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surprised, gaming pc much cheaper than thought
- Thread starter dogboy122
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i was looking at gaming pc parts and found out i could build a decent one for only 414 dollars, not as bad as i thought!.
I guess that depends on how you define the word decent in this case.
At that price, Quake 4 with maxed out graphics at 1080p butter smooth, from my previous experience.
Quake 4 is about seven years old though?
My Macbook Air plays HL2 maxed at 1080p btw, not what I'd call a gaming rig, but also not on ebay for $400.
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414 dollars is about £300, its pretty much impossible to build a "gaming" PC for that price in the UK anyway.
What do you define as decent anyway? Please post the components in your build.
What do you define as decent anyway? Please post the components in your build.
Mine or OP?
Mine was a quad core 3.1 Athlon chip, 4GB memory, Radeon 6770 1GB. Dodgy build quality buy yeah, for the price (OK, it was $499) it was good.
Not impossible at all, but you do have to make some compromises. Eurogamer did a recent article about building a £300 gaming PC
That's a pretty savvy build for the price they paid but it assumes you have Windows OS already, a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers.
I don't like how they kept comparing it to the Alienware m14x either, they are comparing a laptop to a desktop, they are saying that the alienware costs £1000 but there build is only £300, however the alienware has a monitor, keyboard/mouse, speakers, its portable as it's a laptop and you can take it anywhere, that's why it's £700 more, I wonder how much they could build a laptop for with a similar performance to the alienware m14x.
My threshold for building a decent gaming PC on a budget is $500. I can promise that the price would include almost all needed periphrals (aside from monitor, I'm a stickler there) and would be able to play all contemporary games at most 16:9/16:10 aspect ratio resolutions on a 23 inch screen or smaller. I tend to go higher budget-wise since I prefer quality brand parts for specific purposes.
I've been building PCs for gaming since 2002, roughly.
I've been building PCs for gaming since 2002, roughly.
It's really aimed at console gamers but yeah you would have to pay extra for Windows. A basic keyboard and mouse could be had for under £20 and you could hook it up to a HDTV rather than a monitor to give you both display and sound
Comparing a laptop to a desktop really is apples and oranges so not sure why they were doing that.
It's really aimed at console gamers but yeah you would have to pay extra for Windows. A basic keyboard and mouse could be had for under £20 and you could hook it up to a HDTV rather than a monitor to give you both display and sound
Comparing a laptop to a desktop really is apples and oranges so not sure why they were doing that.
Yeah I built a cheap gaming PC a few years ago and just hooked it up to my TV, it was ok for games that used a controller but sitting on my couch trying to play with a mouse and keyboard was a bit of a mess! Also it was a 720p TV so most games looked terrible on such a large screen.
If you have an old desktop ATX system (salvaged from work or parents) $400 / £300 will go a long way.
New mobo / processor / RAM / video card and you're sorted. (especially if you already have the old monitor and it's not too bad.)
With a decent mobo, you could cheap out on the processor or RAM and leave yourself headroom for a big but cheap upgrade in the future. Say, a low end i3 processor (I only buy intel so that I can go the Hackintosh route in the future if needed), or 2x 4GB RAM (maybe 1x8GB even) to leave 2 (or 3) RAM slots free.
Maybe a cheapish £120 graphics card. Even a lowend i3 from last year is a powerhouse, and you can put in an i7 at some point in the future.
Desktops are excellent value at the moment - I keep thinking about buying a new rig / upgrading my old one but TBH I probably won't ever buy a desktop again - just doesn't suit me. I'm currently repurposing my old desktop into an UnRaid NAS server.
New mobo / processor / RAM / video card and you're sorted. (especially if you already have the old monitor and it's not too bad.)
With a decent mobo, you could cheap out on the processor or RAM and leave yourself headroom for a big but cheap upgrade in the future. Say, a low end i3 processor (I only buy intel so that I can go the Hackintosh route in the future if needed), or 2x 4GB RAM (maybe 1x8GB even) to leave 2 (or 3) RAM slots free.
Maybe a cheapish £120 graphics card. Even a lowend i3 from last year is a powerhouse, and you can put in an i7 at some point in the future.
Desktops are excellent value at the moment - I keep thinking about buying a new rig / upgrading my old one but TBH I probably won't ever buy a desktop again - just doesn't suit me. I'm currently repurposing my old desktop into an UnRaid NAS server.
I am the same as your last paragraph there, I used to love building them and still kind of do love it but I can't see me using one at home any time soon. I like the mobility of laptops now and sitting on my couch is much more appealing than sitting at a desk since I work at one all day long.
