Hardware Entry level gaming pc

[niklakis]

I want to buy a ^^ and i have found a pre built one that is cheap but I'm not really sure if it is worth it. My budget is 750 euros (including the screen) and the specs of the pc I found are:

ASUS M11AA-GR004S
CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)
GPU: GeForce GT630 2gb
RAM: 8 GB DDR3-RAM 1600 MHz
HD: 1 TB 7200 rpm
PRICE: 600 eu 12 eu every month

And the screen i found:
ASUS Monitor VH228D 139 eu

I also thought of building my own pc and i would like some suggestions about that and if you are going to suggest something please include the os and screen in the total (ex. parts cost 500 eu os 100 eu screen 150 eu total 750 eu). Also if you can inculde what it would be capable of. If you are going to suggest a pre built one i want it to be from here (sorry it is in greek but you can google translate it. The translation should be pretty accurate)

Thank you

 

[TheDreamLord]

The graphics card is not good at all. If you need a screen and the OS that budget is not high enough for even a built PC, sorry to say.

 

[niklakis]

Ooops just realized. Horrible gaming pc. (the one i edited out)

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

With €750 you should be able to build a pretty ok rig. One I would recommend would be something like this:

CPU: Intel i3 or an Intel i5, you should be able to get a nice 3rd gen i3, or maybe a 2nd-3rd gen i5 (Approximately €100-€150)
Motherboard: Just about any MSI/Gigabyte/ASRock/Asus motherboard your CPU and RAM will fit in (Approximately €80-€150)
RAM: 8GB (Approximately €50-€70, depending on the brand/speed and everything)
GPU: Geforce 650 Ti, as they're becoming fairly cheap with nVidia's 700 series being released (Anywhere from €100-€125)
PSU: 500W should suffice (€30-€50)
Case: Whichever one you want, just make sure everything will fit and it has good airflow
OS: Windows 7 or 8.1, whichever you fancy.
Monitor: Whatever

From searching around on Amazon, this would cost somewhere around €650-€750 (including monitor and OS), which is just about in your budget, and is a fairly powerful rig that should be able to play just about everything on high to max settings.

 

[niklakis]

Thank you. I will consider it. From what you told me it is a fairly decent machine, just what i need.

 

[Kirito-kun]

With €750 you should be able to build a pretty ok rig. One I would recommend would be something like this:

CPU: Intel i3 or an Intel i5, you should be able to get a nice 3rd gen i3, or maybe a 2nd-3rd gen i5 (Approximately €100-€150)
Motherboard: Just about any MSI/Gigabyte/ASRock/Asus motherboard your CPU and RAM will fit in (Approximately €80-€150)
RAM: 8GB (Approximately €50-€70, depending on the brand/speed and everything)
GPU: Geforce 650 Ti, as they're becoming fairly cheap with nVidia's 700 series being released (Anywhere from €100-€125)
PSU: 500W should suffice (€30-€50)
Case: Whichever one you want, just make sure everything will fit and it has good airflow
OS: Windows 7 or 8.1, whichever you fancy.
Monitor: Whatever

From searching around on Amazon, this would cost somewhere around €650-€750 (including monitor and OS), which is just about in your budget, and is a fairly powerful rig that should be able to play just about everything on high to max settings.

Even a GTX 650 Ti is a bit underpowered for the kind of rig the OP is trying to build.

CPU: AMD FX 6300 (Intels are a waste of money for gaming. AMD is all you need): €100
Motherboard: Anything by ASUS or MSI, buy as cheap as possible: €80
RAM: 8GB, buy as cheap as possible: €70
GPU: Radeon HD 7870 (The best price-to-performance "next-gen" crusher): €200
PSU: Any 500W PSU made by a respected manufacturer: €50
Case: You don't need a case
OS: Pirate it
Monitor: Anything cheap

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Even a GTX 650 Ti is a bit underpowered for the kind of rig the OP is trying to build.

