Best cheap gaming PC

First of all I would like to try and keep the project under $1100. But I could go as high as $1500 but do not really want to.

I would like to buy the cheapest gaming PC I can buy. But I would like it to be able to play any game I want to play. I would also like this to be able to play games for hopefully the next year or two.

I am going to make this one a desktop. So I could update it in the future. I would really like to build one. But I have never do so and do not want to hurt anything doing it.

Is it more worth it to buy the parts and have a professional put it together for me? or should I just buy one from a top PC gaming company? if so witch company do you guys think is best?

This is my absolute number one place for anything Windows. I do not want to ask anyone else opinion.

Your budget is sufficient for what you want. If you have any experience with upgrading a computer, you won't find building it to be that hard. You just gotta get the right parts, one toy have them, they really only plug in one way.
Many here can help you pick out parts that well work together. I'm tied up, so cannot assemble a parts list right now, but am sure somebody will post one before too long. I'd go a nice core i5, 8gb of ram, SSD for OS and games, standard mechanical hard drive for storage, an ati our Nvidia card (whichever you prefer), a solid case (antec, corsair, haf, nzxt), and a power supply around 650watts (corsair, seasonic, pc power and cooling).

Build your own computer; not that hard and cheaper. All you need is the parts and a few hours.

Try out Newegg for computer parts, very reputable and usually good prices. If you want a guide for computer hardware, then use PC Part Picker; this will allow you to keep a list of hardware you need for your computer (I don't pay attention to ratings).

Suggestions, don't get a SSD because they're extremely expensive (but incredible) unless you have a lot of extra money. AMD is good for budget builds.

Try not to spend over $100 for a case, there are plenty of cheap ones. Also, get one that has "grills" or "holes" in the front. This is very good for air flow. Don't get a case because it looks "cool".

The motherboard, processor and graphics card are your important trio; the most expensive components. I usually start with the kind of processor I want then move onto the motherboard from there (I know what socket I need after choosing the processor) then I move onto the graphics card.

wow. you can have a really nice desktop rig for $1100...

honestly, if you have no clue what you're doing, buy a nice gaming rig from a reputable company BUT LEAVE OUT THE VIDEO CARD. then go graphics card hunting and use your leftover budget to shop appropriately.

but if you feel decently handy, you can definitely build a computer made of high quality parts. when you buy from a PC vendor, what ends up happening is they throw in some nice components like the CPU, SSD, etc. but in order to make a serious profit, they go cheap in a number of areas (low quality motherboard, cheap power supply, etc.). so you can't just look for bullet points like Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, etc. so the only way to ensure high quality parts throughout is to buy all the parts yourself.

I am pretty sure I can can do most of the build. Like you said it pretty much just plugging in wires. What I am worried about is do things like the heat sink on the processor well that's pretty much it. I have taken apart and put back together a lot of the old dells. I have a basic knowledge of how to do it. I do not care what my PC looks like either. I would actually rather it look plain like a sleeper of sorts. I just want something that can be upgrade able and will play any game on the highest FPS and all that. If anyone actually has all the parts for a computer like this listed out I would love to have it. All I want is help from the best. That is why I am here. If needed I could spend a lot more. But I would like to stay as cheap as possible.

start with this guide. pretty good:
Ars Technica System Guide: December 2012 | Ars Technica
Ars Technica System Guide: Bargain Box, February 2013 | Ars Technica

of course, with the rapid change in technology (especially the graphics), that part will need some tweaking as there's no guide that can quite keep up. but arstechnica is a great place to start.

start there, decide on your base CPU and components, and we can help out fill out the rest like the video card. note that the arstechnica guide is for a complete system, including keyboard, monitor, etc. if you can reuse that stuff from a current system, you can pile that money into upgrading some components.

If your looking for the best bang for your buck, check out Tom's Hardware. They tell you exactly what to buy for your budget and benchmark the system so you'll know how it will perform:

System Builder Marathon, Q1 2013: $1,000 Performance PC : Can $1,000 Buy A High-End PC?

I am just not good at this picking parts. I always want the best. I have the money but I do not want to spend it I have 4 people in my family and I support everyone. Please help. LOL. I cant help it I do not want to think I could have just spent a little more to have a lot better. But I also do not want to say crap I spent to much. I know I can always upgrade later.

Here is the reason why I can not do this stuff

!. I want at least a 4 core processor and I want it 3 GHz or gigher

2. I want a good enough video card to play any game I want.

3. a mother board that supports crossfire or at least 2 video cards.

4. I want obviously a CD drive but would like it to read blue rays doesn't have to burn them

5. another obvious I want to be able to connect an ethernet cord.

6. I want it to run kool do not want to worry about over heating at all.

I do not want to overclock anything. If something comes overclocked factory that is fine but I will not be doing it.
Also If I am going to upgrade later. The last thing I would ever upgrade would be the mother board right? So shouldn't I get one that can withstand a lot more than I will be putting on it this time?

chiumiento said:

I am just not good at this picking parts. I always want the best. I have the money but I do not want to spend it I have 4 people in my family and I support everyone. Please help. LOL. I cant help it I do not want to think I could have just spent a little more to have a lot better. But I also do not want to say crap I spent to much. I know I can always upgrade later.

