› ›

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Register

Quick Links

$600 PC Build -- Help

indojabijinindojabijin Member UncommonPosts: 97
in Hardware
Hey guys,

I need new PC with a $600 budget for a family member. Peripherals are not needed. They want to play games like Fallout 4, Skyrim, WoW with good settings - doesn't necessarily need to be max.

I haven't upgraded my PC in years so I have absolutely no idea what to do in terms of recommendations and MMORPG was the first place to come to mind.

Any idea on what they should get?

Regards.

Comments

  • laseritlaserit Member LegendaryPosts: 7,591
    With only $600 I'd try looking in the used market, quite often you can get great value there.

    "Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    Here you go:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2488974
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231544
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147183
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226688
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127844
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416892

    That comes to $606, including shipping and before $60 in rebates.

    There's no optical drive there.  I'm counting on you being able to scrounge for one from somewhere else, or at least borrow it long enough to install Windows.  That's also only 256 GB of storage space, though it's easy to add more later.
  • LoganKaiLoganKai Member UncommonPosts: 16
    First we need of list of exactly what you need.  Peripherals to me means mouse and keyboard and monitor, but not everyone includes monitors in that.  Do you need a case as well or do you have a decent leftover?  
    Do you have a copy of windows ready or do you need to buy one?

    As for your requirments, wow scales well on every pc, and skyrim is old, though with mods you can challenge any system.  Fallout 4 is where you will hit a wall.  Newer games take bigger hardware.

    Min. Reqs for Fallout 4: i5-2300, 8gb ram, and gtx550/radeon7870

    Rather than list of parts that may or may not be needed/within your price range, I'll give you a way to figure out what you need yourself.

    Google "Tom's Hardware" they put out lists of PC parts for different budgets ranked by quality and keep them updated.  Figure out what you need, and find the best you can to fit your price range.  (Keep compatability and future-proofing in mind, ie dont pick a motherboard with a cpu socket that wont be used in a year when you want to upgrade)

    As for where to buy the parts, amazon or newegg are the go-to sources for solid prices and reliable shipping and service.  





  • indojabijinindojabijin Member UncommonPosts: 97
    We wouldn't have a copy of windows. We have everything needed peripheral wise (mouse, keyboard, speakers and monitor).

    @Quizzical are you suggesting in the build to use the OEM heatsink and not an after market one? I didn't see that included unless I missed something.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    indojabijin said:
    We wouldn't have a copy of windows. We have everything needed peripheral wise (mouse, keyboard, speakers and monitor).

    @Quizzical are you suggesting in the build to use the OEM heatsink and not an after market one? I didn't see that included unless I missed something.
    Yeah, I'd use the stock heatsink.  It will work fine, and it's the sort of sacrifice you have to make if you want to fit a $600 budget.
  • LoganKaiLoganKai Member UncommonPosts: 16
    Quizzical said:
    Here you go:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2488974
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231544
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147183
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226688
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127844
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416892

    That comes to $606, including shipping and before $60 in rebates.

    There's no optical drive there.  I'm counting on you being able to scrounge for one from somewhere else, or at least borrow it long enough to install Windows.  That's also only 256 GB of storage space, though it's easy to add more later.
    not a bad selection, and honestly close to the best you can get for the price.  and yea, the ssd will fill up fast but use the money back from rebates for 1TB HDD for storage and less performance focused programs.

    not personally a fan of AMD cpus but they have their place

    totally forgot about neweggs combos, can get some great deals.

    i know its missing things and is outside you price range but this combo is great for the price over 700 after windows and gpu.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1606524


  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    LoganKai said:
    Quizzical said:
    Here you go:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2488974
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231544
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147183
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226688
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127844
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416892

    That comes to $606, including shipping and before $60 in rebates.

