Trunkin on 16 July 2015
| greenmedic88 said: $500-700 is considered budget level PC gaming. No one builds a gaming PC with anything approaching a 10 year life expectancy, even for actual top of the line systems that run in excess of several thousand dollars. This is very realistically what a $700 budget buys for a build it yourself gaming PC: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-budget-gaming-pc,4065.html Current Budget Gaming PC Components CPU Intel Core i3-4150 (Haswell) $120 CPU Cooler Intel Boxed Heat Sink and Fan $0 Motherboard ASRock H81M-HDS, LGA 1150, Intel H81 Express $57 RAM G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL $64 Graphics Sapphire Dual-X Radeon R9 280 100373L $180 Hard Drive Western Digital WD Blue WD10EZEX 1TB $55 Power EVGA 100-W1-500-KR 500W $43 Performance Platform Cost $519 Storage Drive None $0 Case NZXT Source 210 Elite Black $50 Optical Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK SATA 24x DVD Burner $20 Total Hardware Cost $589 OS Windows 8.1 X64 OEM $100 Complete System Price $689 As anyone familiar with PC components will recognize (anyone familiar will already have a good idea of what $700 in hardware will buy anyway) this is a competent but modest 1920x1080 gaming PC. I suggest reading builder articles from Tomshardware.com to better educate yourself on what various budgets will currently buy and the tested performance numbers said builds will yield. |
This is pretty much perfect. Dare I say a rig like that one should last the entire generation, if you don't mind reducing settings. Though I'd replace Windows 8.1 with Windows 7, which can be found for $70 or less if you look around, and just upgrade to Windows 10 when the time comes.
@OP, don't forget the cost of a monitor, unless you plan on playing on your TV. Monitors are generally pretty long lived, in my experience, so it might be worth it to look for a used one.
