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Gaming PC Build

Sep 25, 2019275 VIEWS

Hello Massdrop Community, Im not knew to pc hardware and all that Jazz it’s just I’m new to building pc’s, I was looking to see if I could get some help in assembling sort of a budget gaming pc as I don’t have a lot of money right now. My currency is AUD, my budget is around 1000 AUD (not full gaming setup just the build, already got all things such as mouse, keyboard etc.) the build can exceed the budget but I just want a good build. You can also add some rgb, doesn’t faze me but yet rgb looks nice. Last but no least I’m not fussy about having different branded parts, I’m leaning more towards AMD instead of Intel Rn though. Any ways good luck to you all.

(Edited)

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275

xKore

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Whitedragem

185

Oct 8, 2019

Cheers for updating me with usage scenario; if you are going to do streaming as a major part of it; a couple of options are before you.. Get a processor with 2x more cores than you need (for most of the games listed, that would still be a 4 core, and whilst there are a ‘handful’ of titles that make use of six or more, it is generally only for up to ten extra frames per second, which, for streaming purposes, won’t help a lot... (target framerate for streaming will likely be recordings at 60 frames per second... ) -if you want footage of competitive moments when you are gaming at 120 + fps, then you will be better off filming with a panasonic or maybe sony camera recording ‘some cuts’ that include the (desktop) zone and show it ‘in action’ (I’d recommend some phillps lightbar type monitors or a range of projects that can ‘add ambience’ or light the room according to the onscreen action. (I think logitech sell some 2.1 speakers that ‘light up with the action’ and could sit behind your monitor, Harvey Norman have sold them for $200 on a couple of occaisions).. That being said, I would recommend you 16Gb of RAM (definately NO MORE), and aim for a six (true) core processor.. likely the newer AMD platforms (last couple of years) -as they will give best bang for buck, and whilst might not easily hit 150fps+ that a costlier intel setup would offer, will certainly get you 120fps + when you tune games for it.. generally the difference between a high priced intel/nvidia system, could be offered by an AMD/AMD system for a fair bit less, and you would likley wind up with some nice motherboard and video card ‘matched lighting’ systems. For the record I build ‘battlefield boxes’ for many a postal worker (etc), and for a budget of six-seven hundred, I easily hit their 60 fps minimum requirement with systems that last for many years, run silently(watercooling), and look clean/nice. They usually keep the keyboard/mouse/headphones/chair etc over a few builds. I do recommend that if you are going to have any ‘filmed’ moments (ie using an external camera), consider getting a custom keys keyboard (Drop has these) as that will add to the notion of your unique identity. Something like the Russian caps keyboard that has been featured this week, just look awesome and speak retro/pro/gamer very clearly... If I find some specific parts (ie mainboard model and gfx deal) I will update this post with some recommendations... You are in Melbourne area is my guess? edit: (had to leave to get milk for morning coffees) so- I mentioned a couple of options before you... I would look at any processor that gives the highest ‘per core speed’ (raw clock speed) and ideally six cores. Eight (true) cores is a nice want, but, budget prevails... The money saved from buying an ‘over the top’ processor will benefit your video card budget massively.... and would definately net more FramesPerSecond by getting at least a ‘mid range’ graphics card (generally $400ish price points, but, as I do for posties’, spend at least $300 zone on a great video card). So the other option that opens up with grabbing a great six core processor now,.. when games really need six cores ‘minimum’ (which will start to happen given consoles all have seven core processors(previous gen disabled one to increase ‘yield’), with one core usually kept aside for the OS;games have six available...), your ‘extra core or so’, presently being bought to leave headroom for the video streaming will become needed (think the next couple of years),.. when that happens you could move your video encoding, for streaming purposes, to an ‘external box’. These are often on clearance in the JB Hifi bargain bins, and will give excellent performance /exceed most of your needs. Most importantly good ones should offset your CPU, and keep things easy on your rig. This would allow a ‘future proofing’ upgrade option where you won’t even have to open your rig. Not being a streamer myself, I do still understand that many video cards make for great streaming encoders.. Unless the video card has dedicated silicon towards this goal, Memory bandwidth and GPU die (the GFX cards ‘CPU’) will give up some of their area to achieve this. This may affect the ability to Overclock your video card for a ‘free’ 10% performance gain, or even more likely, simply lower framerate overall for the games. Some tricks might be available to you though, and I am happy to continue to help brainstorm solutions once your build goes live... As an example, I used to stream Tomb Raider from a bedroom PC to my loungeroom TV. In 3D. The video card was being pushed really hard, as was the processor... I actually found- enabling my inbuilt to my CPU ‘Intel Video card’, was worth turning on to use as a ‘free’ encoder. (It had been disabled via BIOS for years) In this scenario it raised my framerate by 7-15 frames per second as Steam streaming didn’t need to encode on my CPU or GPU that were being used for gaming. (It did raise the temp on my CPU slightly as now more of it was ‘enabled and in use’). There are always solutions, and what works for others may be outside your comfort zone. To keep things simple is why I am suggesting an AMD/AMD build (both CPU and GPU) as using one software applet, assuming the right mainboard is in your rig, will allow easy overclocking of all your parts for the free 10% of headroom that they usually come with. This level of Overclocking is highly recommended and isn’t going to limit system life or reduce stability etc... That free ~10% is usually the difference between the next step up system.. and if you wouldn’t overclock your rig, buying parts that make it easy an reliable, usually have the extra benefit of ensuring a reliable and quiet build. My personal preference is towards silent systems. I usually undervolt my rigs (generates less heat), and take whatever overclocks I can grab ‘for free’. I presently recommend AMD Vegas as the second hand bargain card (ie a flagship Vega 64 seem to be around $400AUS, and Vega 56 (the true bargain) are in the $300 price bracket.) If you are willing to consider some parts second hand, let me know... I will scour gumtree for some recommendations if you like ;-) If you could tell me your favorite PC parts shop, local to you, I will check over their webpage/give them a quick call, and see what build they can offer that gets you a great reliable motherboard/power supply etc.. That being said, I have an x99 mainboard sitting around, and they use QUAD CHANNEL RAM, (no memory bottlenecks), and have a lot of budget six core+ CPU parts available.. I do like the idea of your local shop sorting you out if you are not 100% confident with System building.. and if the price is within 10% of the best price on the internet, the service/support and warranty handling that they can offer is usually worth it!

