Affordable Gaming Build

[Bran]

Hi everyone, I'm building my first gaming PC and I'm trying to keep my budget around $700, excluding peripherals and other things like an OS. I primarily play WoW and want to raid comfortably. I'd also want some room for upgrading in the future. I found this website, http://www.logicalincrements.com (I'm looking at Canadian prices) that lists premade builds and I was thinking of going with either the very good or great build. Are these decent builds for what I need? This is all pretty overwhelming for me since I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to computers so the more detailed you can be as to the performance of each build and the difference between the two the better. Thanks.

Edit: Building this from scratch so I don't have any parts to reuse and I'm playing at a 1920x1080 resolution.

Very Good:

R9 270$195
FX 6300$120
Stock$0
ASUS M5A97 R2.0$110
4GB$40
1TB$60
None$0
SeaSonic S12II 620$76
HAF 912$65
Total $666

Great:

R9 280$235
i3 4160$139
Stock$0
ASRock H97 Anniversary$110
8GB$75
1TB$60
None$0
SeaSonic S12II 620$76
HAF 912$65
Total $760

[Deleted]

If you want a gaming rig and especially going for mmo's like wow you need to get an intel cpu. The second buidl you got there is decent. Similarly:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($139.00 @ shopRBC)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($93.50 @ Vuugo)
Memory: Team Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($64.95 @ Vuugo)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($244.75 @ Vuugo)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ NCIX)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.98 @ NCIX)
Total: $722.16
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-07 10:02 EDT-0400

[JForny]

You don't NEED to go with the intel build for wow or any game for that matter. The AMD would be a lot better for newer games such as: Dying Light, Dragon Age, Assassins Creeds, any FPS or any game requiring a quadcore. I use and AMD 860k with an R9 270X and play wow at 78fps(Drops to around 55fps in heavy population) But the intel does have better upgrade path, which will come with a heavy price tag as well. I'm sure someone will bring up TDP, but I assure you, even running 24/7, you 'll only pay an extra $150 a YEAR for electricity.

[Lathais]

You don't NEED to go with the intel build for wow or any game for that matter. The AMD would be a lot better for newer games such as: Dying Light, Dragon Age, Assassins Creeds, any FPS or any game requiring a quadcore. I use and AMD 860k with an R9 270X and play wow at 78fps(Drops to around 55fps in heavy population) But the intel does have better upgrade path, which will come with a heavy price tag as well. I'm sure someone will bring up TDP, but I assure you, even running 24/7, you 'll only pay an extra $150 a YEAR for electricity.

Don't listen to this guy. A $60 intel Pentium G3258 outperforms the AM-FX8350 in WoW due to single core performance. The only thing he is right about is that you don't need to go with intel, but you'd be pretty stupid not to. He mentions games requiring quadcore which is ridiculous. There have been a few games that did, but there were quickly user patches that allowed them to run on i3's, which are not dual core. In fact, i3's ran the game better than some AMD 6 and 8 core chips. Number of cores does not matter when those cores are weak.

[JForny]

Don't listen to this guy. A $60 intel Pentium G3258 outperforms the AM-FX8350 in WoW due to single core performance. The only thing he is right about is that you don't need to go with intel, but you'd be pretty stupid not to. He mentions games requiring quadcore which is ridiculous. There have been a few games that did, but there were quickly user patches that allowed them to run on i3's, which are not dual core. In fact, i3's ran the game better than some AMD 6 and 8 core chips. Number of cores does not matter when those cores are weak.

Seriously? What newer game allows a dual core and what game did the i3 beat an 8350 in? Wow? Well yeah, old game that uses single core... Of course it will. A benchmark means nothing to real world. Based on engineering software and multiple synthetic tests, the world trade buildings should have withstood a plane flying in to them. Dang pesky synthetic tests...

[Kagthul]

You don't NEED to go with the intel build for wow or any game for that matter. The AMD would be a lot better for newer games such as: Dying Light, Dragon Age, Assassins Creeds, any FPS or any game requiring a quadcore.

See the now locked thread where i thoroughly debunked this.

I use and AMD 860k with an R9 270X and play wow at 78fps(Drops to around 55fps in heavy population) But the intel does have better upgrade path, which will come with a heavy price tag as well.

... huh?

I'm sure someone will bring up TDP, but I assure you, even running 24/7, you 'll only pay an extra $150 a YEAR for electricity.

So.. youll only pay the difference of having a CORE i7 in your machine PER YEAR?

Thats NOT a small number.