I see you don't seem to understand what the phrase "Entry level" means.

 

[Kirito-kun]

I see you don't seem to understand what the phrase "Entry level" means.

It's still best to try to configure the best system possible for the set budget. A 7870 manages to fit into the 750 euros price limit and will give much better performance than the GTX 650 Ti. I mean, the GTX 650 Ti is only about as powerful as the PS4. Why go into PC gaming if you don't intend to play with the best graphics. A 7870 overclocked is almost twice as powerful as the PS4, meaning that it'll keep performing at an acceptable level for years to come.

A rule-of-thumb for a gaming PC is that the GPU should always cost significantly more than the CPU. Intel's hyperthreading doesn't really help in games so you're just wasting money putting one into a gaming build. An inexpensive AMD CPU with a solid Radeon GPU is the best combination.

 

[Shoat]

The graphics card is not good at all. If you need a screen and the OS that budget is not high enough for even a built PC, sorry to say.

My screen cost 85€ (and I see no reason why any sensible person would ever pay a three-digit number for a screen - you're sitting right in front of it, it doesn't need to be huge) and you can get an OS for less than 100€ as well (Hint: It doesn't need to be the "ultimate" or "enterprise" edition).

~550€ should easily be enough for the computer itself. This is "entry level" after all.

My Computer was ~350€ (got it four years ago) and it runs everything except for stuff like Crysis, Planetside 2 and similar ridiculously demanding games - exactly what you'd expect from it.

ASUS M11AA-GR004S
CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)
GPU: GeForce GT630 2gb
RAM: 8 GB DDR3-RAM 1600 MHz
HD: 1 TB 7200 rpm
PRICE: 600 eu 12 eu every month

Why does your price include a constant monthly cost?
I would suggest you stay away from such offers, you'll usually end up being ripped off.

 

[Foxi4]

Why would you even bring up the PS4, or any consoles for that matter? The OP is asking about an entry-level gaming PC. Entry-level gaming translates to mid-range, meaning anything between an i3 and an i5, a mid-range GPU and 8 or more GB RAM to go with the set.

 

[Kirito-kun]

Why would you even bring up the PS4, or any consoles for that matter? The OP is asking about an entry-level gaming PC. Entry-level gaming translates to mid-range, meaning anything between an i3 and an i5, a mid-range GPU and 8 or more GB RAM to go with the set.

An entry-level gaming PC. Gaming PC emphasize on GPU. If you want to maximize gaming performance, there's nothing wrong with skimping on the CPU in order to make room for a 7870. With next-gen console being released, you're gonna need a GPU more powerful than what they have in order to run next-gen games at a decent graphical setting.

 

[Foxi4]

An entry-level gaming PC. Gaming PC emphasize on GPU. If you want to maximize gaming performance, there's nothing wrong with skimping on the CPU in order to make room for a 7870. With next-gen console being released, you're gonna need a GPU more powerful than what they have in order to run next-gen games at a decent graphical setting.

An entry-level gaming PC is a Mid-range. Entry-level means "playing games on medium/high", not "super duper ultra 200FPS@4K".

 

[decemberchild]

I'm reading through this and I always wondered, most pc's can output hdmi now. Is there something wrong with using your tv as your pc monitor? I'm not suggesting that the op do this. I'm asking would it cause an issue.

 

[jonthedit]

Go with a NVIDIA GeForce 460 for video.
It's high end entry level and it won't let you down.

 

[Thanatos Telos]

I'm reading through this and I always wondered, most pc's can output hdmi now. Is there something wrong with using your tv as your pc monitor? I'm not suggesting that the op do this. I'm asking would it cause an issue.

I got my desktop hooked up to my TV now for Netflix/gaming, so it will work. Just make sure that you have the sound set to go through HDMI if you don't want to buy speakers.
EDIT: OP, what sites can you buy from? Not Greek, so I don't know.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

I'm reading through this and I always wondered, most pc's can output hdmi now. Is there something wrong with using your tv as your pc monitor? I'm not suggesting that the op do this. I'm asking would it cause an issue.

