October Build – The Mainstreamer! (Under $1000)

Welcome to October’s Build!

The Mainstreamer is a confident $1000 rig. At this price point we will give you a setup that will run all modern games at 1080p, 60fps with most if not all settings maxed out. I happen to be running a 970 in my personal gaming rig and it is a phenomenal card with great performance and low power consumption. So let’s lay it out:

Processor ($235.00):

Intel i5 4690K 3.5GHz

Memory (RAM) ($44.99):

Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB (2X4 GB)

Graphics Card ($329.99):

ASUS STRIX GeForce GTX 970 Overclocked 4 GB

PSU ($53.00):

Thermaltake 550W 80 PLUS Bronze ATX

Motherboard(Bargain at $90.99):

MSI ATX DDR3 2400 LGA 1150 Z97

Case ($67.99):

NZXT H230 Silent Chassis, White

Storage SSD Boot Drive ($89.00):

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD

Secondary Storage Drive ($46.99):

Seagate 1TB SATA 6Gb/s HDD

Optional Extras not included: DVD Drive, Monitor

TOTAL PRICE: $957.95 (Prices are subject to change)

The Details:

There is a little room in the budget for a different motherboard in case the price of this one spikes. A good Z97 by ASUS, MSI or Gigabyte will serve you well, should you need to find an alternative.

Let me explain why I am going with last year’s i5 iteration instead of Skylake.

Skylake is a great and powerful processor and it has a lot of benefits for a system. If you are using your PC for a lot of things and not just for gaming and general use then you might want to think about getting this. But for now the price and limitations aren’t worth it for a gaming build. For one thing you have to upgrade your motherboard to the H170 or Z170 which generally cost 50% more at the very least. On top of that Skylake enabled motherboards require DDR4 ram, which is a ton more expensive than the perfectly gaming viable DDR3. Pass for this build, but maybe the next build for the high budget will have it.

There was a commotion earlier in the year about the 970 GTX and the fact that its advertised 4GB of memory was actually 3.5GB with an extra 0.5GB in check that was too slow for gaming. I reckon this was probably a mixup between the tech guys and the ad guys, but the damage was already done to the otherwise sterling reputation of this card. I bought mine even after finding out that it was running at 3.5GB and I don’t regret it. Fantastic card, plays everything at 60fps, butter smooth, and gives you access to the useful NVidia experience and ShadowPlay tools.

While the SSD doesn’t bring much for gaming other than faster load times, I consider it essential to any modern build that isn’t budget. My computer has been so much faster with one of these as a boot drive and I will never go back to HDDs as a primary drive for any pc I build in the future. The prices are falling constantly so some pretty great deals are available, and the Evo 850 is among the best of them.

So there you have it, if you have any questions please feel free to shoot them out in the comments.

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September Builds – The Gateway! (Under $600

Welcome to September’s first build!

This is the build for those of you who want to play games on a budget. Ideally we will be wanting 1080p at as high a frame rate as we can, but we’ll need to cut some corners to get close. As always with a gaming rig, we want to pump as much money into the graphics card as we can. It is the most important component for getting the best frame-rate we can achieve. This rig is perfect for playing League of Legends, DotA 2 and a lot of fairly graphically intensive games that are surprisingly manageable at such a low budget.

With that lets get on with the build:

Processor ($79.98):

AMD Athlon X4 860K Black Edition CPU Quad Core FM2+ 3700Mhz 95W 4MB AD860KXBJABOX

Memory (RAM) ($49.99):

Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB (2X4 GB) PC3-12800 1600mHz DDR3 240-Pin SDRAM Dual Channel Memory Kit CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B

Graphics Card ($169.99):

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 Overclocked 2GB 128 Bit GDDR5 PCiE Video Graphics Cards GV-N950WF2OC-2GD

PSU ($53.00):

Thermaltake Smart Standard 550W 80 PLUS Bronze ATX12V 2.3 Power Supply SP-550P

Motherboard($74.99):

Gigabyte AMD FM2+/FM2 A88X Dual-Link DVI D-Sub Triple Monitor ATX Motherboard GA-F2A88X-D3H

Case ($48.00):

NZXT Source 210 ELITE Midtower Case with 3.0 USB – Black

Storage ($46.99):

Seagate 1TB Desktop HDD SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive (ST1000DM003)

Optional Extras not included: SSD Boot Drive, DVD Drive, Monitor

TOTAL PRICE: $522.94 (Prices are subject to change)

Conclusion:
These parts should give you a solid system, with a little overclocking you can do well with this rig, and the graphics card will definitely be able to keep up 1080p at 60fps, though maybe you will have to compromise and turn down a few settings.

If you like this build, sound out in the comments below. Don’t be afraid to tell me I’m wrong and that there is a better gateway build out there. I’m always open to suggestions!