I'm trying to go as cheap as I can to build a competent machine for my kids that can play games too. I have the SSD sitting in my desk and the GTX 760 is in my machine right now (I'm upgrading to a 1060 or 1070). I already have a copy of Windows 7 but I may purchase Windows 10 instead. I built my machine but am not expert so I need opinions:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6Gtv2R



[url=https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6Gtv2R][/url]

You could get away with a cheaper power supply with less power, but it looks fine. Maybe a slight bottleneck with that CPU, but not enough to matter.

CPU will bottleneck, quad core intel or 8 core AMD would preform better for just about the same price. Case is ok, can prolly find one cheaper if you have a Frys or microcenter near by. Leave the PS as is it. If you want to save money, go partial modular rather than full. Little bit of cable clutter which some zip ties take care of saves you some bucks. Do you really need a CD/dvd drive? Cant remember the last time i used mine, everything is online nowadays. Use a flashdrive to get anything you need. Stick with windows 7, the older GFX card will not run any better in 10 than it does in 7. Make sure to get usb 3.0 and PCI 3 in the MOBO for future proofing.

Shop around on newegg for reviews on your MOBO before you buy. So many POS ones out there. If your gonna spend a few extra bucks on anything, make it your CPU and MOBO combo.

If you want to get some extra performance out of the CPU, you can overclock it as well but be sure to get yourself an aftermarket cooler for it. Even stock, i recommend them. $30 Hyper 212'ish like coolers run circles around the stock ones.

Wait a month or so if you can for the new AMD Ryzen CPUs to hit the market. The leaked, and AMD released, benchmarks look promising and even if it's not what AMD hopes, it still might knock down the Intel CPU prices some.


I would not recommend any of the current (non-Ryzen) AMD CPUs or APUs.

If you have a Microcenter nearby, keep an eye on their CPU/Mobo deals. Sometimes you can walk out with a much better deal (even with tax) than online separately.

January eCatalog: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/c49f9339#/c49f9339/33 or http://www.microcenter.com/site/specials/catalog/catalog.aspx

VonDownByTheRiver said:

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If you want to save some money, put a 9600 GPU in there, still one of the best!

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Check the memory spec on that motherboard. I think the i3-6100 can run ddr3 and ddr4, so make sure you are picking up the right stuff.

I will echo that spending a little more for a quad core processor could make a big difference in your gaming performance. I would be looking for deals on an i5-4590/6500/6600 with a quality motherboard.

Microcenter link posted has some good deals in it if you have one near you. I just grabbed a CPU/Mobo combo from there and save 40 bucks over what I could have gotten online. /r buildapcsales is another good place to look for deals.

FatZilla said:

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CPU will bottleneck, quad core intel or 8 core AMD would preform better for just about the same price. Case is ok, can prolly find one cheaper if you have a Frys or microcenter near by. Leave the PS as is it. If you want to save money, go partial modular rather than full. Little bit of cable clutter which some zip ties take care of saves you some bucks. Do you really need a CD/dvd drive? Cant remember the last time i used mine, everything is online nowadays. Use a flashdrive to get anything you need. Stick with windows 7, the older GFX card will not run any better in 10 than it does in 7. Make sure to get usb 3.0 and PCI 3 in the MOBO for future proofing.

Shop around on newegg for reviews on your MOBO before you buy. So many POS ones out there. If your gonna spend a few extra bucks on anything, make it your CPU and MOBO combo.

If you want to get some extra performance out of the CPU, you can overclock it as well but be sure to get yourself an aftermarket cooler for it. Even stock, i recommend them. $30 Hyper 212'ish like coolers run circles around the stock ones.

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That CPU is fine. He could even drop down to one of the $65 Pentium chips and still be good. CPUs haven't been bottle necking GPUs for standard gaming in a while.

Drop the CD drive and go with a cheaper PSU.

So what if I wanted to go AMD? What about this?

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/T2YMyf

Against my modified Intel build?

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/smz2zM

Oh yeah, the full modular power supply is important to me.

That AMD CPU is way underpowered (~25% less performance) than that i3.

If you can wait, it looks like the AMD Ryzen CPUs will hit at the end of February, which should give you palatable AMD options and likely knocking down the Intel prices a bit as well. If you can't wait that long and you want something inexpensive, but still usable now, get the i3.

Don't buy AMD right now. The current CPU's are not even close to worth the money, and they have new architecture right around the corner.