(Edited)

xKore

Oct 9, 2019

WhitedragemI do indeed live in Melbourne, I really like how you are definitely aiming to really help me out, quieter systems are definitely nicer as it doesn’t cause a commotion whilst streaming, aswell as streaming I want to record so I want to aim to get at least 256-500gb storage in my pc so my storage doesn’t clog up extremely fast, AMD is definitely the card I’m leaning towards as it performs really well for a budget price and it can handle streaming. I live near a few computer part suppliers (centre com, idigi computers) etc which I can get parts from. I’m also not too fussy on the brands etc as I’m not a picky person I just get what works best, seriously thanks for taking your time to help me, I’m just on the look for a budget gaming pc, preferably 1000$, I already have the peripherals and a 60hz monitor that will work for now, but yea hopefully this is a decent amount of information, please do ask me questions if you have any, (I’m 15 btw) so money doesn’t come in as fast as the average person

Whitedragem

185

Oct 7, 2019

The games you listed are mostly super easy to render, and if this is just for ‘competitive online shooters’, (the penchant for ultra high refresh rate), then a few things to consider: Processor speed does not matter so much for gaming nowadays. Let me qualify that- With consoles the lead platform targeted by games companies, and consoles having, by contrast to PCs, ancient processors of a very low speed nature- most PC processors are overkill for modern gaming. The exceptions are open world games (that require the magic trifecta of high speed processor, massive RAM bandwidth (basically the only genre to show (slight) frames per second increases for increased RAM speed, AND a great graphics card). Other than open world games, having way more processor speed than is needed, can come in handy if you plan to stream (although this can be offset in other ways that reduce the CPU overhead for streaming), or plan on running budget Solid state drives that don’t really give full performance without a decent CPU hit. (Some people playing open world games with processors that JUST cut it, have major drive loading issues as there is no CPU *headroom* left for crunching data to/fro the cheap solid state drive). The times when CPU speed DOES matter is when we want to go massively high framerates and the video card is being held back by not enough processor speed. The flipside to this is that an i3 processor (low tier/low speed) might give the same frames per second at 4K resolution as a nice i7 (upper tier/high speed) processor due to the bottleneck being the graphics card that simply cannot render more frames per second. For super high framerates (at 1920x1080 or ‘low resolution’) the trifecta becomes ‘no bottlenecks’; need a great graphics card fed from a fast processor. What is a fast processor for THOSE GAMES and 1920x1080? Actually, older ones work really well! Those games will need one thread at a really fast speed (it will prove the bottle neck), and a few more to keep the system running and the sound flowing etc. As an example to offer some ‘real world numbers’, I had an i7 3770K processor. It would happily clock up to 4.8Ghz (5Ghz if power consumption wasn’t an issue) on water cooling, and with its four cores + hyper threading, offered 8 threads at ‘very high speed’. Battlefield (Hardline/BF1/Star Wars Battlefront etc) easily rendered north of 120 frames per second. Maybe not *easily*, and truth be told, I basically ran the processor at 4.6Ghz as that ensured ‘around 110 (lows) to 120 (averages) frames per second’ and kept the heat/power consumption down. When I upgraded (sidegraded) to a 5820K, with 6 cores/12 threads (it had more parrallel processing capability, generally NOT supported in older games), its reduced core speeds that I ran it at (4.2Ghz) dropped my framerates to 90 Lows with averages around 20 frames per second less than my older ‘faster ‘per core’ clocked’ CPU. Why so much technical mumbo jumbo? (Teach a man to fish; bear with me!) Just establishing that processor speed barely matters at 4K (video card becomes the bottleneck), and at low resolution, where the processor can become the bottleneck, faster per core clocks are generally favoured by older game titles (the ones mostly used in the pro level competitive shooter world). Now don’t take the numbers I quoted and believe that you NEED 4.6Ghz. (certainly it will help to have more speed, but with a limited budget, we should spend EVERY CENT very practically with the total system ‘balance’ in mind).. Every generational improvement in processors bring slight/subtle performance per clock increases. Meaning a four core/four thread 4Ghz machine from four years ago wouldn’t be as quick as a 3.7Ghz machine today (with the same four core/four threads). So 120 frames per second target huh? Good aim- for a few reasons. 