivelant. I've heard too many bad things about buying cheap psu's and decided I was just going to get a good one and eat the extra money. I originally was going to go with the 550 on newegg, until I realized I could save 3$ by doing the 650 lol. The 450 is only 8$ cheaper than the 650 too (thats with shipping). With that said though, would there be anything bad about getting a bigger than needed power supply? I'm just worried I'm going to go upgrade parts one day and I'll regret not spending that extra $10~ on the bigger psu and have to buy a whole new one.

I was also thinking of buying a cheapish video card now, since all I really want is to play ddo until XIV comes out, and upgrade the card then, but I think it would be better to get the better card now. 4770 looks like a good choice, thanks for that.

The only problem is that it's a microATX, not sure if that bothers you or not.

What is it that would make that a problem? Its things like this that I don't know about mobo's that worries me :/ Thanks for finding that bundle for me though, think that would make a great combo/deal^^.

As a random question, does anybody know how long newegg Christmas sale goes for? And what are the chances of parts actually getting sold out? I want to know how long I have to buy these things, because the more research I do the better I figure I'll do in the end, but I don't want to miss the sales because so far I'm saving something like 80$ on everything, which is huge for me. Also my friend thinks I should mention that I have no plans for overclocking.

[fishstix]

Being cautious about the PSU is good, but there are a few equivalent quality brands, such as this Antec for $55. If you plan on sticking with ATI in the future, the 5000 series actually have a lower power requirement than the previous generation cards, the 4000s and the nvidia cards. So unless you want to run crossfire, then a small PSU is fine. About "bigger is better" a bigger PSU ends up drawing in more power from your house right? electric bill ftl.

And yeah, buying a cheap card now/upgrade later as needed is a good idea, something I did myself I bought a cheapo 8400 gs for ffxi, and then upgraded to a gtx260 for aion.

Also, like it was mentioned above, if you can afford the upgrade to the Phenom II x2, it's definitely worth it. The differences is that the Athlon IIs don't have an L3 cache however that affects performance, idk :3 With the right motherboard and luck, you can also unlock the cores of a PII to make it a quad.

[Rammses]

The extra power from high wattage PSUs is basically useless; 450w is future safe. An ultra high-end Core i7+Radeon HD 5800 system won't draw much more than 250w under load... Any system requiring 650w would be exactly what you don't want for an MMO: hot, noisy and expensive to run -- glad the industry isn't going down that path anymore...

I'd be wary about cheaping out on the CPU if you want to play FFXIV or any future titles. Quite a few recent multi-platform titles (RE4, Lost Planet, HAWX, CoD4, MW2 off the top of my head) have seen a significant performance boost from multi-core processing, and then we have the extreme case of GTAIV; if FFXIV is anything like that, an Athlon II x2 250 would perform horribly and bottleneck your plans of a future GPU upgrade. But considering you'll need an AM2+ board for your DDR2, that combo deal fishstix suggested might be a risk worth taking. If you decide against it, I'd suggest the Athlon II x3 435 instead, which at $87 is much better value than the x2 250 at $67. The AM2+ board in the combo deal is decent (the Gigabyte equivalent for the same price is perhaps a little better, if you don't go with the combo deal: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128394), as long as your case supports MicroATX (I suspect google and a ruler can answer that). If you can find a cheaper, solid AM2+ board, I'd go with that and the x3 435. Otherwise, just go with the combo and upgrade to a faster AM3 processor later if the x2 250 doesn't work out. All current AM3 CPUs support DDR2 RAM, and the quadcores should have dropped a little to a more reasonable price by then.

[Flatliner]

Yeah, I didn't know about the cache thing with the processors. Definitely will upgrade, as well as downgrade from the 650watt psu to the 550 antec that fishstix posted. I also realized I may have slightly more money to spend than I thought( I talked some people into getting me the operating system/ram for Christmas :D), so I'm looking at upgrading some pieces. If I had say...$500 with the ram

RAM = ddr2, 4 gb 65$
http://www.frys.com/product/6011558

HDD = 500gb. 55$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145215

PSU = 550watt, 55$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371016

MOBO = That mobo that you posted looks good cause as yall have mentioned, I should upgrade that processor 80$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128394

So...that leaves $265 for the video card and CPU, with shipping >.>

CPU = AMD x2 550, $100 ?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103680

Video Card = Hell...I could get the 5770 at this pirce...$155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-864-_-Product

10$ left over. Are there any more slight upgrades for the processor that might be worth another $10-20? I would really have that piece be the most future proof of them all, along with the mobo since they are no fun to replace. Also with the 5770, since somebody before mentioned it was more energy effecient, could I go down to a 450watt with this? Currently that 550watt is cheaper than the 450 I was looking at before though lol. Gogo Christmas sales. Btw, thanks a lot for all the help so far guys, its made me feel a lot better about the purchase :D

EDIT: Sorry for the ADD-tastic posting, but trying to set up Christmas dinner thing with family while playing on newegg and hoping their deals last longer than just to midnight tonight. Anyways, found this mobo/cpu combo, wondering what yall thought? Slightly better upgrade, and the 630 was kind of what I was thinking of getting when I first started looking at processors. It doesn't have a hdmi port though...don't even see a dvi. But the 5770 does, so I'll just run the comp to the tv through it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.305248

[Rammses]

Looks solid, 5770 is a good choice for graphics.