Do people still "stripe" drives. Built my son a pc back in 2003 and I bought 2 120gb drives and striped them. Remember the speed being noticeably faster. Just curious.

dfdogfood said:

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Do people still "stripe" drives. Built my son a pc back in 2003 and I bought 2 120gb drives and striped them. Remember the speed being noticeably faster. Just curious.

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Yeah, 50 year old nerds who aren't keeping up with the times. You'll get more performance increase by using SSD.

VonDownByTheRiver said:

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dfdogfood said:

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Do people still "stripe" drives. Built my son a pc back in 2003 and I bought 2 120gb drives and striped them. Remember the speed being noticeably faster. Just curious.

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Yeah, 50 year old nerds who aren't keeping up with the times. You'll get more performance increase by using SSD.

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A single Samsung 960 Pro using the PCIe interface (honestly, any other NVMe SSD too) will smoke any kind of RAID 0 SATA SSD array. While you can run a couple m.2 PCIe SSDs like the 960 Pro in RAID 0, there aren't a ton of setups that can support that and the real world gains are negligible because of who fast a single drive is, though the benchmarks can look impressive.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/35462/samsung-950-pro-ssd-raid0-performance-tests/

Thanks for the serious answer.

I did have a snarky response queued up, but didn't think it fit on this thread.

Just as a note to my previous post, that article I linked is about the 950 Pro which is significantly slower than the 960 Pro, so the real world gains would be even less noticeable with the 960 Pro.

The new 960 Evo, Samsungs more value oriented new m.2 NVMe SSD, while slower than it's 960 Pro brethren, is still faster than the 950 Pro as well. The speeds have been really going crazy on storage with the change to PCIe based interfaces and NVMe.

VonDownByTheRiver said:

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dfdogfood said:

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Do people still "stripe" drives. Built my son a pc back in 2003 and I bought 2 120gb drives and striped them. Remember the speed being noticeably faster. Just curious.

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Yeah, 50 year old nerds who aren't keeping up with the times. You'll get more performance increase by using SSD.

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just get nvme. ssd was so 2015

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabyte-x170-extreme-ecc-intel-c236-motherboard,4784.html

that setup can do raid 0 m.2s

SF2004 said:

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FatZilla said:

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CPU will bottleneck, quad core intel or 8 core AMD would preform better for just about the same price. Case is ok, can prolly find one cheaper if you have a Frys or microcenter near by. Leave the PS as is it. If you want to save money, go partial modular rather than full. Little bit of cable clutter which some zip ties take care of saves you some bucks. Do you really need a CD/dvd drive? Cant remember the last time i used mine, everything is online nowadays. Use a flashdrive to get anything you need. Stick with windows 7, the older GFX card will not run any better in 10 than it does in 7. Make sure to get usb 3.0 and PCI 3 in the MOBO for future proofing.

Shop around on newegg for reviews on your MOBO before you buy. So many POS ones out there. If your gonna spend a few extra bucks on anything, make it your CPU and MOBO combo.

If you want to get some extra performance out of the CPU, you can overclock it as well but be sure to get yourself an aftermarket cooler for it. Even stock, i recommend them. $30 Hyper 212'ish like coolers run circles around the stock ones.

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That CPU is fine. He could even drop down to one of the $65 Pentium chips and still be good. CPUs haven't been bottle necking GPUs for standard gaming in a while.

Drop the CD drive and go with a cheaper PSU.

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The problem with going Pentium is there are games that I've played that don't support fewer than 4 cores, The Division being one of them. My G3258 had serious issues with the game, while an equivalent build with a i5 4690K swapped in ran the game flawlessly.

Serious question: Why not get a refurbed workstation as a starting point?

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Serious question: Why not get a refurbed workstation as a starting point?

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Not a bad idea. There a a decent number of guides online that walk you through buying old workstations on eBay and configuring them as gaming machines. You can get pretty decent value that way, though you do tend to lose a little flexibility in regards to future upgrades, but no that much compared to a cheap scratch-built system.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/build-8-core-gaming-pc-cheap-server-parts/



More updated videos starting with complete workstations

So, this is what I ended up with. All items were bought from Jet except the ram which was from Newegg and the $0.00 items I already had sitting here. All in all I think it's a pretty solid value/build...thoughts?


https://pcpartpicker.com/user/sdc177/saved/DZ3gsY

Does the i3 come with a heatsink and fan? You might need to get one. Intel doesn't always have them in the box anymore.

Yes I think so.