Budget gaming PC - R7000 limit (excl screen)

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Hey guys :)

Okay so I haven't built a PC in ages, and a friend has asked for assistance. His budget is R7000. This is for the case only, i.e. he has a screen, keyboard and mouse. Currently I'm sitting at R8046 and I need advice on where to cut, and just general opinions about the build.

Here's the hardware (All prices from Comx-Computers):

Motherboard - R1130
ASUS B85-PLUS

Processor - R2485
INTEL Core i5-4460

Memory - R509 x 2 = R1018
2 x LENOVO 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz

Graphics - R1760 (Yes, I do prefer Nvidia, but they're so expensive...)
Sapphire R7-250X Vapor-x 2Gb

PSU - R530
Huntkey 550W

Harddrive - R682 (He'll buy a SSD later on, for now this will have to do)
Western Digital Caviar 500GB

Chassis - R441
GIGABYTE X7 Black


Any advice will be appreciated greatly! Thanks :)
 
If you don't mind a 2nd hand graphics card ,I can supply you with and evga gtx 660ti for R1800.

Comes with the box and all the goodies.
Has the evga badge/sticker and a poster for the wall also.

Otherwise the pc looks good :)
 
Gtx Gaming said:
If you don't mind a 2nd hand graphics card ,I can supply you with and evga gtx 660ti for R1800.

Comes with the box and all the goodies.
Has the evga badge/sticker and a poster for the wall also.

Otherwise the pc looks good :)
Click to expand...

Would much rather take the 660 over the 250X
 
Mobo can be downgraded to a gigabyte easy.

You should also be able to get a 1tb WD green drive for that price.
 
Hi there, just a question...what resolution is the monitor you're going to be playing on? And just my own opinion, there seems something unbalanced about spending more on the CPU than the GPU for a gaming box.
 
@ Gtx Gaming - Unfortunately I'll have to decline the offer, I don't believe in buying PC hardware second hand. I've had too many bad experiences. But thanks!

@Deadmanza - Cool, I'll have a look.

@F1 Fan - Cool, I thought the mobo is probably a bit overkill. And I'll check the harddrive. It's just I prefer a SATA3 drive, couldn't see a 1TB SATA3 for that price.

@Neoprod - That's pretty much the cheapest i5 I could find. I don't think a i3 will cope with gaming, will it? And I really don't want to get a older LGA775 or something. Any other suggestions for a CPU?
 
I'd go FX-6300 (about R1 800.00) and about a grand for a good 970 board personally.

The i3-3250 and up are fine for gaming for the next few years (my opinion) but I prefer the more future-proof AMD chips (the i3 dual cores have hyper-threading so they can run a game like Far Cry 4 which asks for 4 cores minimum). I wouldn't expect a game to come out asking for more than four cores (or 2 cores with hyper-threading) for a few years i.e. long after you've decided to upgrade this machine.

So your call...i3 or fx-6300 (in this usecase, the AMD platform might actually be more expensive). And of course spend the saving on the graphics card ;-)
 
I would suggest something like the i3 - 4160 (~R1500) http://www.takealot.com/intel-core-i3-4160-3-60ghz-socket-1150-processor/PLID32852952
and then use the saved money for a R7 260x, R9 270 or Nvidia equivalent.

The extra cores on the i5 will seldom get used in current games.
http://www.tomshardware.com/ have interesting articles discussing recommendations for gaming builds and how cpu's compare. From what I recall they recommend Pentium's (Gxxxx) on builds about this price so that better graphics cards can be bought.
 
I'd suggest spending a little more on the psu. At some point you'll want to upgrade and you won't have to worry about getting a new psu with that new gpu, additional ram etc.
If I could do my current build over, I'd get a decent, quiet psu.

Takealot had an awesome raidmax 730wat for about R700 bu I see its been removed.

