Advice on cheap gaming comp
Advice on cheap gaming comp
Anyone have any helpful advice on what spec/vid card/hardware for a halfway decent gaming comp? started saving recently, as I've been playing games on shitty laptops in lowest settings at 10fps for far too long.
Re: Advice on cheap gaming comp
If your main focus for the machine is gaming, as you probably already know, you're going to want to put a fair chunk of your budget into the video card. For current stuff, I would suggest at least a Radeon 6850 or GTX 460 on the nVidia side.
Nearly anything current works for the CPU - and little point going past the bang for the buck choices. Commonly recommended model right now is the i5 2500K, but even the baseline i3s, or AMD chips, will do well enough if paired to a decent GPU.
While I'd expect that they'll update it soon enough, here is an example of a budget build skewing things towards what matters for gaming.
Most of the other hardware either stems from the CPU choice, or is relatively similar regardless (RAM, Storage, etc). One thing that you do want to make sure you don't go super cheap on is the power supply. It's a core component of your system, and a poor one will lead to an unstable system (at best). That said, it's also an advantage of building yourself, since most big-box systems come with PSUs that lack the capacity to support much in the way of upgrades. IE, many Dells have a ~300W PSU, which won't hack it for anything but lower end video cards.
Nearly anything current works for the CPU - and little point going past the bang for the buck choices. Commonly recommended model right now is the i5 2500K, but even the baseline i3s, or AMD chips, will do well enough if paired to a decent GPU.
While I'd expect that they'll update it soon enough, here is an example of a budget build skewing things towards what matters for gaming.
Most of the other hardware either stems from the CPU choice, or is relatively similar regardless (RAM, Storage, etc). One thing that you do want to make sure you don't go super cheap on is the power supply. It's a core component of your system, and a poor one will lead to an unstable system (at best). That said, it's also an advantage of building yourself, since most big-box systems come with PSUs that lack the capacity to support much in the way of upgrades. IE, many Dells have a ~300W PSU, which won't hack it for anything but lower end video cards.
Re: Advice on cheap gaming comp
isiolia wrote:If your main focus for the machine is gaming, as you probably already know, you're going to want to put a fair chunk of your budget into the video card. For current stuff, I would suggest at least a Radeon 6850 or GTX 460 on the nVidia side.
Nearly anything current works for the CPU - and little point going past the bang for the buck choices. Commonly recommended model right now is the i5 2500K, but even the baseline i3s, or AMD chips, will do well enough if paired to a decent GPU.
While I'd expect that they'll update it soon enough, here is an example of a budget build skewing things towards what matters for gaming.
Most of the other hardware either stems from the CPU choice, or is relatively similar regardless (RAM, Storage, etc). One thing that you do want to make sure you don't go super cheap on is the power supply. It's a core component of your system, and a poor one will lead to an unstable system (at best). That said, it's also an advantage of building yourself, since most big-box systems come with PSUs that lack the capacity to support much in the way of upgrades. IE, many Dells have a ~300W PSU, which won't hack it for anything but lower end video cards.
wow...thanks so much, I bookmarked that link and I'll read it right away. Big help <3
Re: Advice on cheap gaming comp
Do you have a budget in mind? I can vouch for the GTX 460 though. I have the ASUS 768MB in an old shitty dell and it can now run most games on high or very high. Best bang for your buck you can currently get I'd say.
