Advice on a slow PC build

[Rus-Evo]

Hey guys,

Currently I play games and such on a laptop (a reasonably capable Acer 5741G) which is plugged into a big monitor, a TV, a surround sound, a USB sound card and wireless keyboard/mouse. This is OK, but laptops aren't really for sitting out of sight under desks trying to play graphically intensive games!!!

I do not have the budget to go and buy a gaming PC so my plan is to do the following:

1. Buy a new micro-atx case with a 500w power supply (only 30 British pounds).
   
2. Every month after payday scour ebay and other for very good deals on motherboards, CPUs, graphics cards and memory (and a DVD drive but thats very inexpensive), and maybe get one every payday.
   
3. I already have an SSD and some assorted HDs to use.
   
4. Run linux or steam OS until I can afford to buy a copy of windows.
   

Essentially I just need the stuff to fill the box and I don't mind taking the risk of going second hand if it means I can get a good enough PC for good value.

The problem I have is that its been over three years since I was into building PCs (I moved to England from New Zealand about 2.5 years ago and have been relying on my laptop). In that three year period there has been a lot of change in the computer market place. Now I see all these cheapo AMD this and that and I have no idea what is powerful or what is just cheap and power efficient.

So does anyone have any advice on what I should look for and what is minimum nowadays for a decent gaming experience? Are these new cheap cpus good enough or do I need to go second hand?

Just for the record I used to have an AMD 6400+ CPU and a 9600GT graphics card and that level of power is what I would call that minimum level only I want to get to (lets call that the design benchmark). So I am wondering if a second hand i5 and something around a 9800GT level would hold me until I can upgrade later.

Any ideas? Time is on my side, gonna do this slow

[KvickFlygarn87]

Or, run Linux 4 evar. It is quite a fine OS!

[Rus-Evo]

I am interested in Linux, I am sure it would do media, productivity and the internet really well. But gaming is the purpose of this build and my understanding is that I could not play my current games on it!

[hotmailcompany52]

You can use Wine to run your windows games on Linux.

[Rus-Evo]

I did not know that was possible. Do you need a degree in nerdiological-programmyness to make that work, or is it automatic? Would steam work?

[Nuke]

an intel i5 would be good for your tdp and save you plenty of power for a modest video card. you can also run integrated at first and buy your video card later. 8gb ram will be about all you need. then you just need a mobo.

i usually do this:

figure out what cpu i want to run.

find a mobo that works with that cpu and has all the ports you want/need.

find the fastest ram the mobo supports (ram is cheap), i have never needed more than 8gb.

video card when everything else is working

[Woopert]

Ha, that's exactly what I did. I also had to delay the process for personal reasons and came home in August 2013. I would recommend Newegg for online shopping (Amazon is good as well), or a local PC store. I am lucky to have a Micro Center nearby and I can say it's a good store. Also get Windows 8.1 when you can, don't go for 7. It's a LOT faster on boot-up and various other processes. AMD processors are very good and are not "cheap" as in being poorly made; they're quite far from it. I have the FX-8350 and I will say it's quite a good bargain but for your needs a FX-6300 (FX-6350 is good too, but a bit more expensive for not much of an upgrade) would work quite well. Graphics cards, ask yourself this: would you like to record videos and get Advanced PhysX which is VERY uncommon on games currently, or spend a lot less for almost equal performance? If you'd like the former, go for an Nvidia -- the GTX 760 is quite a good deal, and should run most games 1080p on Ultra settings. For AMD cards, they are a better value, and an R7 265 is a good value -- though the R9 270X is a very good value so go for that if you're able to. It competes directly with the GTX 760. Certain brands of GPUs for the two chip makers (AMD and Nvidia) are cheaper, but if price doens't matter EVGA is good for Nvidia and Sapphire is quite good for AMD. You can never go wrong with an ASUS card, either. Make sure your GPU has at least 2GB of GDDR5 memory, that's important.

For RAM, 8GB is good for gaming and is the minimum if you want a good experience. Most RAM works pretty similar, I have Crucial Ballistix Sport IIRC. Corsair is highly regarded but might be expensive. Motherboards, go for either an ASUS or Gigabyte or MSI. They're good, and MAKE SURE IT MATCHES THE CPU SOCKET! I'm sure you know this already, though.

So to conclude, PLEASE go for the AMD chip. They're much cheaper and give more than enough performance for gaming. For your needs I recommend the FX-6300. I'll find a good motherboard, too. model name below. If building the PC is hard for you, you can pay money to the local PC shops to build it for you (that's what I did).

Motherboard model name: MSI 970A-G46 ATX AM3+ Motherboard

Get it if you're going for the FX-6300! MSI makes real high-quality boards for the price. I have a Gigabyte 970A-UD3 if you're curious, it's quite good too but about $30 more expensive. They're the same chipset, too. So the MSI might be better for you. Also below if you're curious, my PC specs. Mine was about $1000 IIRC.

AMD FX-8350

EVGA GeForce GTX-660 Ti

Gigabyte 970A-UD3

8 GB Crucial Ballistix Sport

Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB SSD

Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Blue, 64 mb cache

Cooler Master HAF 922

Stock Heatsink

Corsair CX600M PSU

Good luck!

[Rus-Evo]

That looks quite nice, how does it run KSP?

I think you guys are right on the i5 front, I am leaning that way, I dont really understand how to match the CPUs to mobos, with AMD I just always needed an AM2+ slot or whatever and I was good to go!

For me I am looking at significantly cheaper than you build as my baseline minimum (mentioned above) shouldn't be too hard to surpass!!

[Nuke]

match the socket and fsb clock. most mobos have a qvl that will tell you what hardware it works with, cpus, memory, etc.

Edited May 4, 2014 by Nuke