- - - Updated - - -

Seriously? What newer game allows a dual core and what game did the i3 beat an 8350 in? Wow? Well yeah, old game that uses single core... Of course it will. A benchmark means nothing to real world. Based on engineering software and multiple synthetic tests, the world trade buildings should have withstood a plane flying in to them. Dang pesky synthetic tests...

Most benchmark sites dont use synthetic tests. They use real-world game benchmarks. You can even find guys doing live benchmarking on Youtube and Twitch.

Here's a prime example of real-world benchmarks:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/intel-co...4340-review/3/

notice the i3 achieving higher framerates across the board than the FX 8350.... even in BF4, which supposedly can use "all the cores".

[JForny]

See the now locked thread where i thoroughly debunked this.



... huh?



So.. youll only pay the difference of having a CORE i7 in your machine PER YEAR?

Thats NOT a small number.

- - - Updated - - -



Most benchmark sites dont use synthetic tests. They use real-world game benchmarks. You can even find guys doing live benchmarking on Youtube and Twitch.

Here's a prime example of real-world benchmarks:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/intel-co...4340-review/3/

notice the i3 achieving higher framerates across the board than the FX 8350.... even in BF4, which supposedly can use "all the cores".

Bare with me doing this from my phone. I seen footage, foot in mouth now. But what I have to say, the graphics didn't look all that great, you have to turn off a lot of video settings on the videos I looked up. I think running an and r7(definite bottleneck from the r7). All I'm saying is why suggest a dual core in 2015? At least suggest an i3, that could be used for a year. Before the feeling of wanting more. Having different architecture will have its strengths and weaknesses. But saying don't use amd is just lame.

My CPU(860k), gpu(dualx r9 270x 4gb) and mobo(Asus a88xm-a) total(sales and open box) $220. You still need a mobo and gpu for an i5. I can oc 4.5 my memory to 2400 and gpu(haven't tried it yet) but I run high/ultra on all games. It's a great setup. If you got with an i3 or Pentium, you'd spend the same, but will eventually spend another $200 for an i5, then you'll wanna sli or bigger gpu. You don't need more than 50fps, science. You can want it, but don't need.

I might go i5 max, unless I got into game making. Again no need for it. But its the biggest Intel gag, tdp. Intel (i5, $120 a year) AMD(8350 $150 a year) not enough of a difference to warrant $800+ for the latest i7.

Numerous boards are known to be paid shills for Intel and use shit parts for AMD builds, while the intels get all high end stuff. It's like racing a gt500 against the basic white girl v6 mustang and saying we tested both and saying what your saying.

[Deleted]

Bare with me doing this from my phone. I seen footage, foot in mouth now. But what I have to say, the graphics didn't look all that great, you have to turn off a lot of video settings on the videos I looked up. I think running an and r7(definite bottleneck from the r7). All I'm saying is why suggest a dual core in 2015? At least suggest an i3, that could be used for a year. Before the feeling of wanting more. Having different architecture will have its strengths and weaknesses. But saying don't use amd is just lame.

My CPU(860k), gpu(dualx r9 270x 4gb) and mobo(Asus a88xm-a) total(sales and open box) $220. You still need a mobo and gpu for an i5. I can oc 4.5 my memory to 2400 and gpu(haven't tried it yet) but I run high/ultra on all games. It's a great setup. If you got with an i3 or Pentium, you'd spend the same, but will eventually spend another $200 for an i5, then you'll wanna sli or bigger gpu. You don't need more than 50fps, science. You can want it, but don't need.

I might go i5 max, unless I got into game making. Again no need for it. But its the biggest Intel gag, tdp. Intel (i5, $120 a year) AMD(8350 $150 a year) not enough of a difference to warrant $800+ for the latest i7.

Numerous boards are known to be paid shills for Intel and use shit parts for AMD builds, while the intels get all high end stuff. It's like racing a gt500 against the basic white girl v6 mustang and saying we tested both and saying what your saying.

The Core i3 has the same threading capability as the 8350, just fewer cores. The 860k does a lot of work narrowing the gap, but it's still there in general. I'm actually going to go against the grain here and say that the 860k is a very viable low-end gaming GPU, but it's weaker in large-scale MMOs, such as WoW and RIFT.

[draykorinee]

ANNNND were off, intel, amd, intel, amd, thread lock.

The second one would be my preference, I have an AMD build and its fine, but I do fell intel would be better if you can afford it.

[Lathais]

ANNNND were off, intel, amd, intel, amd, thread lock.