120hz monitors are more common and lower cost than 200hz monitors etc. If cost considerations are a factor, giving up the slight ‘bleeding edge’ 24 frames per second difference that a 144hz monitor would require hugely reduces the cost to balance the video card and the processor to hit those targets. Also; I have 120 hz top of the line gaming screens (when 120hz was the fastest they could do), and when I got a 75hz freesync screen I couldn’t believe how much better than ‘60hz’ it performed. -It was better than 15 extra frames per second that the math might suggest. Freesync actually processes the info onto the screen faster. 75hz freesync feels like 100hz ‘brute force’ high speed monitors. I couldn’t believe it but have tested for many many hours, and can confirm a 75hz freesync is entry level enough for great online competitiveness. G-sync actually has to hold a frame (buffer) and I cannot speak 75hz gsync is equal in terms of perceived speed, but it wont matter as an AMD video card SHOULD BE 100% your best consideration (Nvidia price to performance isn’t worth it in the long run, but I haven’t checked those older games framerate graphs and if they all magically favour nvidia, which might be true, as they are generally older version of direct X gaming titles, then doing what all your friends recommend (and the guy at the PC shop no doubt), who say ‘buy NVIDIA’, it isn’t worth making your tech team think you are an idiot or to put them ‘offside’ when building your project. Keep em happy and let the green team take your money, and again next year, and again the next year...) My serious recommendation (I have to go, breakfast with family) is to consider hacking a PSVR onto your PC. Generally they are cheap as chips (I paid $112.50 Australian dollars for ‘brand new at Target’ clearance stock). These PSVRs can be made to work with PC, offer 120hz, are OLED (impressive contrast and colour) and offer such a large screen, that, even forgo’ing 3D, running it as one large screen (2D) will equate to playing on a MASSIVE PROJECTOR or, like playing games on an IMAX theatre screen. (my childhood fantasy). Headshots become easy peasy, my kill to death ratio in battlefield TRIPPLED (! x3 !) They are a seriously great screen for competitive gaming, are relatively comfortable, offer private screen, but might prove uncomfortable over long periods of time. For the $15 driver software requirement to make PSVR work with a PC (and 2x HDMI if you wish to keep things easy, although adaptors can get around that), they are a very good consideration, and who knows, there might already be one in the house, or certainly, second hand for budget prices.... Dont waste any of your budget on ‘super fast’ performance RAM (the cost to performance gain the expensive RAM chips offer is not good value) You could get away with 2x4Gb chips (if trying to put more money into CPU/GPU) which would be my recommendation.. but obviously 16Gb is the happy comfort amount to seek. (Do not buy more, RAM can only help if it is needed, and more than 16Gb is NOT NEEDED especially when we are building a budget PC and not running a desktop design power house with virtual OSs and RAM DISKs) I always recommend spend money on a nice power supply (do not buy based on output power, but more so ‘weight’), and a reliable motherboard. They are the basis of your PC. Personally I always try to find a full metal case. It is shielding. We don’t need to see inside, although ‘less shielding’ saves money and you shouldn’t need to give up 10% of your budget to case. (although I would, as the case and power supply often are keepers for ‘several builds’) 2c- hope these general guidelines help - i ran out of time .. reply and if you still are assembling, I would love to offer more advice. (and maybe a cheap gaming sound card;-)