For the CPU, I'd go with either $87 Athlon II x3 435(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...4&Tpk=x3%20435) or $124 Phenom II x3 720(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-649-_-Product). The x2 550 isn't good value for $100 imo. If it unlocks, great... if it doesn't, you're stuck with an expensive bottleneck with future quadcore-optimized applications. Athlon II x4 630 probably isn't worth it regardless of discount. It performs worse with games than the other CPUs, and consumes more power.

The x3 435 is a good if you want to keep choices open. You may not need a faster CPU later on if you're mostly playing FFXIV, but if you do want to upgrade, it's been a cheap enough placeholder. If you just want a future proof CPU, then I think it's worth spending the extra money on a Phenom x3 720; it won't be a bottleneck with neither duocore- nor quadcore-optimized applications for a good while.

As for the PSU, 450w is good enough for anything you would want to put on an AM2+ motherboard... Maybe future generations of multicore CPUs will be power hungry monsters, but I really doubt it as I can't see much demand for noisy, expensive radiators. I think we're past the conventional PC wattage peak and expect the trend of lower, more effective power consumption to continue. But correct me if I'm wrong.

[Olo401]

I actually like that motherboard more than the Foxconn one, but there's a reason why I didn't choose it. AMD's 785G chipset is slightly outdated. It'll still do the job and support the processor with the proper BIOS version, but it won't support DDR3 while the 790 series chip can. That's not of much consequence right now because you already have your memory, but down the road it means you're capped.

[Milks]

Not to steal your topic, but I don't want to create yet another "rate my PC that I want to buy" topic. Anyway, this one's not really cheap, but not expensive by any means:

Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129024)

MSI P55-CD53 LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130240)

SAPPHIRE 100283-2L Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102864)

Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80605I5750 - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115215)

CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model TW3X4G1333C9A G - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145251)

ZALMAN CNPS9900ALED 120mm 2 Ball Low-noise Blue LED CPU Cooler - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118046)

Going to use DVD burner from old PC and hard drive from old PC. Any problems with this that I should be aware of? Haven't built a PC from brand new parts, the only PCs I've ever built have always been Frankensteins by gathering parts from random people or finding them at school. In other words, they haven't exactly been PCs I could use for anything useful. I just built them for shits and giggles at high school.

[Weeks]

You can save about $40 by switching to a Gigabyte motherboard that's currently got a combo deal with that CPU and video card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.310917

That computer will work well, but my advice to everyone who isn't really scrimping is to go SSD. Computers can be so fast and so quiet these days, it's a pity to sabotage them with the hard drive. Use your old computer, a cheap HTPC, or a plug-in hard drive for media storage.

EDIT: Actually, about $20, but you get a slightly-upgraded video card that runs cooler and quieter. Didn't realize that was different.

[Rammses]

That computer will work well, but my advice to everyone who isn't really scrimping is to go SSD. Computers can be so fast and so quiet these days, it's a pity to sabotage them with the hard drive. Use your old computer, a cheap HTPC, or a plug-in hard drive for media storage.

With their current pricing, it would be cheaper to invent a time machine and travel to a time when 80GB of SSD doesn't double to cost of your computer, and game developers no longer make a single console port take up 1/4th of that space.

When they have dropped a little in price, would it be a good solution to use a tiny SSD for the OS and basic apps, a smallish 10000 rpm disk for games and an external for media? I don't know much about HDDs; is there a catch? I'd love to get rid of my Raptor's search clicks when I'm working and surfing.

[Weeks]

Kingston's 40GB version of the Intel X25-M is $85 after rebate when you can find it in stock. Half the people around here seem to have a mouse or keyboard in that price range.

Personally, I'm using just a little over 20GB of my 80GB on this computer. Most people are going to have a lot more games than me, but I just can't imagine it being easy to go over 40GB storing video files elsewhere.

[LiquidFriend]

if you're willing to order soon and fuck with Bing Cashback, TigerDirect has 12.8% Bing Cashback right now and free shipping on orders over $100 and under 35 lbs.

[bungiefan]

I'd rather get a terabyte drive for that kind of money than a 40 GB drive. I need space more than quiet or speed. 3 TB still isn't enough for my household.

[Milks]

Just bought the above parts listed for $691. Not bad, I guess.

[Milks]

UPS are bastards. All of my stuff arrived except my case and power supply.

[Olo401]

UPS are bastards. All of my stuff arrived except my case and power supply.

Might not be them.. if you ordered from Newegg they have two warehouses that I know of - New Jersey and southern California. Sometimes you get lucky and everything comes the next day on UPS Ground..