The second one would be my preference, I have an AMD build and its fine, but I do fell intel would be better if you can afford it.

If you can afford it? Just look right here in this thread where it shows a G3258 playing BF4. A G3258 is $60. What does $60 dollars get you in the AMD world that is better than a G3258? All I am seeing in the $60 range are these:

A6-6240K
A6-7400K
AMD Phenom II X2 565 Black

Let's look at the nest price bracket shall we. An i3-4160 is about $110. The i3-4160 will play any game on the market just fine. It has 4 threads which some games are starting to require. What can be had in the AMD world for ~$110:

FX-6200
A8-3850
A10-6790K


Let's look at some benchmarks now:

G3258 vs FX-8350
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1265?vs=697

Scroll to the bottom and look at the FPS. The G3258 WINS at Bioshock Infinite and Sleeping Dogs and is only a couple FPS behind in Tomb Raider less than 5 FPS behind in BF4. If you want to tell me any of the other AMD chips listed above are better than the 8350 then you are nuts. The i3 will do even better than the G3258 obviously, but no AMD chip is gonna do better than the 8350. It's why I use this comparison all the time. There is no competition when it comes to gaming. intel wins, hands down, across all price points. This is FACT. This has nothing to do with brand loyalty or fanboyism. I want to see an AMD chip that is better. I wanted to build AMD again this year, it just made no sense to do so.

[moremana]

@JForny

I dont think its a war...there is no competition from the red side.

At one point AMD was king in the chip market for gaming. Everyone here knows it, but over the last few years they have done nothing to keep up with Intel. Period!

The technology and the parts are 3+ years old, you really want people to spend money on a chipset that was released over three years ago? .. . And you call that quality advice?

As for the 860k, I wont even go down that road, a Intel Q6600 quad from 2007 blows that away.

[robomatticus]

Hi everyone, I'm building my first gaming PC and I'm trying to keep my budget around $700, excluding peripherals and other things like an OS. I primarily play WoW and want to raid comfortably. I'd also want some room for upgrading in the future. I found this website, http://www.logicalincrements.com (I'm looking at Canadian prices) that lists premade builds and I was thinking of going with either the very good or great build. Are these decent builds for what I need? This is all pretty overwhelming for me since I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to computers so the more detailed you can be as to the performance of each build and the difference between the two the better. Thanks.

Edit: Building this from scratch so I don't have any parts to reuse and I'm playing at a 1920x1080 resolution.

Very Good:

R9 270$195
FX 6300$120
Stock$0
ASUS M5A97 R2.0$110
4GB$40
1TB$60
None$0
SeaSonic S12II 620$76
HAF 912$65
Total $666

Great:

R9 280$235
i3 4160$139
Stock$0
ASRock H97 Anniversary$110
8GB$75
1TB$60
None$0
SeaSonic S12II 620$76
HAF 912$65
Total $760

At least go with an i7 and not a wimpy i3, you want your rig to last you a while.

[Deleted]

@JForny

I dont think its a war...there is no competition from the red side.

At one point AMD was king in the chip market for gaming. Everyone here knows it, but over the last few years they have done nothing to keep up with Intel. Period!

The technology and the parts are 3+ years old, you really want people to spend money on a chipset that was released over three years ago? .. . And you call that quality advice?

As for the 860k, I wont even go down that road, a Intel Q6600 quad from 2007 blows that away.

In what tests? The data (that I can find easily) shows the 860K outstripping the Q6600 at the same clock speeds by 33% in synthetic benchmarks and gaming capacity. Note that I didn't say it was was the best out there; I said it's arguably one of the best budget CPUs, not limited by the dual-core, dual-thread nature of the G3258 (which, by the way, is arguably the best budget CPU out there).

In addition, the costs for both the Pentium G3258 and the Athlon 860k are somewhat similar overall.

[JForny]

Again... saying intel is be all end all is just bogus. When you do your first build, you don't want to spend gobs of money, just in case you break something or short something out. Yes maybe next build go bigger and better. But saying AMD is garbage and no one should buy it... Well then, take your ps4 or xbox1 back, cuz they both use AMD. All I'm saying, is both are good builds. One with a better upgrade path(kinda pricey) The other won't need to be upgraded for a while... Either way, you are gonna spend A lot of money upgrading later down the road. Not everyone has rich parents or a good job.

- - - Updated - - -

The technology and the parts are 3+ years old, you really want people to spend money on a chipset that was released over three years ago? .. . And you call that quality advice?[/QUOTE]

It still works and will continue to work for a few years.

