Help with building a budget gaming computer?

Question

Hello, I'm planning on buying some parts, to make a budget gaming computer-more as a project, but to game as well. However, I wanted to salvage some parts from my Gateway Sx2300, most likely, these listed parts:

-AMD 64 Phenom 2.2 GHz triple core processor, OC'd 500 MHz FSB
-140 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drives (X2)
-one CD drive (X48 speed)
-possibly the power supply (HUGE MAYBE, since it's only 250W)
-Radeon HD 5450 1 GB DDR3 graphics (X1)
-4 GB DDR2 RAM (two 2 GB sticks)

I want to buy a bigger, but decently cheap case, and I'm definitely going to need a motherboard, since I only have one PCIe slot, but I prefer to get a $100 ATI Crossfire capable board, since I already have one GPU (and an AMD CPU), and most likely a power supply. My issue is, I want to know if I can I build a decent gaming PC, with the parts I want to keep, and the parts I want to buy, for less than $150-$200?
I want to shoot for a PC that has 6-8 GBs of RAM, crossfire 5450 graphics, and plays nicely with games like Crysis (at least high DX9 settings), and STALKER Call of Pripyat in DX11? (Just for the record, I'm not extremely picky about resolutions and frame rates, as long as it's playable, and looks okay to the eye) Can you recommend any parts to buy, from the parts I want to save? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

Well you said you wanted a $100.00 MoBo and you will need a power supply like 700watts. So that blows your 150-200 price. Then why would you crossfire two 5450's they are only 64bit memory interface and only have 80 stream processors.

With what you have you would be cheaper to just get a better video card like a 5770 and a power supply. Then later down the road you get a new processor, MoBo, and DDR3 memory. Also those "140" gb HDD's only have 2-8mb cache so a new larger HDD with 32-64mb cache would be good.

When you buy parts think about future upgrades so what you buy now will work in the future.





Good luck

Answer 2

I see no reason to get more ram, 4GB is plenty for whatever you will do with it if you are only using 5450 cards. Even in crossfire those aren't gonna be great. Do you know for a fact that your 5450 is crossfire capable? Some aren't. The need for an upgraded power supply isn't a maybe, its an absolute must. 250w isn't enough, period.



How about this setup. What you have to go along with this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102873R



this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130265



and this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.585345



The motherboard is crossfire capable, the power supply will handle a crossfire setup and the graphics card is much better. All told, with the shipping to me, the total came to $316 and its a huge upgrade with a decent amount of expandability still. This would be the route i would take and leave out the video card till you can afford a better one if you can't pull it off. But I would just leave the 5450's alone, don't get another. Crossfire doesn't scale as well as sli does so you aren't gonna see huge performance gains having the 2nd 5450 if its even possible for you to use yours.

Answer 3

OK, well . . . if your goal is to improve your gaming performance, you need to first fix the most obvious bottleneck in your system. That would be the CPU. That's an incredibly slow processor for gaming, even if it's overclocked. The HD 5450 is a decent video card but two of them working together would indeed be more appropriate for gaming use. For RAM, you will likely never use more than 2GB.* So, your current 4GB of RAM should work fine. Your power supply needed to be replaced a long time ago.



So, you need power supply, CPU, extra video card, Motherboard and CASE:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371035

This power supply typically wouldn't handle two video cards, but the HD5450 is very efficient. 500W should be more than enough.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146061

This case is really high quality, not too expensive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103903

Current CPU with high clock speed more appropriate for gaming.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161321

Another HD5450

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131402

Ran into a problem trying to find a crossfire board with AM3 socket and DDR2 RAM. So that was the cheapest I could find, and you need new RAM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134793



That totals about $315. I'm afraid it can't be done cheaper, though. You might be able to find an older board to crossfire with your current CPU, but the results would likely be disappointing.



* For any computer running windows 7, ctrl/alt/del, launch task manager. Now check your percentage of physical RAM used, and note that virtual memory (swap file) is NOT in use. If you do this, you will always see a number lower than 1.5GB of RAM actually used. For example, on a machine with 4GB of physical RAM, you will never see task manager report more than about 33% of that used. And, virtual memory is NOT in use! So 2GB of RAM is all you need . . . even for gaming.

Answer 4

hard drive and power supply toss



PSU has to be around the 450W-500W area (and don't get a cheap one) $50 minimum



hard drive, pretty much any hard drive would be better.



6-8GB not needed. I'm currently using 4GB of RAM on max settings with an i5 processor and a 5850 graphics card



But most motherboards with an am3 socket have ddr3 for the ram standard so your current ram wouldn't work.