Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: MrRiplEy[H] on February 08, 2015, 01:45:02 PM

Title: For anyone looking for an ultra cheap AH machine
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on February 08, 2015, 01:45:02 PM
This youtube video contains benchmarks that are real eye openers. You can get a motherboard+cpu combination for 130 bucks that's almost directly comparable to a 350 dollar i5 setup.

Combine this to a R9 280x or a GTX770 you have a killer price per value setup in your hands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L1irtUW1V8

Best of all the CPU can be overclocked to 4,2Ghz using the included cooler. You can easily get a setup like this:

Case: 50 bucks
CPU: 75 bucks
Motherboard: 75 bucks
Ram (8Gb): 100 bucks
HDD (2Tb): 80 Bucks
Graphics card (AMD 290X): 280 bucks
PSU (XFX black 650W): 75 bucks

Total: 735 bucks for a gaming machine that can do BF4, Skyrim, BF Hardline and most probably, AH3. 
Title: Re: For anyone looking for an ultra cheap AH machine
Post by: zack1234 on February 09, 2015, 02:16:40 AM
This forum is awesome :old:
Title: Re: For anyone looking for an ultra cheap AH machine
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on February 09, 2015, 03:51:38 AM
A little clarification:

Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 52 bucks
CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 - 75 bucks
Motherboard: Gigabyte B85M-DS3H - 55-75 bucks
Ram (Kingston HyperX Fury 1600Mhz 8Gb): 69 bucks
HDD (Western Digital Green 2Tb): 80 Bucks
Graphics card (AMD 290): 280 bucks
PSU (XFX Pro core edition 850W): 99 bucks

Total: 680 bucks for a gaming machine that can do BF4, Skyrim, BF Hardline and most probably, AH3.  

Prices picked up from Amazon.com
Title: Re: For anyone looking for an ultra cheap AH machine
Post by: Denniss on February 09, 2015, 05:41:00 AM
Save some money in the way oversized PSU and get a better CPU. The R9 285 may be an alternative solution not a lot slower than the 290 but less power consuming.
Title: Re: For anyone looking for an ultra cheap AH machine
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on February 09, 2015, 07:03:03 AM
Save some money in the way oversized PSU and get a better CPU. The R9 285 may be an alternative solution not a lot slower than the 290 but less power consuming.

Actually you can't get a quality PSU for much less than that and a better gaming cpu will cost at least 100 dollars more than the Pentium. A PSU is not a place to skimp even on budget builds. If you watch the youtube video I provided you see that the 75 dollar Pentium competes directly with a 245 dollar i5 even when it's overclocked.

You are however correct that the system would work using a 500W PSU as long as it's a high quality one. I'm actually planning to make a build myself using the 3258 using a 450W XFX Pro PSU, document the process and post it here as a guide. I'm a bit worried about the PSU size but since I have it vacant I'll try to use it. The reason I put the 850W PSU in was that Amazon didn't have quality brands smaller than that (at least I didn't find them easily).

The price difference between a 285 and 290 is not too big ($180 vs $239) but when you look at certain gaming benchmarks...

(http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8460/67201.png)

You pay 25% more to get 36% more performance. It's a good tradeoff. And coincidentally that 36% is exactly the difference between having playable frames in BF4 and not.
Title: Re: For anyone looking for an ultra cheap AH machine
Post by: Bino on February 09, 2015, 08:25:56 AM
That Pentium G3258 is making waves.  A friend sent me this link with a "build me one!" email:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2015/02/07/build-a-compact-1080p-gaming-pc-for-400-benchmarks-included/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2015/02/07/build-a-compact-1080p-gaming-pc-for-400-benchmarks-included/)

Title: Re: For anyone looking for an ultra cheap AH machine
Post by: 68valu on February 09, 2015, 10:19:58 AM
Great post!!






                                                                                                    68valu