Here is the reason why I can not do this stuff

!. I want at least a 4 core processor and I want it 3 GHz or gigher

2. I want a good enough video card to play any game I want.

3. a mother board that supports crossfire or at least 2 video cards.

4. I want obviously a CD drive but would like it to read blue rays doesn't have to burn them

5. another obvious I want to be able to connect an ethernet cord.

6. I want it to run kool do not want to worry about over heating at all.

I do not want to overclock anything. If something comes overclocked factory that is fine but I will not be doing it.
Also If I am going to upgrade later. The last thing I would ever upgrade would be the mother board right? So shouldn't I get one that can withstand a lot more than I will be putting on it this time?

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The link I gave you fits exactly what you are looking for except the Blu-ray drive. You can add that for around $50. All the parts listed really good components.

Here's a quick list:

oldpro21 said:

chiumiento said:

I am just not good at this picking parts. I always want the best. I have the money but I do not want to spend it I have 4 people in my family and I support everyone. Please help. LOL. I cant help it I do not want to think I could have just spent a little more to have a lot better. But I also do not want to say crap I spent to much. I know I can always upgrade later.

Here is the reason why I can not do this stuff

!. I want at least a 4 core processor and I want it 3 GHz or gigher

2. I want a good enough video card to play any game I want.

3. a mother board that supports crossfire or at least 2 video cards.

4. I want obviously a CD drive but would like it to read blue rays doesn't have to burn them

5. another obvious I want to be able to connect an ethernet cord.

6. I want it to run kool do not want to worry about over heating at all.

I do not want to overclock anything. If something comes overclocked factory that is fine but I will not be doing it.
Also If I am going to upgrade later. The last thing I would ever upgrade would be the mother board right? So shouldn't I get one that can withstand a lot more than I will be putting on it this time?

Click to expand...

The link I gave you fits exactly what you are looking for except the Blu-ray drive. You can add that for around $50. All the parts listed really good components.

Click to expand...

Does the mother board hold more than 8 GB of ram will I even need more than that. Also the DDR3 1800 isn't that kind of slow for today's standards. I am probably just going overboard with everything. But I was just wondering. But I do like it a lot. I also want a name brand video card. Do you think they are more reliable.

crossfire is not worth it if you're going performance/bang for the buck. it's more for the people that have a huge budget. because you can get better price performance from a single powerful card than 2 less powerful cards. and if you pick a powerful card, by the time it drops in price, there'll be newer cards out there.

dirtyvu said:

crossfire is not worth it if you're going performance/bang for the buck. it's more for the people that have a huge budget. because you can get better price performance from a single powerful card than 2 less powerful cards. and if you pick a powerful card, by the time it drops in price, there'll be newer cards out there.

Click to expand...

So I am better off getting one decent card? I was going to had CrossFire

The Socket 1155 has most likely reached the end of it's upgrade-cycle:



So if you want something you can still upgrade later on, then you have to go for the Socket 2011 or wait for Socket 1150. A machine based on Socket 2011 is not cheap.

You want to have a GPU which will play everything you throw at it ? Then I would not settle for something less then a Gigabyte GTX670-OC / HD7970-OC.

Here are the GPU-Charts:

GPU-Charts

Here are the CPU-Charts (Multi-Core 4 / up to 8 Threads):

CPU-Charts Multi-Core 4 / 8 Threads

Here are the CPU-Charts (Multi-Core 8 / up to 12 Threads):

CPU-Charts Multi-Core 8 / 12 Threads

Intel-CPU's are better then AMD-CPU's in real-world conditions.

If you want to go for SLI / CrossFire later on, even that a Single-GPU-Setup is always the better / less-issues-causing solution, as you have to rely on certain Driver- / Game-support etc. and a Multi-GPU-Setup is mainly needed for high screen-resolutions / Multi-Screen-Setup's / 120Hz-Screens + fps >= 120, then you should go straight for a bigger PSU.

Another thing you should think about is, if 2x PCIe v3.0 x8 is enough for you (it is for 2-Way-SLI / CrossFire) or if you would maybe need 2/3/4x PCIe v3.0 x16 (usually only needed for really extreme Setup's or more then 2 GPU's).

This site here: This PSU is only an example to show which Info's you can get from this site

... can give you some more info's about the quality of a PSU, if it got tested by them.

If you have a look into my System-Spec's, then you have an example what you would roughly need to play Battlefield-3 with Ultra-Settings and Crysis-3 with mainly High-Settings and a screen resolution of 1920x1080. I will not need to upgrade this year, but maybe next year if I still would like to play future games on minimum High-Settings. Ignore all the fancy stuff of my system, like Case / Liquid-Cooling.

chiumiento said:

dirtyvu said:

crossfire is not worth it if you're going performance/bang for the buck. it's more for the people that have a huge budget. because you can get better price performance from a single powerful card than 2 less powerful cards. and if you pick a powerful card, by the time it drops in price, there'll be newer cards out there.

Click to expand...