Add R200 extra to the gpu budget and you can pick up this. I'd suggest looking at other online stores though, you might find it cheaper.
http://www.takealot.com/msi-amd-radeon-r7-260x-2gb-gddr5-oc-graphics-card/PLID32830117

Your board supports xfire, so you could run two of these in the future and a good psu will be vital.


Lastly, I know how it feels when you have some cash and you rush a build. I recommend saving some more. Save another R1000 and you could pick up an R9280x. My current gpu, basically lets you max out anything with good fps. Save around R1500 and you could get the nvidia equivalent, gtx760.

So yeah, another R2000 and you get parts that wont require any urgent future upgrades to keep up with games.
Also, you can get a micron 128gb ssd for around R700.
 
Thank you for all the advice, it really helps a lot, and is greatly appreciated!

Okay, so I'll take all the suggestions into account, and renew the current build. I'm meeting up with the friend this is for, and then I'll discuss this with him, and ask if he doesn't rather want to save some more. I agree that an extra R1500 or so can really make a big difference.

I'll let you guys know what the verdict is soon :)
 
So you are going from trying to save a R1000 to getting him to spend an extra R1500 above your R1000?

Anyway, for a budget build I would agree to drop to an i3 CPU and get a cheaper mobo. One between R500 to R700 will work fine. If he can spend more it can go to graphics or ssd/hdd. I doubt you would want to go crossfire on a budget pc anyway. Just make sure what he want to do with it and what he needs.
 
Was bored so came up with a 1080p medium quality game settings build for you using your R 7000.00 limit...I used Wootware's prices cos' I don't like that Comx site design.

Gigabyte H81 m-ATX mobo for R882.00
http://www.wootware.co.za/gigabyte-ga-h81m-s2ph-lga1150-haswell-micro-atx-motherboard.html

i3-4160 for R 1599.00
http://www.wootware.co.za/intel-bx8...socket-22nm-dual-core-3-6ghz-desktop-cpu.html

2x2Gb Corsair CMX DDR3-1600 CL9 for R823.00
http://www.wootware.co.za/corsair-x...x2gb-ddr3-1600-cl9-desktop-memory-retail.html

Antec Neo 520W PSU for R749.00
http://www.wootware.co.za/antec-520...2v-80-plus-bronze-certified-power-supply.html

Zalman ZM-T4 m-ATX case for R350.00
http://www.wootware.co.za/zalman-zm-t4-micro-atx-tower-pc-chassis.html

Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 64mb cache 1tb drive for R749.00
http://www.wootware.co.za/seagate-b...m-64mb-cache-3-5-internal-hard-drive-oem.html

Sapphire R7-260x for R1 841.00
http://www.wootware.co.za/sapphire-...gb-gddr5-pci-e-3-0-desktop-graphics-card.html

That's R6 993.00

What would I change? Given the price constraints, I wouldn't know what to do, tbh. I might want a better graphics card so you may want to cut down to a cheaper PSU? But I don't like Thermaltake and some of the other budget PSU re-branders...maybe look into Huntkey and let us know (heard conflicting stories about their PSU's).
 
Buy a second hand CPU, check carbonite, atm there's a 1 month old i4 4th gen for R1500
It's either that or an i3, which was a really good buy @ R1200 on black friday, but that deal is over now.

Your graphics card choice for the price range is kinda a really bad choice.
Here's a 3000 passmark card, twice as fast as that one for R1300
http://www.takealot.com/gigabyte-nv...gddr5-pci-e-3-0-graphics-card-1g/PLID26664593

Don't let the 2gig fool you, it's plain useless if you cannot run the resolutions and settings at decent fps that would actually use it in the first place.
 
Neoprod said:
That links to a GTX 650 which is 3 tiers below the R7 260X on Tom's graphics card hierarchy chart...did you mean to link to a GTX 750? That would be a closer match but the price goes up commensurately.
Click to expand...

The original post shows the R7 250X

But confused the performance of the GTX650ti. Doesn't look that good anymore.
 
Think it's better to just wait for the GTX960.
All the nice cards start at the R2000 mark, then every R100 gives big boost.
 
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