we're building Mike a gaming PC (recycled thread)

[s1mplehumar]

Yo. Who needa PSU? You? I have a few 500w units, and at least one 750. Actually I know for sure I have a 750w PC Power and Cooling PSU (not modular). I told Mike I'd do some digging by the weekend to see what all I have.

[marurun]

So, did a little reading on the AMD APU + GFX Crossfire solutions... What I read was not promising. Here's an example looking at AMD's latest and greatest with the supposed "optimal" Crossfire pairing.

http://www.techspot.com/review/781-amd- ... rformance/

I will not be using this kind of solution for my own PC, sadly.

[noiseredux]

let us not forget that Mike is a complete noob to PC gaming. He wants something that can play Steam games with friends. His interests are things like Street Fighter IV and Magical Drop V. This is his first build, and he wants to spend the closest to $0 on it he can. I think the AMD solution is damn good.

[marurun]

I don't know how well SFIV runs, so I can't speak to that. Maybe the AMD APU would tackle it just fine straight up.

[flex wood]

Are you around a microcenter noise? I mean you can get an i3 4150 for about $100 there. I've got one here and could go grab one and ship it out to you no problem since that's about the same price as an FX 4300.

I'm not close to a Microcenter. Well, if it comes down to buying the CPU/mobo, it'll be Mike's $, so we'll run it by him and then you can ship to me. Thanks for the offer! That said, me and Frag Mortus had been talking about an AMD combo that would run Mike about $150 for the CPU and mobo.

We have talked about Mike getting an AMD A8-6600K. It's a quad-core 3.9Ghz CPU with 4mb L2 Cache. The bonus is that since it has on chip GPU (which is pretty competent for an on chip GPU), it can actually crossfire with the GPU that Noise has to toss in. So, that will give mike pretty decent gaming performance. Also, the MoBo we were talking about has 4 RAM slots where most of the others in it's catagory only have 2, so it has better expandability.

If we could find some one that has a PSU (450W should suffice) that they don't need, or care to donate we could really have Mike a quality gaming PC for just the price of the cpu/mobo combo.

I'm not sure the quality of any of these mobos but you basically get $40 off any mobo with the purchase there. I'd be more then willing to cover shipping myself if you guys want me to grab something.
http://www.microcenter.com/site/product ... ndles.aspx

[Frag Mortuus]

I'm not sure the quality of any of these mobos but you basically get $40 off any mobo with the purchase there. I'd be more then willing to cover shipping myself if you guys want me to grab something.
http://www.microcenter.com/site/product ... ndles.aspx

Wow, Mike could get that bundle with the free MoBo for $100. It doesn't have much features but would probably suffice for a beginner system. It has PCI-e for his graphics card, and all of the minimal connection types. It only has 2 on board USB ports, but he really only needs two for mouse and keyboard. Plus he will have the ones on his case.

[noiseredux]

I'm not sure the quality of any of these mobos but you basically get $40 off any mobo with the purchase there. I'd be more then willing to cover shipping myself if you guys want me to grab something.
http://www.microcenter.com/site/product ... ndles.aspx

Wow, Mike could get that bundle with the free MoBo for $100. It doesn't have much features but would probably suffice for a beginner system. It has PCI-e for his graphics card, and all of the minimal connection types. It only has 2 on board USB ports, but he really only needs two for mouse and keyboard. Plus he will have the ones on his case.

wow, damn. That's a hell of a deal actually.

[mjmjr25]

noise told me I should probably start paying attention here - just caught up on last few pages ---- wow, guys, thank you!

I think noise has been clear, but here's where i'm at. Never been a PC gamer and don't really want to be one, I never game sitting at a desktop and don't think I ever would. I mostly game at a cab, with my kids on Wii or something, or in bed on ps3.

The idea is a lot of stuff is cheap / arcadey / online w/friends fun on Steam, so it would be cool to have in my bedroom for an hour or so at night.

I don't think i'd every be into a MMORPG, or anything in that realm. 95% of what i'd be into would be arcade / platformer / fighter / puzzle, so if I can get something that loads me into steam easily, had controller support easily, didn't require downloads or messing with windows, that's the ideal.

[marurun]

Gotcha. Also, Microcenter is determined to undercut NewEgg at every turn. If you live near one and can go in in-person, you can get CPUs and mobos for much less. That combo is pretty good, and they've got others to match it. Hell, if you go for the highest-end AMD APU you might not need an add-in video card at all for Mike's needs.

[noiseredux]

We already have a gpu though so having him spend more on mobo doesnt make much sense.