Slashdot Mirror
Build an $800 Gaming PC
ThinSkin writes "Building a computer that can handle today's games doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. In fact, you can build one for less than $800, especially given that many hardware manufacturers have cut costs considerably. Loyd Case over at ExtremeTech shows gamers how to build an $800 gaming PC, one that features an overclockable Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 and a graphics-crunching EVGA 260 GTX Core 216. The computer exceeded expectations in gaming and synthetic tests, and was even overclocked well over spec at 3.01GHz."
Yeah but can it run windows7?
i kid i kid!
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
spend $400, get one thats 90% of this speed, in a year sell it for face value on craigslist, rinse and repeat.
I've been getting free upgrades for many years now.
They're not gaming PCs. The only one that comes close is the PS3 which could run Linux, but since it can't actually access the GPU it's not exactly going to be a gaming behemoth.
I know that consoles are a perfectly legitimate gaming platform, but posting about their cheap cost in article about PC gaming is like posting about the specs of a high end PC in a thread about console gaming.
I am sure we had a story like this the other week. I am pretty sure we have it every couple of weeks. Considering this has been (more or less) the way of things for probably about five years (I have been following the 'good enough' philosophy for that long, from a Radeon 9600xt, through a GeForce 6800, to a Radeon 4850 today), it isn't news to any nerd. You stopped needing a top of the line computer for gaming around the turn of the century when clock rates stopped doubling every 12-18 months and ATi got good enough to really compete with nVidia.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Most of the time when Intel or AMD underclocks it, there's a good reason. That's not to say that it can't be done in a reliable and safe fashion, but often times it's because the chips aren't guaranteed to work reliably at the designed frequency.
Sort of like how the tri-core Phenoms are quad-core Phenoms with one of the cores inoperable. Yes, sometimes they have in the past down clocked them just for supply and demand reasons, but I'm not aware of that happening in recent memory.
The April 2009 version of Ars Technica System Guide covers three systems priced at $700, $1600 and $12,500. The link is http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/2009/04/ars-technica-system-guide-april-2009-edition.ars Tweaking the first two systems here and there should cover requirements of most users.
Except not. They need the lower binned parts to supply people who can't afford the faster ones. A lot of times they have great yields, but they just can't sell enough CPU's at $300/ea so they disable a core and sell it as an X3, or clock it down. Really... only on the very first runs of a new process is it more likely to be the scenario you propose.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Mine's way cooler, it's got a "Turbo" button on the front that switches it from 8Mhz to 16Mhz. It's freaking awesome!!!
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
True, it can't access the RSX under Linux, but it's still a PS3. One:
in a terminal and it boots right back into GameOS so you can play your PS3 games or in my case, my PS3/PS2/PS1 games.
And even under Linux you can still play games, there's always Nethack, or Jools, or Megamek, or Epyx Rogue under Dosbox, or the PC version of Diablo under QEMUized Win95.
I don't understand why gamers have this die hard loyalty/borderline bias for Intel. Granted, they are better than AMD hands down - they're a bit of an overkill. Unless you're an extreme gamer, you'll never actually need the extra power, and to recommend the Q8400 over the Phenom II X4 940 is odd considering they're usually priced within $5 of each other.
I build a new computer almost exactly a year ago. 4 Gigs of DDR2 800 Low Latency memory, 7200 RPM SATA II hard drive with 32mb cache, an Athlon X2 5000 BE (I just bumped the multiplier from 13 to 15 to get it at 3ghz) and a HD 3870. With the exception of the CPU, everything is is running at stock speeds. These are the games I play:
Call of Duty: World at War
Fallout 3
Race Driver: Grid
NBA 2K9
Drakensang
I was sure my computer would be sluggish, but it runs all these games just fine with excellent graphics at a 1680x1050 resolution. The point? At the time of my building, all of the mentioned games were (for the most part) considered "current generation", and my CPU was lumped into the scrap heap with the "only if you have to" parts. When I actually started playing games, I soon realized that my performance was exactly what people said I wouldn't achieve.
anandtech.com
tomshardware.com
maximumpc.com
pcmag.com (hard to find, though)
arstechnica.com
sharkyextreme.com
I mean, really....does anyone think it's hard to find this stuff?
You can even find sample builds on amazon.com and on newegg.com if you look around a bit.
I don't understand why you would go with a Quad Core. If you're looking to trim costs, get a Core 2 Duo and overclock the hell out of it. Spend your money on a better graphics card if it's for gaming. I have a quad core and it really only gets utilized for video encoding.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
First, most of the overclocking taboo today is just marketing gimic.