It has some issues but works really well for the most part.

The biggest issue is reading text on web pages and games from a couch, you can adjust the font size in most things but the text gets kinda scrunched up on some things.

Playing with all the settings you can get your hands on eventually gets you to a pretty workable solution from about 10 feet back. (I liked making the icons larger on the desktop and found that this made using Windows from a couch a little easier. The downside is while I have like 20+ icons on my desktop and it works fine, from a couch your limited to a lot less icons.)

I don't think you have any of these issues if your sitting closer to the TV... but my experience was has been setting up PC's for people who tend to have 60 inch or larger 1080P screens and Windows 8.

Web pages worked well with larger font sizes in Chrome but this can cause issues with some web pages.

Edit: Also HDMI has a wonderful feeling to it, when you plug in the power cord and then you plug in the HDMI cord and you realize your all done... (the machines I have set up had built in blue tooth for mice and keyboards.) 2 cords 1 box and done. So clean and elegant it's indescribable. Then I come home to my PC with it's conglomerate of wires... *sigh* but that's how I do.

 

[PityOnU]

I'm reading through this and I always wondered, most pc's can output hdmi now. Is there something wrong with using your tv as your pc monitor? I'm not suggesting that the op do this. I'm asking would it cause an issue.

Most TV's have high latency and expect overscan, but other than that it isn't really an issue.

I think my Sharp 70LE640U has a standard latency of ~60ms. With "gaming mode" enabled that drops to ~16ms. Most PC monitors have *at most* ~16ms of lag, while some of the super-optimized gaming versions have only ~1ms.

 

[Thanatos Telos]

Most TV's have high latency and expect overscan, but other than that it isn't really an issue.

I think my Sharp 70LE640U has a standard latency of ~60ms. With "gaming mode" enabled that drops to ~16ms. Most PC monitors have *at most* ~16ms of lag, while some of the super-optimized gaming versions have only ~1ms.

Heck, a normal monitor usually comes 2ms. My normal use Samsung from 2009 (190$ in April)? 1080p @2ms/60hz

 

[Foxi4]

Just as a side note - Kirito-kun seems to be advocating the purchase of the cheapest mainboard possible... don't do that, lest you wish to risk poor performance.

The motherboard connects all the components together and feeds them electricity, you don't want that part to be crappy. You can squander on some less important components like the disc drive or the case, but the components that are directly responsible for the performance of the rig have to be appropriate.

Crappy motherboard means crappy capacitors and crappy capacitors mean poor current stability, overall instability of the rig and terrible overclocking prospects, if any at all. A mid-range PC requires a mid-range motherboard, plain and simple.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

Just as a side note - Kirito-kun seems to be advocating the purchase of the cheapest mainboard possible... don't do that, lest you wish to risk poor performance.

The motherboard connects all the components together and feeds them electricity, you don't want that part to be crappy. You can squander on some less important components like the disc drive or the case, but the components that are directly responsible for the performance of the rig have to be appropriate.

Crappy motherboard means crappy capacitors and crappy capacitors means poor current stability, overall instability of the rig and terrible overclocking prospects, if any at all. A mid-range PC requires a mid-range motherboard, plain and simple.

Yeah I agree with this at least 99% lol

You can get a cheap mobo, but by cheap I mean $$$ wise. If you shop last gen you can get top of the line for less money but you would have to give up things like USB 3.0 right now and possibly support of the latest and greatest CPU's (not a problem for entry level price here people rarely just upgrade CPU's.)

Of course to pull this one off you would need to know a lot about hardware and each time I do a build for some one I spend many hours pouring over the crap trying to get the best bang for the buck.

@ the OP

If you do build it yourself, do yourself a huge favor and read over the reviews on Newegg, even if you are not buying from them the reviews can provide a lot of information.