$800 budget PC gaming build

Dirtytape

Dirtytape

n00b
Joined
Apr 21, 2017
Messages
19
1) What will you be doing with this PC?
Gaming.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$800 usd

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Mesa, AZ USA

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, gpu, mobo, psu, cpu cooler, HD, optical drive.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
6) Will you be overclocking?
No. Running stock.

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
Probably 21 inch, 1080 or 1440 resolution.

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
I plan on buying parts a couple weeks at a time. This will probably take a few months to get everything.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Crossfire or SLI support? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? etc.
Multi monitor support.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?

I will need to purchase windows 10.


Thanks for reading. I haven't done research or built a gaming PC in a couple years so I'm out of the loop on where to start or what to look at. I want to stick with Intel and Nvidia for cpu and gpu.

I will be building this for my girlfriend. This will be her first gaming PC.
 
sknight said:
This should help...
https://www.wepc.com/builds/best-gaming-pc-under-800/
Core I5 + GTX 1060. GL to you and your GF!

Silver
Click to expand...

Note that the link provided only has a 128GB SSD as your storage drive, and nothing else -- that's not going to hold a lot of stuff. It also doesn't include a copy of Windows 10.

Also, the OP didn't answer questions 4 & 5 -- without those, we're going to have to assume you want everything new, and will not be reusing any parts.

I'd also argue that at the tight price-point of $800, you're probably better off going AMD for your CPU, as the Ryzen series offers very good price-performance value.

8GB of RAM is not really adequate, nowadays (I'd recommend 16GB as a minimum), especially if you have a number of Chrome tabs open (for example).

I have a lot more I can say about a nice build, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow (it's getting late).
 
You can get a Ryzen 1600 for ~150 with a cheap B350 board for around ~50-60. As tung stated, 800 doesn't give you a lot of breathing room if you factor in other items. The extra ~50 saves gives you a 1TB WD Blue HDD for mass storage. I tend to agree with the RAM choice, but if you want the most general gaming performance, 8GB will be enough for now. I'd then suggest grabbing a single stick of 8GB then, and grabbing another 8GB of the same module later. 2666-2933 is an ideal speed if you pair with Ryzen, as you do get more performance with faster RAM, but only if the price is right. (Yes you preferred Intel/Nvidia, but it really depends on the rest of the system requirements..) The 8400 is a great cheap, but at over 200 it's 1/4 your budget.

You also mentioned '21 inch, probably 1080p or 1440p' does that mean you don't have any peripherals either? No monitor/keyboard/mouse?

You said you'll buy over time. Unless you see a great deal on something, just wait til you've saved up enough as a, you may find you can save more than you think, and b, there may be better sales/price reductions down the line. I generally suggest avoid buying piece by piece over time.
 
Finally, I agree with Bense, for a cheap gaming rig it’s hard to beat a cheap off lease business class workstation from eBay that you throw a graphics card into. You can probably come in significantly under budget for a very small performance hit in CPU performance if you are willing to consider used. For gaming performance, the video card matters more than CPU or RAM by far. So buying a couple year old machine with a slightly slower processor and putting a current gen mid tier graphics card like the 1070 or 1070ti will be far faster than assembling a current gen budget machine with a budget graphics card like the 1050ti or 1060.
 
I agree with Bense and Archaea. HP Z420 is an excellent starting base for a solid gamer. The only thing with a HP Z series that sucks is the power supply is proprietary but there are adapters that can be had. It should support a 1070 TI if you don't overclock with adapters though.

This is from PC Server and Parts. a company I've bought a few machines from and a lot of parts.. drop an SSD in and a 1070/ TI or even a 1080 and you will be set https://www.amazon.com/HP-Z420-E5-1620-Windows-Workstation/dp/B00ZARDDUW


also if you want Win 10. you can activate it with the Windows 7 COA key, for free
 
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Archaea said:
Finally, I agree with Bense, for a cheap gaming rig it’s hard to beat a cheap off lease business class workstation from eBay that you throw a graphics card into. You can probably come in significantly under budget for a very small performance hit in CPU performance if you are willing to consider used. For gaming performance, the video card matters more than CPU or RAM by far. So buying a couple year old machine with a slightly slower processor and putting a current gen mid tier graphics card like the 1070 or 1070ti will be far faster than assembling a current gen budget machine with a budget graphics card like the 1050ti or 1060.
Click to expand...

That's what I discovered with my HP XW8600 build a few years ago. I hadn't previously realized that workstation was a term that was used to describe motherboards that used architecture (xeons/opterons/ecc ram) in a desktop PC style case (read: without 20k rpm fans). You absolutely, will not ever find a better price/performance setup than using an enterprise workstation (dell, hp) that's just fallen out of warranty and has made it's way to the IT 'surplus' market.

Not to mention that you start developing contacts from ebay purchases -- whom which I would later find out a general idea of who their employer was, and how they managed to 'come across' surplus hardware that they needed to dispose -- whom which would offer me CRAZY deals on hardware after discovering that I was just a geek and not some 'suit' / someone in HR.

ECC RAM is cheap, and those ultra high core count xeons will continue to drop in price (which you can later use as a drop-in upgrade).

Check ebay for Dell T3610 -- that was the last one I purchased.

Don't quote me on this, as I've done little to no research on this; but given the fact that the current gen of consoles (xbox 1,ps4) both use x86 architecture, with 8-core AMD APUs that are clocked in the 2GHz range -- I would imagine that the newer gaming engines are becoming more multi-threaded, and less reliant on ultra high core clocks (above 4.0GHz). Yes, I am implying that pc gaming software development is converging more and more with gaming console software.
My point being, higher core count xeons with a lower clock speed aren't as 'terrible' for gaming as they were a few years ago.
 
matt167 said:
I agree with Bense and Archaea. HP Z420 is an excellent starting base for a solid gamer. The only thing with a HP Z series that sucks is the power supply is proprietary but there are adapters that can be had. It should support a 1070 TI if you don't overclock with adapters though.

This is from PC Server and Parts. a company I've bought a few machines from and a lot of parts.. drop an SSD in and a 1070/ TI or even a 1080 and you will be set https://www.amazon.com/HP-Z420-E5-1620-Windows-Workstation/dp/B00ZARDDUW

also if you want Win 10. you can activate it with the Windows 7 COA key, for free
Click to expand...

I like HP cause it's easier to obtain documentation on them as opposed to Dell. I'm more familiar with HP than Dell. However, the last time I checked pricing on ebay, I noticed that the Dell equivalents sell for a bit less. YMMV.

Thank you for mentioning the proprietary power supply aspect. There are some adapters out there for certain boards, but this tends to raise the costs for the supported boards. (eg. the conventional atx power supply -> hp z420 motherboard adapter is convenient that it exists, however it raises the costs of HP z420 motherboards). Get a power supply de-pinning tool and an 24-pin ATX extension cable (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200121). This way if you start stacking a ton of GPUs in the HP workstation like I did a few years ago, you can make yourself a conversion harness so that you can use a much more powerful PSU on the proprietary motherboard. -- Or you can do other cool stuff, like use $35 HP power supplys that are rated at 1050w for regular ATX motherboards.

If it ain't zip-tied, electrical taped, ghetto-rigged -- it ain't shit. lol

Speaking of SSDs, I need to do some research and find out some of the OEM part numbers for some of the newer m.2 nvme SSDs like I did ~18 months ago with the Toshiba ones (which were the OEM Variants of the OCZ SSDs). But shhhhh. Don't want people to start scoring those deals before I make my purchases ;)
 
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