    There's no optical drive there.  I'm counting on you being able to scrounge for one from somewhere else, or at least borrow it long enough to install Windows.  That's also only 256 GB of storage space, though it's easy to add more later.
    not a bad selection, and honestly close to the best you can get for the price.  and yea, the ssd will fill up fast but use the money back from rebates for 1TB HDD for storage and less performance focused programs.

    not personally a fan of AMD cpus but they have their place

    totally forgot about neweggs combos, can get some great deals.

    i know its missing things and is outside you price range but this combo is great for the price over 700 after windows and gpu.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1606524


    If you go that combo, you've got $210 left in the budget to fit a video card, OS, power supply, and another memory module.  You'll about use up all of that without the video card, even.  You really, really don't want to power your computer with a power supply from a cheap junk brand like Logisys.  And that's one memory module for a dual channel memory system.
  • LoganKaiLoganKai Member UncommonPosts: 16
    yea, i know its out of budget, but for an i5, mobo, 8gb ram and what looks like a decent case, for under $400, is a good deal. also the MOBO has room for upgrades in the future.

    And i noticed the single stick ram but dual channel vs single is unnoticeable outside of benchmarking apps.

    I'll give you the PSU, it's crap.  

    Though come to think of it the combo discount is about the same price as the PSU itself. 

    That combo purchased individually with the PSU swapped out for the one Quizzical mentioned and the windows and GPU come to $650 not counting shipping.  

    Yes, I know it's still over budget, but, to me, a much better CPU and upgrade ability is a fair trade for no SSD and single channel memory.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    LoganKai said:
    yea, i know its out of budget, but for an i5, mobo, 8gb ram and what looks like a decent case, for under $400, is a good deal. also the MOBO has room for upgrades in the future.

    And i noticed the single stick ram but dual channel vs single is unnoticeable outside of benchmarking apps.

    I'll give you the PSU, it's crap.  

    Though come to think of it the combo discount is about the same price as the PSU itself. 

    That combo purchased individually with the PSU swapped out for the one Quizzical mentioned and the windows and GPU come to $650 not counting shipping.  

    Yes, I know it's still over budget, but, to me, a much better CPU and upgrade ability is a fair trade for no SSD and single channel memory.

    If you're breaking apart the combo deal anyway to ditch the junk power supply, you might as well get a more appropriate memory configuration.

    The point of paying a bunch of extra money to get an Intel CPU over AMD is to get something faster.  But getting an Intel CPU that tops out at 3.2 GHz gives up a whole lot of that performance advantage, while still costing you an extra $100 or so over AMD.  On a large enough budget, yeah, you get Intel.  But $600 is not a large enough budget.
  • LoganKaiLoganKai Member UncommonPosts: 16
    OP:  This is exactly the debate and decision you need to work out for yourself.

    You have a budget, as everyone does when building their own PC.  You try and get the most for your money.

    If your goal is to get as close to $600 as possible, Quizzical's selections are hard to beat.  Maybe with a bunch of time bargain hunting online, but even then it would be hard to save money without costing performance.

    My suggestion was targetted at staying close while getting the most for your money.  the intel chip is definitely better but you pay for it.  As quizzical mentioned you can also spend more for dual channel ram but the extra money spent is nowhere near the performance increase that you gain from the intel vs amd chip.

    Quizzical said:
    The point of paying a bunch of extra money to get an Intel CPU over AMD is to get something faster.  But getting an Intel CPU that tops out at 3.2 GHz gives up a whole lot of that performance advantage, while still costing you an extra $100 or so over AMD.  On a large enough budget, yeah, you get Intel.  But $600 is not a large enough budget.
     
    Part of the thing that makes the intel chip about 20% better performance-wise than the AMD is not the clock speed.  The AMD chip has a 1MB L2 cache only, while the i5 has L1, L2 and L3 caches and a smaller architecture that speed performance and save energy (ie: less heat).  

    And again, part of my point is to make upgrading easier in the future.  With the AMD I dont think they even make a better chip for that socket, it looks like to is the best out, and considering they have already moved to another socket type for most of their chips I'm not sure many will be coming out.  

    Back to OP:  This largely comes down to what you want to spend and also personal preference.  Tom's Hardware lists will help, and check their hierarchy charts when you wonder which is better, or google it.  Enjoy your new build!
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    edited November 2015
    LoganKai said:
    OP:  This is exactly the debate and decision you need to work out for yourself.