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Whitedragem

185

Oct 12, 2019

those prices are likely ‘fair’; they usually feature the most basic/budget parts (trying to be cheapest)- they should factor in an operating system and assembly/service time. I have bought windows direct from microsoft a few times for $40-$45 aus. edit; centrecom have a ‘gaming system’ weekend sale till sunday close. not much off, two systems around your pricepoint. include wifi and windows.

(Edited)

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xKore

Oct 16, 2019

WhitedragemI was unfortunately away this weekend so oppurtunity missed, also I got the job at red rooster so that’ll greatly help out with the funds, it’ll take me 3-4 weeks to get enough I’d say

TheJewishCuber

Oct 4, 2019

I have a parts list for you that you can play a lot of games at high-max settings above 80 fps. Here's the list: CPU: Ryzen 5 2600 Motherboard: ASRock B450 Pro4 ATX RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB 3200 MHz SSD: Sabrent Rocket 512 GB SSD GPU: EVGA GTX 1660 SC ULTRA GAMING Case: Phanteks P300 PSU: EVGA 650 GQ Price on PCPartPicker $682.81 USD which is 1008.44 AUD. If you have questions just respond to the comment.

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TheJewishCuber

Oct 4, 2019

TheJewishCuberAlso if you want 100-200 FPS you can lower the settings a little bit if you're not hitting that mark but Minecraft, CS-GO, and Overwatch are not super demanding. I think the only game you will have to lower the settings on is COD.

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xKore

Oct 8, 2019

TheJewishCubercheers

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Malitiano

Oct 4, 2019

What kind of games are you looking to play?

xKore

Oct 4, 2019

MalitianoMainly record Minecraft and play a few other games here and there like COD, csgo, overwatch, just basically anything that can run them over 100-200 frames.

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erickong

7412

Sep 26, 2019

Have you watched any videos from linustechtips or looked at all the build on pcpartpicker?

xKore

Oct 4, 2019

erickongI have And they are good builds but still sometimes exceed my spending limits, he spends like 1000$ usd and that’s like 250$ (AUD) over my budget as my budgets 1000 AUD

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