Building a gaming PC

Status
Not open for further replies.
Is it possible to build a decent gaming PC for $500 dollars ?

from scratch?

not including the price of an OS, Monitor, Keydoard, Mouse, Speakers
 
Pretty much no...

You're looking at at least 700-800 bucks for an entry level system. If you had an optical drive and a hard drive to carry over and you only had to worry about central components, 500 bucks would be doable. But it wouldn't be a hot rig by any stretch...

Basically you need

PCI-E Mobo (Socket 939 or a comparable board from that 'other' company)
1Gb of PC3200 (or greater)
PCI-E Video Card (6600/X600 or greater)
Entry Level Processor (Athlon 64 3000 or comparable)
--------------------------------------------------------
Thats gonna ring in around $500, maybe a bit more.

You can price it on Newegg if you want, but I think thats around $500ish. You'd still need

HDD (80Gb, 7200 RPM 8Mb Cache, or greater)
Optical Drive (DVD required)
Case/PSU (400W or greater, make sure it has good ventilation)
120mm/80mm Fans for front and back of case
--------------------------------------------------------
$200-$300 (a bit more if you want a stlyish case)
 
mmhmm..it's difficult with only $500...wats the popular games nowadays...COD and BF..a 6600 GT won't cut it on these...very laggy...there are $180 X800's on newegg though...so that's nice...1 gig of DDR2 RAM is only about $80 and CPU/motherboard combo's socket 939 are only $250 from tigerdirect.com so that's already more than $500
 
well if he doesnt mind playing games on there minimums he could get a card lower than the 6 series. i have a 5700 le (70$) and it plays cod2 dx7 maxes and bf2 lows w/o anylag. but ur gonna need more than 500 especially if u dont have anything at all except that 500
 
Nah don't wanna play them at the minimum...

Just have to put up more cash I guess...

But a definite plus is I can use the HD out of this PC, and put the 40G HD I have laying around back in this one (Going to give this PC to my son)

So I will still need :
case/with power sup
multiple fans
DVD Drive
Vid card
Cpu/MB
1GB ram

That about right?
or did I forget anything?
 
This is my setup and I am happy with it. Now I won't be playing Fear on max settings but I play it on med with no lag and doom 3 on high with 40 fps.

Amd Athlon 3000+ $130
Nforce3 Mobo $57
2 x 512MB DDR400 $70
80GB HardDrive $60
Case with 2 fans $45
PSU 400watt $40
DVD-RW $40
Radeon 9600xt $65
------------------------
$507
Now the Radeon 9600xt is a bit dated so you might want to put up another $80 or so for a 6600gt. I hope this helped.
 
I can only say that if I were you I would save some extra money for a nice hard drive. A fast hard drive can improve loading times a lot.

If your drive is at least 7200rpm and 8mb of buffer you should be ok. But basically dont underestimate the importance of a fast hard drive.
 
faster load times are great but i would perfer to be able to play a game on anything but lowest. but yes a faster hard driver like a 10,000 RPM Hard Driver would be very nice.
 
Ironically, you dont need a 10k rpm drive to notice "considerable" performace changes in that system. Just stick with a good 7200rpm drive. No need to spend over 100$ for a 36 gb drive.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back