Building first computer in 10 years!

[jlbenedict]

Wow... Finally in position to be able to put together a complete, budget system capable of gaming after a 10 year absence from the component world.
Last dedicated computer for any sort of gaming was a Cedar Mill based 651 system, with a 6800 GS for my GPU. (this was in 2006... the Cedar Mill 651 was $400 )

Last build (stop gap build, using previous case, power supply and DDR2) was in 2010 with an Asus AM3 board of some sort, using the integrated Radeon graphics, and a Phenom 9850 cpu..

Now to the present, in 2016, I treated my son and myself to two identical budget builds, that should give us a good gaming experience for many years (hopefully)

$1,105.76 ($552.88 each), out the door shipped (before rebates) for:

Corsair Spec-01 (red)
MSI Gaming 970
FX-6300 (must have hit the 'Egg at the right time.. these were $89.99.. now back to 109)
MSI GTX 950 Gaming
8 GB (2x4) Ripjaws X
Western Digital 1TB Black edition
EVGA 500 Watt, Bronze 500

Yeah.. I'm sure this gets bashed by the anti-AMD crowd.. but there is no denying the fact that for sub-$600 that this should be able to play 99% of any game out there with decent settings, at playable frame rates..

Yes, I'm aware that AM3+ is a dead end platform.. but for the longevity that I will get out of this, both AMD and Intel will have new socket platforms by that point. There is no denying the fact that Intel changes sockets as often as I change my underwear.. often..
1156->1155->1150->1151 all in a short time span... there are no guarantees that 1151 will be the socket of choice 3 years from now..

 

[extide]

Actually, not bad. Although I would DEFINITELY say spring for a small ssd for the OS for each system. It will make a huge difference. Spend another $100 each on like a budget 256GB ssd, and you will have a major noticeable impact.

Also, it's been pretty predictable you get 2 gens on each socket, but that will probably be stretching to 3 gens on each socket from here on out. But yeah, I see the point behind your setup, those intel platforms don't matter. You can probably get a decen't bump in performance with some overclocking, both of the CPU and GPU. I would have gone with AMD GPU's in that price range, though, but with an overclock the GM206 should be pretty decent.

 

[fightingfi]

wheres the ssd?
1 tb hdd way to small by todays standard
amd r9 380x 4 gig to keep up with games minumal
good luck

 

[mnewxcv]

wheres the ssd?
1 tb hdd way to small by todays standard
amd r9 380x 4 gig to keep up with games minumal
good luck

[H] standard and real world standard are not the same. This will be just fine, and will play all the latest games on medium ish settings for the most part. You do not need a $1000 build to play current games if you don't need them maxed out.

 

[jlbenedict]

[H] standard and real world standard are not the same. This will be just fine, and will play all the latest games on medium ish settings for the most part. You do not need a $1000 build to play current games if you don't need them maxed out.

Yeah..i'm not sure where an R9 380x fits in a sub-$600 budget rig
$600 seems to be at the point to what it would be $1000 for a mid-range budget rig years ago, and that was my price point.. sub-600 and I felt I met that well and caught some decent deals at the right time.. even though I was tempted to go with a new Skylake build, or overclock the hell out of a G3258

Display is 23", 1080p @ 60 hz.. so nothing extreme

 

[mnewxcv]

Yeah..i'm not sure where an R9 380x fits in a sub-$600 budget rig
$600 seems to be at the point to what it would be $1000 for a mid-range budget rig years ago, and that was my price point.. sub-600 and I felt I met that well and caught some decent deals at the right time.. even though I was tempted to go with a new Skylake build, or overclock the hell out of a G3258

Display is 23", 1080p @ 60 hz.. so nothing extreme

you can use the best of the best parts, but doesn't mean you will utilize them. Build what you need and use the savings for something else

 

[StoleMyOwnCar]

It's not actually that hard to fit it under 600$. You didn't include Windows as part of that rig, so here. This is a slight modification of a parametric filter build I made a long time ago. It includes some custom defined options to give you a build that will literally kill what you have in your opening post for just 26$ over your initial budget (well with MIR's shrug):
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wZtr3C

The only reason it goes a bit over budget is because I put an SSD in there. FYI, the GPU he was suggesting was a 380X, which is a fair chunk cheaper than anything I put in that build.

Here's the build with a 380X:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Ndsjf7

Notice that I could actually upgrade to an i5 while keeping the same budget as the 390/970 build I linked earlier, with a 380X as the GPU:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Cf33qs


TL;DR, before building anything, you should have consulted us.

 

[Squizzles]

I would really try and get a SSD. It's the one part which makes the biggest difference in general system performance.

 

[extide]

I would really try and get a SSD. It's the one part which makes the biggest difference in general system performance.

Yeah, seriously, check it out:
240/256GB drives starting at $59 each.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0038500&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Pagesize=90&Page=1

Just DON'T get the Crucial BX200. Pretty much any other drive on there will be fine. Sure, they are budget drives, but the difference in speed is hard to notice between a decent modern ssd, and a top tier modern ssd. However, the difference to a hard drive is MASSIVE!

In my above post I said it would cost $100/each, well I was off, it will actually cost you $120 TOTAL. This will be a massively noticeable upgrade, it's not $60 for a 'little bit faster' this is huge.