Yea, you can fry out your processor being stupid with it, but the vast majority of people will be able to OC their processors in a very stable way for long periods with no problems. Chances are unless they are doing really crazy crap, the processor will be outdated (like by the time it got out of the box) before it looses any life from an OC.
The AMD black edition for example. Yea, AMD does not endorse it but they are actively marketing a processor for overclocking. The MB makers are providing all the tools including on many motherboards the auto features that stop newbies from burning it out. point and click over clocking, with an edge of danger to get people to do it without really doing it.
I even buy my low end workstations at my office with the intent of overclocking them when they start to reach their end of life. Gives me another year out of them, when I would have replaced them anyway. At that point I got nothing to loose. Well, at least it gives me something cool to do with them before retiring them to spare parts.
Living in Chile
I had a friend working at an AMD factory. He toll me the manufacturing process isn't precise enough to produce specifically 3GHz, 2GHz or 1GHz CPUs. Or at least this model helps in diminishing costs, they could probably make the process precise enough but it would raise costs.
So how do they do it ?
They produce 3GHz, 2GHz and 1GHz CPUs in one process all at the same time, there is no difference between the manufacturing process for each speed.
They then test each produced CPU to see how much clock speed it can handle then classify them with regards to this criteria.
When demand for higher clock speed CPU goes down and they have too many CPUs that can handle 3GHz on shelf, they just stamp "2GHz" on them and sell them as "2GHz" CPUs to diminish their inventory.
So overclocking would seem like a gamble, it might work perfectly because the company actually sold you a CPU that was rated for a higher clock speed. It may also not work because the company sold you a 2GHz CPU that was rated to handle only 2.000352 GHz.
Don't take for granted that because your friend or blog posters successfully overclocked a given CPU model, you will automatically have as much success.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
You can build it a lot cheaper with branded components that cost way less: Here's my rig and prices translated into USD at INR47:$1
M2N-E-SLI mobo: 189
AMD Athlon X2-63 bit dual core 4200+: 96
9800GTX+ AND 8600GT (yeah two): 189
LG 17" monitor LCD: 93
Case: 20
OCZ Vanquisher cooler: 35
Point of View PSU: 170
Total: 792
Hell, the shops here will fix it up, assemble and home deliver free if you spend this much amount at one shop.
I got a free MS Natural keyboard, Microsoft Mouse and a 8GB JetFlash card free
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I'd say that learning how to put a computer together is as important to use a computer as knowing how to change a wheel is to driving a car, and it's not hard either.
But hey, if you prefer to pay rather than learn, you can get it for far less than $1000 anyways. Your local friendly neighbor geek wouldn't charge you more than $50 for it, and it's possible he'd still do it for half that amount.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Yes, you can go 'cheap' and spend 'only' 800 dollars on a machine. But that's not REAL cheap - that's just a budget, new computer. Me, I can go REAL cheap and still have a reasonable gaming experience.
I bought a used Pentium IV with a 40 GB HDD and 1 GB of RAM for 50 dollars, with a crashed O/S. It's a Dell, and I have a Dell install CD, so don't need to worry about the OS code or Genuine Advantage. I dug for a bit at pricewatch.com to get a new AGP video card with decent 3D performance in a low profile. Reviews just a year or two ago indicated it was a good chipset. It came with a DVD drive, no burner. 25 dollars got me generic mouse, KB and speakers.
Spent an afternoon, loaded a new OS, (WinXP) drivers from Dell support, and video card drivers, and I now have a system that plays newish games like Star Wars, WoW, and GTA 3 SA and GTA IV at 1024x768 on the 17 inch CRT monitor bought at a yard sale. High end? Not a chance. But for bang/buck, the 650 bucks saved on this rig will go a long way towards helping to pay for my kids' college.
And still lots of fun!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If this topic was about playing chess, why would I bother to pay $58/hr to play chess?? I'd have to be a fool!! Umm. Maybe I like playing chess in my spare time. Same goes for DIY'ers who like to build their PC.
Oh and as others have said, what in the world would take u that long to put a machine together? Do you make $200-300/hr or somethin?
Camping on quad since 1996.
Of course not. It's called dividing up the market (I'm sure there's a technical term for it), and it's completely legitimate. If someone can't afford your top product, you make a scaled down version for them. You can't just give them the top product for a lower price, because then no one would pay that higher price. But at the same time, there's no reason to waste development money purposefully making a worse design. So you just modify the existing design to be worse.