    You have a budget, as everyone does when building their own PC.  You try and get the most for your money.

    If your goal is to get as close to $600 as possible, Quizzical's selections are hard to beat.  Maybe with a bunch of time bargain hunting online, but even then it would be hard to save money without costing performance.

    My suggestion was targetted at staying close while getting the most for your money.  the intel chip is definitely better but you pay for it.  As quizzical mentioned you can also spend more for dual channel ram but the extra money spent is nowhere near the performance increase that you gain from the intel vs amd chip.

    Quizzical said:
    The point of paying a bunch of extra money to get an Intel CPU over AMD is to get something faster.  But getting an Intel CPU that tops out at 3.2 GHz gives up a whole lot of that performance advantage, while still costing you an extra $100 or so over AMD.  On a large enough budget, yeah, you get Intel.  But $600 is not a large enough budget.
     
    Part of the thing that makes the intel chip about 20% better performance-wise than the AMD is not the clock speed.  The AMD chip has a 1MB L2 cache only, while the i5 has L1, L2 and L3 caches and a smaller architecture that speed performance and save energy (ie: less heat).  

    And again, part of my point is to make upgrading easier in the future.  With the AMD I dont think they even make a better chip for that socket, it looks like to is the best out, and considering they have already moved to another socket type for most of their chips I'm not sure many will be coming out.  

    Back to OP:  This largely comes down to what you want to spend and also personal preference.  Tom's Hardware lists will help, and check their hierarchy charts when you wonder which is better, or google it.  Enjoy your new build!
    I'm not saying to spend extra on memory.  You linked single-channel memory for $40, and I linked dual-channel for $35.  Both are 8 GB, 1600 MHz, 1.5 V, 9-9-9-24.  Both are G.Skill, even.  If you could get the same thing for the same price in dual channel rather than single channel, I'd say do it.  And to save $5 on top if it?  Not a hard decision.

    Let's take your numbers and suppose that the Intel CPU you linked is 20% faster than the AMD CPU that I linked.  That's a simplification, of course, but a decent enough approximation.  In that case, you're spending an extra $100 or so for an extra 20% CPU performance.  A higher clocked version of the same Intel CPU could get you an extra 50% CPU performance for an extra $150.  So as compared to doing an Intel build properly, you're paying 67% of the price premium for only 40% of the performance advantage.  I say that's poor value for the money.

    Incidentally, cache sizes are not Intel's advantage, unless you want to talk about Crystalwell.  AMD has lots of caches, too (registers, L1 instruction, L1 data, L2, L3 on some chips).  Indeed, AMD's FX line has more cache than any Intel CPUs outside of the server-focused lines (anything-E, Xeon E5, Xeon E7).  The problem is that for AMD to offer such large caches means they have to be high latency, and that hurts performance.  Too few ALUs and too little instruction decode per core are other problems.
  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332
    Check Ebay,as always it is usually the GPU that you have to further look into.

    I can tell you that i went for a decent cpu and didn't care much about the gpu figuring i could upgrade it later,well i was surprised that with even a crap gpu i can play any game on the market.

    numbers don't mean anything,all you need is something to play your games.I have seen low end machines on Ebay for 300-600 bucks,yes usually the gpu is a bit weak but with a solid cpu you should be ok.

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    edited November 2015
    Wizardry said:
    Check Ebay,as always it is usually the GPU that you have to further look into.

    I can tell you that i went for a decent cpu and didn't care much about the gpu figuring i could upgrade it later,well i was surprised that with even a crap gpu i can play any game on the market.

    numbers don't mean anything,all you need is something to play your games.I have seen low end machines on Ebay for 300-600 bucks,yes usually the gpu is a bit weak but with a solid cpu you should be ok.
    You can play any game on the market with APU. It doesnt mean you WANT to lol

    It depends what you want. If you play in low res, low detail, yeah go for fast CPU.

    If you want all bells and whistles, CPU is pretty irrelevant for most people, as they will be GPU bound anyway.
    ------------------------------------

    The least i would try to squeeze in is FX-6300 with 65$ board
Sign In or Register to comment.