budget gaming desktop
 

..thinking of building one(^$500 budget). any good suggestions as far as CPU, MB, etc..? Been out of it for many years(back when Pent 233 was the std, Warcraft, C&C was just released). Remember when the screen would 'freeze' as more characters were 'built'..:rolleyes:

thinking AMD(A10s) vs i3 or higher(newer)..any builders out here?

What games are you looking to play?

Imo. $500 isn't even close to building a budget gaming desktop. You will need to at least double that and even then plan on buying low end stuff and upgrade slowly as you get the money. A $500 budget will get you a CPU and that is it. Do not waste your money buying an i3 or i5 (or AMD's equivalent) as they simply do not have the processing power to handle the games coming out now a days. The CPU is the one component you do not want to cheap out on because you can not simply upgrade it later without pretty much rebuying everything else.

To give you an idea of a budget, I'm planing on building a low end gaming PC for my brother for christmas. Everything is low end except for the CPU.

i7 (or AMD equal) - $400
Mother board - $100
16 gig RAM - $65
Case - $100
Power Supply - $50
DVD Drive - $20
1 TB hard drive - $50
Windows 10 - $200
Video Card - $100
Total - $1,085

I bought my gaming rig 3 years ago from Walmart.com and I have upgraded/added parts along the way.

https://www.walmart.com/browse/elect...231068_1097445

Thanks for the opinion all. Going to get a cheaper bundle for my son(for now) just to play some current games-that's faster than his laptop. I'll probably slowly build one starting w/ the latest/greatest. Something better than the consoles, preferably.

Two months late, but did you still need to build one? Its possible to build a decent gaming rig for $500, I've done it, but don't expect to play highest settings at 60fps.

Built mine last year for roughly $600 had an:
i3 cpu $120
a basic motherboard $50
750 Watt PSU $50
16gb ram $40
GTX 960 2GB $200
Western Digital 1tb $50
Case was maybe $30
Hyper 212 evo or Hyper T4 was $30

Over time i added more stuff like an ssd, more hard drives and ram when things went on sale, but that build was fine ran most games at medium to high with custom settings of course. Some games ran better than others but still use it to this day without a need to upgrade. Good Luck.

My computer certainly isn't budget. Bought it 3 years ago, and it's still pretty damn fast. When I ran the benchmark in Civilization 6, I was in the top 1% as far as speed.

Power Supply - SilverStone® 1500 Watt Modular
Motherboard - Asus® Rampage IV Extreme
Processor - Intel® Core™ i7 3970X 3.5GHz
Memory = 1866MHz 8x8GB (64GB)
Processor Cooler - Asetek® Liquid Cooling - Mach V
Video Card 1 - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX TITAN 6GB
Video Card 2 - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX TITAN 6GB
Sound Card - Creative® Recon3D Fatal1ty Champion
Speakers - Logitech® Z-523 2.1
Hard Drive 1 - Crucial® M500 SSD 960GB
Hard Drive 2 - Crucial® M500 SSD 960GB
Hard Drive 3 - Crucial® M500 SSD 960GB
Hard Drive 4 - Western Digital® Green™ 3TB

http://i.imgur.com/QZoggYZ.jpg

Steve, I think this is the wrong thread for you. :) As you said, your system DEFINITELY isn't a budget system. :)

I try to imagine how long it would take me to render the videos I do with a budget system...it takes 3-1/2 hours to render a 4K resolution 30 minute long video.

I wonder how many days it would take otherwise :)

I am not so pro about building gaming PC. But i did it for mine back in the days 4 years ago. The best or at least, you need to double amount the budget. My suggestion to triple amount ($1500) but i think it is maybe too high for you, but its worth of it for long term gaming platform. Always go for i7 and Nvidia GTX. You better go to trusted nearby seller and ask for the price

I don't think you should build a budget gaming desktop for 500. It can be done no problem. But for 700 you can have some pretty decent power and specs. To me, 200 dollars more is way worth it for a budget desktop. 800 would be my personal limit if i was to build another. I made mine years ago and it still does great. The good thing is, if yours is built right, in a few years just get the newest and greatest graphics card, maybe upgrade your ram, and you will still be good to go

If you`re looking for a decent gaming PC and don`t want to do a scratch build then this might not be a bad option.


Asus desktop with Core i5 and GeForce GTX 1060 is on sale for $829
http://www.pcgamer.com/asus-desktop-...-sale-for-829/

Don't go to slowly or you might have to rebuy parts to keep up with the latest/greatest