Help Building a Gaming PC for CHEAP!
 

Okay, I know that there are quite a few of these discussions on these forums already, but mine is DIFFERENT. ...somehow.

Anyway, I would like to finally upgrade from gaming on my 13.3" MacBook (3 years old, or so) to a self-built Gaming PC. I have looked up guides, but none of them really show HOW WELL the computer can run certain games, such as WoW. Also, I am on a tight budget, as I am a 17 year-old college student :P As in, $500-$750 or so. Yeah, I'm cheap :P

I would like it to be able to run WoW on maxed out settings (or close to it, I'm not THAT picky :P), have the Bloom mod enabled, and still get good enough FPS in raids (almost entirely 10m). Obviously, I don't need 287 FPS in a 25m raid; 30-40 FPS is good enough for me :)

So, is this even possible with my limited budget? If so, HOW?! All comments are appreciated :D Thanks!


P.S. All-inclusive guides, a.k.a telling me ALL of the parts necessary for such a system, would be frickin' AWESOME.

I'm running a i5 and HD 5770 combo atm and it runs WoW on Ultra easily, (got 400 FPS in Orgrimmar at one point xD). May want to update the graphics card although as the new 6000 series are out.

Sorry should have read all of your post xD. If your completely new http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/ was incredibly useful for me when i built my first PC. Also check the links in the sidebar as they contain a lot of useful information.

EDIT: You could take a look at http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...uide/Guide.png however just looking at the makes my brain hurt.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea...awesome_pc_647


That's a good spot to start. My recommendation is shop around different sites, and buy similar to what's listed. Mix and match different stuff depending on price, as a few things that were listed probably came down in price, or other more powerful items have come down in price by now.

Does the $750 include Monitor, Speakers, Mouse, and Keyboard? Is there anything that you can utilize that you currently have to save money?

Let me know and then I can build you a system based off of that. :)

THe $750 does NOT include those, and not really :P I have a MacBook, which doesn't really help.

CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme 1077 Intel Core i5 760(2.80GHz) 4GB DDR3 1TB ATI Radeon HD 5450 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit at NewEgg for 769.99.

Just to compare what you can probably afford to buy on your budget.

As for what I personally do. Set a budget and then save 3x that amount. By the time you have your total savings new and better hardware will be available.


And if, for some reason you really want to go all out check out Falcon-nw.com

ALSO: Read through this System Buyers' Guide: $700 to $1700

That CyberPowerPC above is not very good, especially for the price.

Here is a wish list I have setup for you in Newegg:

The total is $768. This does not include the $45 MIR and the 10% Off Video Card Promo Code.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Pu...umber=21293428

You can decrease the price more by getting a smaller HD and/or a less-performing Video Card. All of the other parts I would consider to be much harder to replace. (Because of quality, minimal price differences, etc.)

I have not included a case, (this is more of a personal preference) but you can take a look at them here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...deId=1&name=No

Feel free to ask any questions!

Best price I could come up with was $809 + sh (minus of course any rebates you have to mail in)

It wasn't awesome for $809 but it has everything you need. I used an i3-540 CPU instead of the i5 though but the motherboard will support the i5 and i7 if you wanted to drop in more horse power later. The videocard is a GTX 460 so it should have ample enough power to drive most things for awhile. The keyboard and mouse aren't exactly amazing, but are easily replaced. Since your monitor is probably usable with the PC (I would imagine) you can chop $110 out of the price and apply it to a better keyboard/mouse or the i5 cpu or something.

As I have no newegg account here's just a linklist of components I'd buy:

LIAN LI Lancool PC-K58 Black..................$ 79.99
CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX.........................$ 89.99
SAMSUNG Black 22X DVD+R ...................$ 16.99
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB............$ 54.99
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO............................$ 98.99
AMD Phenom II X4 945..........................$135.99
Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3 1600..............$ 74.99
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850 ....................$199.99

That's a total of $751.92, and you could still get a cheaper Case,
the Lancool case would just be the one I'd get from the cheaper ones available at newegg...

techreport.com does a system build guide every couple of months, here's a link to the most recent one: http://techreport.com/articles.x/19868/1

systems start at $555.88

How good would the "Econobox" on that link (the cheapest option) be? I'm a penny-pincher, LOL.