Consider TV or internet services. There are tiered plans, not because the Cable company runs out of premium packages to sell, but because they know that not everyone wants to fork over the dough to 2000 channels.
See, that's because you got a 63 bit processor. The problem with 63 bit processors is you have no end of bizaar problems trying to run modern 64 bit, or even 32 bit software and that's why you save the $8. Myself, I'd spend the extra $8 on 64 bit. :-P
Funnily enough, this is the second reply to this story by someone with a -1 bug. Someone else mentioned their old 485DX33 system.
I don't therefore I'm not.
And Age of Empires 2 was released back in Feb 1996, which makes it 13 years old now.
:)
doh, why do I even bother. He's going to be modded 5 and I'll be -859365834 troll for speaking the truth
Exactly, it is called segmenting the market.
You might as well complain that Microsoft sell different versions of Windows, they all cost the same. They all have the same media, box, it doesn't cost any extra to burn a different image.
Hmmm...
Considering i have a 38.4MBps connection to the 'net supplemented by a backup connection (from another ISP) of 2Mbps, both of which are NOT throttled in any way, and i have the freedom to download anything anytime i want, plus indian equivalent of FCC actually man dating net neutrality as per law and sending to jail company execs that don't obey their advertised speed limits, and the fact i can buy a 9800GTX+ in the next door PC shop, AND got Spore one day earlier than released in US, yeah i guess we are pretty backward.
BTW, how's comcast treating you now?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Bragging that you can get better connectivity pretty much anywhere in the world other than the US is a bit like racing a legless kid. It isn't done in polite company.
(at other times of course...)
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
When I saw a quad core recommended for a bargain gaming PC I knew I would read about an nvidia card not too far down the list followed by 'gamer/overclocker' ram. Yep it's YAFBBS (Yet Another Fan-Boy Build Story) with no actual useful advice for anyone on a budget.
At the moment a Radeon 4770 would be a better choice, if the not the #1 on bang for buck, as touted by most reputable sources. Highly clockable e7xxx or e8xxx range core 2 duo still kicks quad core ass for less money (easy stable 4ghz), less power draw and subsequent heat problems. What really gets my gall with these kind of websites, is the ram recommendations. That quad core has a 1333mhz bus, thus DDR2 faster than 667mhz gains almost no improvement in memory bandwidth and latency, yet somehow there is a huge market for this kind of crap.
I hate to sound like a greybeard but back in the day it was all about making dirt cheap parts outperform four-figure parts. Now overclocking parts cost more and are much less challenging to work with. If anything overclocking is boring now, it's all about bling. Remember the Celeron 300A?
Yep, CL5 800 is just fine. If you want another 5% in benchmarks you can blow your dosh on CL4 1066mhz. Even if you overclock your FSB speed, you'll watch your bandwidth scores scale up, even holding ram speed at a fixed 800mhz! Even if your FSB is stepping up faster than your ram speed, your memory benchmark scores will continue to go up. It only really makes more sense to come down in latency, 667 CL3 is lower *realtime* latency than 1066mhz CL5, and even reasonable 'value ram' will reach those timings with a voltage boost. Yep the socket 775 platform is that crappy. Spend your money on other areas please.
No IT professional worth their salt recommends anything above reasonably priced and reliable 800/1066 ram, unless you really are going to push high FSB speeds on a core 2 duo, maybe worth paying a whisker more. You don't really need heat spreaders either, and a strip of aluminum and 3M thermal tape will do the job better than $20 set of aftermarket spreaders.
Honestly, you could blow this thing away in benchmarks for less money.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Supreme Commander
Demigod
Left4Dead
Team Fortress 2
Julie Moult is an idiot.
An entry-level $600 TV makes Wii look good. Not all genres need 1080p or higher resolution.
Correction: A shitty $50 TV makes Wii look good. I have a $600 TV (a 32" Sharp Aquos) and the Wii looks like total dogshit. What's puzzling to me is that the PS2 and Xbox both look better at 480i or 480p than the Wii. Does it just have some of the worst graphics output ever, or what?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And how was your last dinner at Outback??
Oh wait...
Unless you have a specific need- HTPC/Silent PC/foo. Just get wait for a slickdeal on a dell vostro. Up the ram and stick a real video card in there and you've got a sweet machine for less bucks and less work. Usually they come with a gigantic widescreen monitor, too.
It's not 1998 anymore, BYO doesn't make sense most of the time.
--- Do you believe in the day?
You both are forgetting the best thing about PC games: mods. Counter Strike would not exist without the help of Half-Life and Valve Hammer.