Budget PC Gaming Builds

DBGage

I'm looking to build a new PC, it's been a while since I built my own so I'm wondering if anyone can tell me that all of these will work?

AMD Machine

Processor - £59 - AMD (Piledriver) FX-4300 3.80GHz (4.00GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 4-Core Processor
Motherboard - £48 - Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P AMD 970 ATX Motherboard
Hard Drive - £32 500GB Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 3.5" SATA III
RAM - £59 - TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Graphics Card - £138 - Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Dual-X Boost OC AMD Graphics Card 2GB Graphics Card
Power Supply - £33 - EVGA 500W 80 Plus Power Supply
Case - £29.75 - BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Black/Black

Intel Machine

Processor - £141 - Intel Core i5-4460 3.20GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Hard Drive - £32 500GB Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 3.5" SATA III
Motherboard - £48 -GIGABYTE GA-B75M-D3H Intel B75 (Socket 1155) Micro-ATX Motherboard
Graphics Card - Asus GeForce GTX 760 DirectCUII OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
RAM - £62 - G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Power Supply - £56.39 - 600W Corsair Builder Series CX600M 80PLUS Bronze Modular Power Supply
Case - £29.75 - BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Black/Black

As long as I'm going over 50FPS with the top games with these machines I'm happy.

Retrogamer

The Intel processor is a lot more powerful than the AMD one in those builts. The rest is very similar spec wise.

You may get over 50fps on the latest games with those rigs with some of the settings on low/medium but unlikely to on high for some of the bigger games.

Tropez

The Intel build is better.

You should be able to get an R9 280x for around the same price as a GTX760 which would provide you with some performance boost.

Slithery

Slight problem with the Intel build.

How do you plan on squeezing an LGA1150 CPU into a LGA1155 socket?

DBGage

Slithery wrote: »

Slight problem with the Intel build.

How do you plan on squeezing an LGA1150 CPU into a LGA1155 socket?

Oooops, will look for another processor.

I've seen processor clocking time is more important than cores, for each of these systems what would you suggest to hit a min of 60 FPS?

Retrogamer

Try and stay with the Haswell intel CPU if you can. They're the 4th gen "i" series processors.

I'm running an older i5 2500k (2nd gen) Sandybridge. It's just over 3 years old and at 3.3Ghz and a 780GTX it runs everything up full, vsync on etc and gets pretty much solid 60fps.

Most games just now depend more on the graphics card than processor so as long as you get a 2nd gen or later i5, you will only really be limited by your graphics card so buy the best you can afford.

RavingMad

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but you might be better sticking to a 1150 cpu and motherboard as they're more mainstream

bluenoseam

May also be worthwhile looking at the anniversary Celeron processor, available for around £50-60, at stock speeds it's bog standard, but apparently it overclocks like a beast. Custom PC magazine did a feature using said processor 4-5 months back building a rig under £500 I'm sure you can probably find the article.

fred246

If a processor becomes famous for overclocking then they often update it so that doesn't work. I don't like celerons or overclocking. I always build PCs now with an SSD for the operating system. When it is working perfectly and normally very fast then I put in the large mechanical hard drive for photos, music, etc.

fred246

I like 80 plus PSUs and Asus or Gigabyte motherboards. Have you checked the chipsets out to make sure they're the ones you want?

bluenoseam

Sorry, turns out it's not a celeron, but it overclocks to crazy levels & is dirt cheap (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-pentium-k-anniversary-g3258-s1150-haswell-dual-core-32ghz-oc-up-to-45ghz-5-gt-s-dmi-32x-ratio-) That'll run a reasonable graphics card but may struggle with certain games, particularly the more complex efforts, but ultimately it's all about your own thoughts. If I was building a machine to play FM & Minecraft I'd put one in without any thought & overclock it, but it's all relative to what you're going to be playing! Personally my next build will be an i5 effort, no need to boost for the i7 just yet for what I'd be playing & the money saved there is better spent on extra grunt in the graphics card & an SSD.