So I am better off getting one decent card? I was going to had CrossFire

Click to expand...

yeah, I recommend not getting crossfire. because the allure is this: You get a great card now. and when the price of the card drops in the future, you get it again and bam, you have almost double the performance.

but the problem is newer cards keep coming out.

the only people that get something out of crossfire are those that have some money to spare and want the best performance possible. or if you have a serious multimonitor scenario (and I'm not talking 2 monitors).

chiumiento said:

Does the mother board hold more than 8 GB of ram will I even need more than that. Also the DDR3 1800 isn't that kind of slow for today's standards. I am probably just going overboard with everything. But I was just wondering. But I do like it a lot. I also want a name brand video card. Do you think they are more reliable.

Click to expand...

The board can accomadate 32GB of RAM at DDR3 2800+(OC). Higher clock speed RAM would be outside of the budget you specified.

PowerColor is a well respected brand name as far as video cards go.

chiumiento said:

!. I want at least a 4 core processor and I want it 3 GHz or gigher

Click to expand...

Some games take advantage of quad core CPU's, while others do not. And the frequency (speed) is not as important as the architecture itself. But most of the core i5's and Core i7's are going to run at 3.0Ghz or above anyway.

chiumiento said:

6. I want it to run kool do not want to worry about over heating at all.

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As long as you arent overclocking and don't live in an extreme environment, you should not have trouble with the stock cooling. It's what I use and i actually overclock it a bit.

chiumiento said:

Does the mother board hold more than 8 GB of ram will I even need more than that. Also the DDR3 1800 isn't that kind of slow for today's standards. I am probably just going overboard with everything. But I was just wondering. But I do like it a lot. I also want a name brand video card. Do you think they are more reliable.

Click to expand...

As far as RAM goes, please be aware that Ivy Bridge Intel cpu's only run at DDR3-1600 by default. Unless you overclock within your BIOS, you aren't going to go over 1600 anyway.

I'm a bit late to this thread, but for what it's worth here are my thoughts.

The rig suggested by oldpro21 is almost perfect, I would make a few changes myself though.

1st - If you are planning on running multiple GPUs then avoid Crossfire go for SLI, I'm running Crossfire with my 6990 and it is far more prone to suffering from stuttering where one card causes a temporary bottleneck by taking longer to render a frame making the second card wait until the frame is rendered. In most games this is not noticeable, but in others it almost makes the games unplayable. Far Cry 3 really doesn't do as well with AMD/ATI Crossfire as it does with the equivalent nVidia cards in SLI as you see in the tests here. I would suggest the slightly more expensive EVGA GTX670 FTW Edition, this overclocked GTX670 performs as well as a standard GTX680.

2nd - Getting an SSD will pay off in amazing startup times but will need an additional drive for storage, I use two drives, one for storage and I have installed Steam, Origin and Uplay on a second hard drive. This means I can keep my SSD use to a minimum and only install the most essential bit of software on to it.

3rd - If you are planning on adding another GPU later get a better PSU now so that you don't have to rebuild later, get a good brand and around 700 to 750 watts to give you some head room.

KeyboardDemon said:

I'm a bit late to this thread, but for what it's worth here are my thoughts.

The rig suggested by oldpro21 is almost perfect, I would make a few changes myself though.

1st - If you are planning on running multiple GPUs then avoid Crossfire go for SLI, I'm running Crossfire with my 6990 and it is far more prone to suffering from stuttering where one card causes a temporary bottleneck by taking longer to render a frame making the second card wait until the frame is rendered. In most games this is not noticeable, but in others it almost makes the games unplayable. Far Cry 3 really doesn't do as well with AMD/ATI Crossfire as it does with the equivalent nVidia cards in SLI as you see in the tests here. I would suggest the slightly more expensive EVGA GTX670 FTW Edition, this overclocked GTX670 performs as well as a standard GTX680.

2nd - Getting an SSD will pay off in amazing startup times but will need an additional drive for storage, I use two drives, one for storage and I have installed Steam, Origin and Uplay on a second hard drive. This means I can keep my SSD use to a minimum and only install the most essential bit of software on to it.

3rd - If you are planning on adding another GPU later get a better PSU now so that you don't have to rebuild later, get a good brand and around 700 to 750 watts to give you some head room.

Click to expand...

I will probably go with the setup oldpro showed me. I will not be doing this for probably at least 3 or 4 more months anyway. I have decided that my main concern for now will be a mother board. I will always be able to upgrade everything from there.

The type of games I want to play are The elder scrolls online & Skyrim. I will probably be playing a lot of MMORPG type games. I also like games like Simcity, Sports games another one of my favorites. as long as I can play games like these with no problem I will be very happy.

Also this may be a dumb question. But processors do still need heat sinks on top of them right? Like I said before this is one of my biggest fears of building a PC. I know that heatsink compound needs to be put on almost perfectly for it to work right. You can not put to little it will not transfer the heat to the heatsink right. But to much will not let any heat through at all. Maybe I could ask a PC specialist to just do this one part for me? I could ask him/her to show me how maybe let me watch them do it.

If you buy a retail cpu, the fan will come with it and will have paste already applied. Just set it on the cpu, and press the locking pins down. It's simple.