• Need help building first gaming desktop
    14 replies, posted
Alrighty, basically I'm looking into building a gaming computer with a budget of $550-600. Sadly I know absolutely nothing about what parts for a computer are good or not, so that is why I hope I can find some help here. I live in the United States and some games I would like to be able to play with medium-high settings with great fps would be Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Borderlands 2, and Civilization V. Also, I am starting basically from scratch, although I have a monitor picked out already (1920x1080) and I already have a mouse. I'm sure I can figure out how to put everything together, but I have been using laptops for years, and it just has shown that it's really not worth the trouble and performance they can bring. So yeah, anyone that could help me out with making a build or give suggestions would be greatly appreciated! (Apologies if I didn't supply enough info, I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to this)
[url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hOlo[/url] This is unfortunately $50 over budget, but if you can scrap together that extra $50, it fulfill all your needs with some extra headroom. You could drop the $75 OS and go with Ubuntu which has great steam support, but I'm not sure on your other game's compatibility or your comfort level on a Linux distro. Edit: Just realized that the base total before MIR's is way off your budget [url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hOIg[/url] is within your budget, with MIR's it gets brought down to ~$500, but I've been out of the AMD loop for a little while, so someone may tell me I'm an idiot for suggesting that build and should go back to 3rd grade.
[QUOTE=Levelog;43127898][url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hOIg[/url] is within your budget, with MIR's it gets brought down to ~$500, but I've been out of the AMD loop for a little while, so someone may tell me I'm an idiot for suggesting that build and should go back to 3rd grade.[/QUOTE] Awesome, as far as I can tell, this is good (but that's with what my knowledge consists of). If you think this should be previewed by another person, then opinions from other people on this build would be appreciated! The only issue I have is that some of these items appear to be out of stock (Memory, video card, and case). If you could help me find other places I could get these or other parts that I could get would be fantastic.
[url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hQx8[/url] Here's with everything in stock, went over budget by $12 though. Use it as a guideline if you want to poke around for deals and such. I'd say stick to a 650ti or 650ti BOOST, and any case should be good, I'm just partial to Antec and Coolermaster cases.
[QUOTE=Levelog;43128661][url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hQx8[/url] Here's with everything in stock, went over budget by $12 though. Use it as a guideline if you want to poke around for deals and such. I'd say stick to a 650ti or 650ti BOOST, and any case should be good, I'm just partial to Antec and Coolermaster cases.[/QUOTE] It appears the video card is still out of stock on the new site you put, but other than that, everything else appears to be fine. Also, thank you very much for helping me with this!
This will outperform that video card for a bit cheaper: [url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-fx785aznl4[/url] I also recommend going with a Seagate Barracuda over a WD Blue. The Barracuda is a bit faster than a WD Black.
[QUOTE=flayne;43129208]This will outperform that video card for a bit cheaper: [url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-fx785aznl4[/url] I also recommend going with a Seagate Barracuda over a WD Blue. The Barracuda is a bit faster than a WD Black.[/QUOTE] So something like [url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hSC0[/url] would be better?
Actually that AMD processor is very bad for gaming. This would give you a better value: [url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hTjs[/url] If you can't go that far over the budget, swap the processor for the FX-6300 and the motherboard for an AM3+ motherboard. Then consider buying a H212 evo, so you can overclock it to make up for the performance drop.
[QUOTE=flayne;43129562]Actually that AMD processor is very bad for gaming. This would give you a better value: [url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hTjs[/url] If you can't go that far over the budget, swap the processor for the FX-6300 and the motherboard for an AM3+ motherboard. Then consider buying a H212 evo, so you can overclock it to make up for the performance drop.[/QUOTE] May I ask what makes that AMD processor so bad?
AMD processors share large amount of resources for each core. Essentially a module (of which the FX-6300 has three) is what you would think of as a core; however, since they can run two threads at the same time AMD markets them as having double the number of cores they really do. Essentially this is like having a three-core processor with Intel's hyperthreading which makes AMD processors ideal for multithreaded applications. Games, however, do not use all that many threads, so even high end AMD processors are beat by some i3's.
Oh, okay then, I think I understood most of that. So [url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2hTjs[/url] would probably be the best build I could get for the value?
Pretty much.
Ah, an i3. I have zero experience using an i3 for gaming, so I was hesitant to recommend one. And yeah, AMD does seem to have fallen, but they're price is still so low compared to the i5's.
Everyone seems to think that AMD has better value since they have low prices, but this frankly isn't true. AMD processors cost less because they are made with this two cores per module design, and performance suffers for it. In the case of gaming, performance suffers more than the price you pay extra for Intel processors and motherboards. In other words for gaming, Intel has better value, and for multithreaded applications AMD has better value due to their cheap multithreading solution.
Well, thank you both for helping me out. I'll probably be ordering these parts very soon and I learned a little something about processors along the way. I really appreciate both of your guys' help!
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