Budget Build

N

Nexrus

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 13, 2006
Messages
164
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Building it so my little brother can play wow
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
375.00
3) Where do you live?
Virginia
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget?
Mobo, CPU, Memory, Video Card and PSU
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
80GB SATA Hard Drice
6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
19"
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Asap
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
I just need it to support the other pieces I buy
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?
I have a copy of both. Which would be better with this build?


My brother is having serious lag issues in the bigger raids when playing wow. I know this build isn't going to shred wow but I'm looking for something that will run wow very well on the lowest settings. All advice is appreciated. Thanks

GIGABYTE GA-G31M $52
Intel Pentium E6300 Wolfdale 2.8GHz $78
EVGA 512-P3-N973-TR GeForce 9800
RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-530SS 530W
A-DATA 4GB
 
That is a piss-poor combo for the price, especially with the crappy PSU and an already-outdated motherboard and CPU (in fact, $79 is too high for an Intel Pentium CPU with only an 800MHz FSB when there are considerably better-performing CPUs for the same price or slightly more - and right now Intel has absolutely nothing worthwhile for under $100). Plus, that GPU is way overpriced for its performance: It should have cost $80 without a rebate - but that particular card requires the hassle of a rebate just to get back $30 (in other words, you'll have to pay $110 up front for that card).

By the way, what is your brother's current system? Which components are in that system?
 
Last edited:
Thank you for your suggestions Shadow. Is 400W enough for all of that? and is that video card on par or better than the one I had picked out?

Thanks again
 
Yes the Corsair 400CX is plenty for that system.
The 4670 may not be as powerful as the 9800gt but don't take it for a slouch. I run a similar one in my system and it runs all of my games find at 1680x1050 with high settings and some eye candy. It should be plenty for that system.
If you feel you want something more powerful you could grab this XFX 4850 for $110
 
Nexrus said:
Thank you for your suggestions Shadow. Is 400W enough for all of that? and is that video card on par or better than the one I had picked out?

Thanks again
Click to expand...

Actually, the 4670 is slower than a 9800GT. But in this case it's a better value not because the HD 4670 is a particularly speedy card for its current street price, but because the 9800 GT costs too much money up front for the performance that it delivers. Plus, like an increasing number of tech manufacturers, that eVGA rebate is not in the form of a check but rather in the form of a prepaid Visa card. And the bank that issues that prepaid Visa card makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to cancel the prepaid account, and if you don't cancel the bank's charges and any unauthorized charges will keep piling up. Worse, there is absolutely no protection whatsoever against fraud with prepaid debit cards (or any other debit card for that matter). Moreover, that 9800GT costs way too much at $110, especially since it has only 512MB of RAM. If you have to spend $110 on a GPU, go for a 1GB HD 4850 instead. (The XFX 4850 costs $112 shipped versus $110 for that 512MB 9800 GT.)

In addition, that Raidmax Hybrid 530, like all of the Raidmax Hybrid series PSUs, are made by Huntkey, which is a known crappy manufacturer. As such, it could not deliver anywhere near its 530W rating - more like 350W at realistic internal PSU temperatures of 45 to 50 degrees C. One of Huntkey's most notorious PSUs is one that Best Buy sold a couple of years ago under the Rocketfish brand name: the "700W" unit was realistically only a mediocre 550W unit labeled as "700W".
 
Last edited:
I guess I'll go with the setup recommended. My only concern is that a new hard drive was recommended as well. Is there anyway to shave some money off the build and make room for a cheap but decent hard drive? Thanks
 
Nexrus said:
I guess I'll go with the setup recommended. My only concern is that a new hard drive was recommended as well. Is there anyway to shave some money off the build and make room for a cheap but decent hard drive? Thanks
Click to expand...

You could drop the ram down to a G.Skill 2GB Set but I'm not sure how well that would fair with WOW. I'll let someone else chime in on how memory hungry wow is. If you can survive on 2gb then that would free up enough money for the harddrive and still stay under budget.
 
I think he should be alright with 2GB for WoW. 4GB is always preferable over it, but I doubt you'll see WoW taking advantage of more than 2GB.
 
I suppose I could go up to 300.00

Maybe there is a lower capacity hard drive with the same speed for around 25? I don't mind looking for one myself I'm not sure what specs Im should keep an eye out for.
 
If you drop down to the G.Skill 2gb set you can have the money to get the blue 500gb and still be under $375.
 
Nexrus said:
Maybe there is a lower capacity hard drive with the same speed for around 25?
Click to expand...

Most of the cost-effective as well as fast hard drives begin to show up around the $55 price range. Most hard drives priced below the $55 either are too slow, old, or have crappy gig per cents ratio

Wait, so your budget is now $400?

EDIT: Actually I recommend this setup:
$103 - AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU + MSI 760GM-E51 AM3 AMD 760G mATX Motherboard
$55 - Patriot 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$112 - XFX HD-485X-ZNFC Radeon HD 4850 1GB PCI-E Video Card
$55 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$50 - Corsair 400CX 400W PSU
---
Total: $375 shipped

Yes less RAM and a mobo with less features than the one Shadowssong recommended but it should suffice. RAM is cheap and easy to upgrade hence why I went for 2GB RAM and spent the majority of the remaining cash on upping the video card.
 
Last edited:
Danny Bui said:
Most of the cost-effective as well as fast hard drives begin to show up around the $55 price range. Most hard drives priced below the $55 either are too slow, old, or have crappy gig per cents ratio

Wait, so your budget is now $400?

EDIT: Actually I recommend this setup:
$103 - AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU + MSI 760GM-E51 AM3 AMD 760G mATX Motherboard
$55 - Patriot 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$112 - XFX HD-485X-ZNFC Radeon HD 4850 1GB PCI-E Video Card
$55 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$50 - Corsair 400CX 400W PSU
---
Total: $375 shipped

Yes less RAM and a mobo with less features than the one Shadowssong recommended but it should suffice. RAM is cheap and easy to upgrade hence why I went for 2GB RAM and spent the majority of the remaining cash on upping the video card.
Click to expand...

Only thing I wonder is about the RAM. Would it be better to buy a little 2x1GB kit than to buy a single 2gb stick or the other way around? I know in the long run it would be more for the 2x1 but for the time being it would atleast run in dual channel. What are you thoughts? I've always been curious about it.
 
Shadowssong said:
Only thing I wonder is about the RAM. Would it be better to buy a little 2x1GB kit than to buy a single 2gb stick or the other way around? I know in the long run it would be more for the 2x1 but for the time being it would atleast run in dual channel. What are you thoughts? I've always been curious about it.
Click to expand...

I'd rather have the little extra room for more RAM upgrade from a 2GB stick as you can upgrade to 8GB of RAM with 4 sticks of RAM. Better than a max of 6GB of RAM with a 2x1 and 2x2GB setup.

TBH I based my RAM recommendation mainly on cost and availability. That Patriot 2GB of RAM has been pretty stable price wise and stock wise. From what I've noticed, the price and availability of 2 x 1GB sticks of RAM fluctuate.
 
Thanks to everyone for their advice. I think Im going to go with the build that Danny suggested. It look's Im getting a better vcard and processor.
 
80gig hdd is more than enough to play WoW with, if you want to save that $.
There's ALWAYS good deals on HDD's except when you need one..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top