Thank you all SO much for your help! :D

If you want to go for the Econobox config I'd highly recommend to at least switch in these parts for those listed:

Phenom II x4 940 4x3,0 GHz
* Actually $5 cheaper than the Athlon (plus Phenom is supposed to be the superior architecture)

GeForce GTX 460
* Only $25 more expensive and up to 30% faster

Seasonic 430W Power Supply
* As Phenom and GTX460 draw more power the 380W PS seems a bit low

The Econobox components would cost about $570 right now, after these changes it would be about $610...
and I would then still switch the memory for a 4GB kit as 2GB may not be enough for more demanding games anymore.

That would be $630 then and for everything below that you will cut away quite some performance imho.

Link for $610 System with 2GB memory
Link for $630 System with 4GB memory

Awesome, thanks! That sounds like my goal, at least for now :) Time to save my money :D:D

The processor is more important with wow then the video card you can get buy with a 240 or above Nydia card as long as you have a good CPU and if your main concern is wow you want as fast a processor as you can get, You will not see very much if any performance difference over 4 cores. Wow is not optimized to take advantage of multi core processors so you will get more performance out of less cored but more speed. My recommendation 3 gigahertz or more As go AMD the chips deliver superior performance to Intel.

[quote=Melikae;217978]If you want to go for the Econobox config I'd highly recommend to at least switch in these parts for those listed:

Phenom II x4 940 4x3,0 GHz
* Actually $5 cheaper than the Athlon (plus Phenom is supposed to be the superior architecture)

GeForce GTX 460
* Only $25 more expensive and up to 30% faster

Seasonic 430W Power Supply
* As Phenom and GTX460 draw more power the 380W PS seems a bit low

The Econobox components would cost about $570 right now, after these changes it would be about $610...
and I would then still switch the memory for a 4GB kit as 2GB may not be enough for more demanding games anymore.

That would be $630 then and for everything below that you will cut away quite some performance imho.

Link for $610 System with 2GB memory
Link for $630 System with 4GB memory[/QUOTE
For a OS i would recomend Win 7 64 bit, With 32 bit the most memory you can have is 3.2 gigs

That's only partially true. WoW is optimized to use two cores since quite some patches.
It can handle even more, but you won't recognize any changes in performance when using more than two cores.

The postet CPUs (the Econobox's Athlon and the Phenom II I posted) are running on 3.0 GHz.
And though you are right, that the Phenoms are most of the time a tad faster than equally priced i3s,
the i5 Cralor posted would most probably be at least on par with the "bigger" Phenom II x4 (but as expensive as well ;) ).

So, thread necro time. I'm gonna be getting a job soon, so I will actually be able to afford building a new computer! I'm also willing to be more patient, so my budget is a bit bigger ;)

I've put together a parts list (including mouse/keyboard/monitor), and I was just gonna see what you all thought :)

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Pu...umber=15933305

not a bad looking rig...although for the Processor I'd go with this and swap in a compatible socket AM3 mobo. That's just me though. I have the X6 2.8 gig OC's to 3 gig and I love it....smooth as butter and no problems at all.

Looks solid. My only recommendation is to drop the Seagate drive, and get a Western Digital one instead. I used to love Seagate, but their drives have been a bit flaky the past couple years.

The 6 core is only better if he plans to run anything that will put them to use. The Sandy bridge he picked will be much faster for most applications, and games.

Hmm...

I'm not sure you need the 1G memory graphics card for any gaming; there are some texture heavy things out there, but WoW isn't one of them. You might be able to shave some price off of that total and raise the GPU speed instead.

Personally, I want an iMac, but it looks about 20% more here, although I don't see your price for Windows on your box, and I can't opt for a smaller drive on the iMac to get speed instead. My intel-core iMac has done well the last five years, but I can't run WoW and its highest settings anymore ;-;

-Crissa