As for the 860k, I wont even go down that road, a Intel Q6600 quad from 2007 blows that away.[/QUOTE]

No and just no.... The 860k has gotten nothing but great reviews, yeah it's not the best or the fastest. But it gets the job done at an affordable price with the ability to use an R9 280X(without bottlenecking) to take it to the next level.... When you're paying $500 for that Pentium, because AMD went out of business you'll wish they stayed in the game...

[WarBringerPT]

Intel vs amd, all over again.

OP stated primarily for wow, therefore go with the g3258 build, I can vouch for it (mine's @4ghz, can stream while raiding mythic).
Buy it along with a nice MoBo, then upgrade to a better cpu in the future, keeping the rest. Though for wow only the g3258 will be enough for along time.
IF you don't want to mess around with overclocking, go with a i3.

[draykorinee]

If you can afford it? Just look right here in this thread where it shows a G3258 playing BF4. A G3258 is $60. What does $60 dollars get you in the AMD world that is better than a G3258? All I am seeing in the $60 range are these:

A6-6240K
A6-7400K
AMD Phenom II X2 565 Black

Let's look at the nest price bracket shall we. An i3-4160 is about $110. The i3-4160 will play any game on the market just fine. It has 4 threads which some games are starting to require. What can be had in the AMD world for ~$110:

FX-6200
A8-3850
A10-6790K


Let's look at some benchmarks now:

G3258 vs FX-8350
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1265?vs=697

Scroll to the bottom and look at the FPS. The G3258 WINS at Bioshock Infinite and Sleeping Dogs and is only a couple FPS behind in Tomb Raider less than 5 FPS behind in BF4. If you want to tell me any of the other AMD chips listed above are better than the 8350 then you are nuts. The i3 will do even better than the G3258 obviously, but no AMD chip is gonna do better than the 8350. It's why I use this comparison all the time. There is no competition when it comes to gaming. intel wins, hands down, across all price points. This is FACT. This has nothing to do with brand loyalty or fanboyism. I want to see an AMD chip that is better. I wanted to build AMD again this year, it just made no sense to do so.

I have no idea what that has to do with me saying if you can afford it, his 2 choices are amd $660 or Intel $760, so if he can afford it go for Intel. No idea what your while spiel was about.

[Lathais]

I have no idea what that has to do with me saying if you can afford it, his 2 choices are amd $660 or Intel $760, so if he can afford it go for Intel. No idea what your while spiel was about.

Well, the $760 build is more expensive not because of the CPU, it's more expensive because it has a better GPU and double the RAM. So the, go with intel if you can afford it is stupid because he CAN afford it if he compares 2 comparable builds. Go with intel if you can afford it makes it sound like it's out of certain budgets to go for intel when intel outperforms across all budget levels.

- - - Updated - - -

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus Z87-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($59.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($44.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($209.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($44.99 @ NCIX US)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($91.75 @ OutletPC)
Total: $698.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-08 12:13 EDT-0400

There is a build that will play pretty much any current game with good FPS at Med-Ultra settings(really depends on the game) and 1080p@60hz. Under $700. If you want more affordable, but lower settings, drop to a 750ti. A little more affordable go to a G3258(which will still play all those games that supposedly "require" quad-core).

[draykorinee]

Well, the $760 build is more expensive not because of the CPU, it's more expensive because it has a better GPU and double the RAM. So the, go with intel if you can afford it is stupid because he CAN afford it if he compares 2 comparable builds. Go with intel if you can afford it makes it sound like it's out of certain budgets to go for intel when intel outperforms across all budget levels.

- - - Updated - - -

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus Z87-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($59.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($44.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($209.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($44.99 @ NCIX US)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($91.75 @ OutletPC)
Total: $698.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-08 12:13 EDT-0400

There is a build that will play pretty much any current game with good FPS at Med-Ultra settings(really depends on the game) and 1080p@60hz. Under $700. If you want more affordable, but lower settings, drop to a 750ti. A little more affordable go to a G3258(which will still play all those games that supposedly "require" quad-core).

I said AMD build, not processor, take a look at yourself.

[WarBringerPT]

I said AMD build, not processor, take a look at yourself.

And why would op choose any of those 2 builds, when he can get a better one for less. Like what Lathais linked.

[draykorinee]

And why would op choose any of those 2 builds, when he can get a better one for less. Like what Lathais linked.

Op gave 2 options, I gave my advice on those two, not sure what's hard to understand.

And he posted that build way after my post in question at that point there weren't any other builds.