This is a gaming machine, not a media library. Both cards can run without dedicated PCI-e Graphics power connectors from a 350-400W power supply.įor this build, the first item to get tossed overboard is the hard drive. The Radeon R7 260X 2GB card is reasonably priced with performance close to the NVidia GTX 750ti version (which sells for $40 more). The big ticket item, and the most direct influence on game frame rates is the video card, so about 30% of our budget will go there. MSI is big on gaming, and they have overclocking support built into their BIOS. This also means you could populate it with some 2 GB DDR3-1600 MHz DIMMs that you may be able to pick up cheaply from someone who has upgraded. The MSI Intel B85 motherboard has SATA 6.0 Gbps connections, USB 3.0 ports, solid capacitors and “milspec” components for reliability, and unusually for a mATX board, it has four DDR3 DIMM memory sockets and can go to 32 GB of RAM if you wish. Starting at 3.2 GHz, it can be overclocked to 4.0 GHz with the stock air cooler. The Haswell Pentium dual core chips start out fast, and can be handily tweaked, so the the Anniversary Edition Pentium will power our platform. The exact settings “sweet spot” is going to vary from game to game, so do some testing with your favorites.įor a low-cost gaming build, we are going to sacrifice CPU cores and go for flat out dual-core speed. But being willing to compromise on resolution and fine detail will let you play with acceptable frame rates on a machine that won’t break the bank. You could do that, of course, as long as you were OK counting to ten between frames. The first thing that has to go out the window is the idea that you have to play all games at maximum resolution and maximum quality settings. The CAN$600 question is, can an uber-affordable machine deliver an acceptable gaming experience? And the answer is: with the right expectations, yes.
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