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AMD Budget Builds! (inquire inside)
BearKnight
Member CommonPosts: 461
I recently did a $1772 Intel based build which has allowed me to 4-box FF14 like a boss. After mentioning this a friend of mine asked for a "budget" build that'd run anything single-box. So here you go 
!
The following are "budget" based builds based on the AMD architecture. If you'd like to see the same in Intel let me know, however it should be noted that Intel is generally 200-300 more expensive, but run cooler and use less power overall. (You get what you pay for, generally speaking)
Budget Bear (High): $989.36
Link
Budget Bear (Low): $751.76
Link
Enjoy :O!
Disclaimer: The prices listed are based on PcPartsPicker price tool. They can vary based on site purchased from, limited time rebates, and mail-in rebates that generally no one actually does. As of the time of this posting the prices are as given to me by PcPartsPicker, and newegg.com.
Additionally, these builds take into account that you already have monitors, mice, keyboards, and operating system. These are UPGRADE budgets, and not 100% complete builds from scratch. You should also invest in your own thermal paste for a new build as stock-thermal pastes are generally low quality, and can lead to higher-levels of heat for your CPU that intended.
[edit]: Error Fixed
ps: "Budget" does NOT mean "Cheap". These are gaming PC's meant to play the best on the market for lowest possible price while still maintaining quality and performance!
Comments
For your low budget build, you could go with the FX-6300 from Amazon Prime for $118.99 or from Newegg for $119.99. The motherboard could also be cheaper, in the $50-$80 range.
Is there a reason for not choosing the FX-8350 in the high budget build?
Neither build has a SSD, which I would consider very important for any gaming computer. The difference in boot and load times, and the overall responsiveness of the computer is just amazing and makes me never want to go back to mechanical drives.
Both builds seem expensive for what you get. The cases are probably too nice for someone on a budget. The power supplies are also expensive for a "budget build" computer. I wouldn't bother with liquid cooling on a budget build, either. Just use the Hyper 212 Evo on the high budget build.
The Fx-6300 is a six-core AMD processor, and is only $26 cheaper. However, the performance boost of the 8320 is significant.
The 8350 is simply an "officially" overclocked 8320. You pay more for something you can easily do yourself, and the performance is actually a couple % better according to benchmarks of price-per-performance.
SSD's are hella expensive for little storage. Right now it's only worth putting one or two games on, and your OS. Not worth the money currently, and you can always upgrade a year from now when SSD's get in the 500gig range for under $300.
The Case in the higher-end build has amazing airflow, and is overall very very impressive (using one in my intel build at home). It was a premo choice for a higher end budget build. Quality, for a reasonble price, however anyone can easily opt for the lower-priced build case if they so choose to.
The Water-Cooler, again, is simply a choice for a higher end budget. It lets your overclock more by dissipating more heat than the EVO (I've got both at home, and the h100i keeps things 8C cooler).
As for the motherboard, it is a high quality board with ease-of-use overclocking tools. It is currently the BEST motherboard on the market for budget PC's, cheap for the quality you get.
Lastly, the PSU, you NEVER skimp on a power supply....EVER. What I've posted is probably a steal, again, for the quality that is given, and 750w is easily enough for this build. I'm using one similar to this for my 760-SLi build, and it easily has the rail power for the task at hand of which i was surprised to find. Not this exact PSU mind you.
TLDR: The budget builds posted easily have enough airflow, or the addition of water-cooling, to overclock the CPU, GPU, and Memory easily enough to warrant a PC worth around $1600. That was the goal with these builds rather than stock builds that you just throw around because you have the money to do so.
Water cooling on that 1000$ build is just overkill, and you spend way too much money on case + power supply.
Those aren't budget builds. They might qualify for building a build that you can try to overclock high with a budget, but most people who build their computers on a budget won't ever overclock it and don't want to spend more than 100$ on just overclocking capability.
I think people are misunderstanding "Budget" for "Cheap".
I'll rename them to "High" and "Medium", and i'll do a "Low" one that makes sense with this mentality. Sound fair
?
I'll also add more options, such as "High - Budget, Overclocking" etc?
However, the PSU will NOT change. Building PC's 101: NEVER SKIMP ON THE PSU!!!
Complaining about storage space on a SSD is like buying a sports car and complaining about it not having a back seat for kids and groceries. You don't buy a SSD for mass-storage of movies, music, or other media. That's what mechanical drives are for.
In my opinion, the extra performance of a SSD is worth the investment. Currently, 120GB SSDs are around $100 for decent-quality drives. That's large enough for the OS and 2-5 games, depending on the sizes. People who hoard games after they're done playing them would have issues, but if you get used to uninstalling and backing up save files it is plenty of space for gaming.
The parts you chose are nice, but far from what I would consider a budget build. While it is bad to go completely cheap on a power supply, skimping on the cost to a $60-$80 range is reasonable when attempting a budget build. In addition, there are plenty of cheaper cases which can be made to have plenty of airflow by simply adding case fans.
SSD's are primary choice based. These builds are 100% go-by templates. You can interchange any part you want for something else you prefer
.
That being said, why would I skimp $10 on the PSU (it's a $90 PSU) for an $80 one when the $90 one is the best you can get quality wise, and will ensure (at best chances anyways) that your parts will get proper power and won't be killed slowly by a bad PSU?
As for the cases, I hunted around for a decent case around $50 and found the Antec 300, but with shipping costs included it ended up being only $63.
Everything else is essentially great for a budget build on the low-side. The only thing i'd change in the builds is probably the cooler to the EVO in the higher-end build, and MAYBE the case in the lower-end build.
That aside everything else is solid.
Made some Updates:
[High]
-Higher budget build has had the liquid-cooler replaced with the top of the line air cooler. (Reduced price by like $50)
-HDD was changed to a cheaper, but still highly reliable and popular HDD (reduced price by another like $20-40?)
-120Gig Samsung $90 SSD was added.
Price dropped from 1010 to around $989.36
[Medium]
-Case changed out for a cheaper case.
Others have already chimed in on areas I personally feel don't really meet budget criteria and you've also made some adjustments based on that feedback so I won't bother mentioning those in this post.
What I am curious about is your reasoning behind going with the widely known to be crippled to 1.5Gb Ram GPU GTX660Ti in the higher budget build? Especially when, for example, you could have an AMD Radeon HD 7950 3Gb card for the same or even less money.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125414
The GTX660Ti is not a bad card per say but it's certainly not the wisest choice when proven superior performance cards are readily available for roughly the same cost.
Often, it's not the part that is the problem, but the price tag. Do you really need eight cores in an FX-8320 rather than six? At $145, I'm not inclined to criticize it. And while a budget build definitely doesn't need a 750 W power supply, I'm not going to criticize getting a very good power supply for $90. If it were $150, I'd blast it as spending way too much on the power supply--but then, if it were $150, you'd likely have picked a different part instead.
$237 before rebate is way too much for a GeForce GTX 660 Ti, though. You can get a Radeon HD 7950 with Boost for a lot cheaper than that:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131499
as others have mentioned...i would go with the fx 6300 rather than the 8350, with an ASROCK mobo in the budget build. The ASROCK + 6300 make for a good budget build, getting good parts (I love ASROCK boards) and gives you lots of overclock room for future proofing.
AMD 7950 vid card in the high end.