Is there such thing as a low-cost 'gaming' PC yet?

[Lagmonster]

My wife wants to transition from her i3 HP-brand laptop to something* that can handle HD gaming without screaming (Sims3, Skyrim, SWTOR, etc.). Problem is, we're having a second baby in six days and my Christmas budget is getting small.

So what I want to know is, is there such thing as a desktop that will be "okay" for gaming without breaking the bank? I'm not talking top-flight tech with maxed out graphics, but god help me if she has to sit at a loading screen for more than 30 seconds, or see the on-screen action stutter and skip, or have to turn settings *down* to "Playstation 2 quality".



* What she *really* wants is a tablet-convertible All-In-One that will magically also play games (like the ASUS Transformer AIO or MSI gaming AIO or something, I guess) but I told her no such thing exists in our price range, or perhaps yet at all.

[Zaune]

What's your total budget? I paid a bit under £300 for a pretty good refurbished machine that's handled most of what I've thrown at it so far but could use another £150's worth of graphics card.

[Mr Bean]

Such things exist minus the "low cost" part of it. I can get you a device that fits the size criteria but not the price. Or fits the price but not the size. Smaller is expensive and that much smaller is very expensive.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

My old piece of shit runs Sims 3, Skyrim, and SWTOR all at max or near-max settings perfectly fine, and it was $1000 when I got it years ago (plus about $300-400 worth of upgrades over the years). A modern system of comparable performance can't possibly run more than $500 (and is probably much less), excluding things like monitors and sound systems. Just my current garbage mid-range GTX550 is what's running said games passably (and most brand-new games at medium-ish settings), and it was around $150 when I got it. Not exactly a future-proof investment to go the bargain route, but if you're on a budget it's not hard to get a game-capable system together. Just don't expect it to keep up with the latest releases for very long.

[Lagmonster]

I keep getting quotes at around $1000. I'd like to pay half that. Frankly, the form factor doesn't concern me - I just haven't bought a machine wholesale in five years and have no idea where the price points are for performance. The fact that she wants a portable all-in-one doesn't mean she won't settle for a desktop box so long as it plays her favourite games without aggravation or too much performance compromise (I've been told that an SSD is necessary to such a rig, and will be costly).

[Joviwan]

The MS Surface 2 Pro is out of your pricerange but exactly what you're looking for.


if portability isn't a concern, and if you have critical periphrials lying around like "a monitor" and "keyboard", you can probably part together a PC for $500 or less that plays games exactly the way you need it to.

I don't think SSD's are in your price range, but a WD Black edition something or other should load games plenty fast and shouldn't be too ridiculous in price.

[Lagmonster]

I have spare monitors, keyboards, mice, etc. in a huge cabinet in the basement. Not an issue.

My main loss is trying to pinpoint the "sweet spot" for performance at a low cost, because it changes every other year and there's so much new things on the market now (tablets, all-in-ones, netbooks, etc.) that I'm afraid I'm going to get over-sold when I go into the local computer store and drop my wish-list. I'm used to a consumer world where "PC gaming" = "full-sized desktop tower", and "Gaming Rig" = "$2000".

[Joviwan]

I don't really think you're going to find what you need in a computer store. Something off the shelf that gets what you need done is probably going to suffer a lot of markup or have suboptimal hardware. Others may know more than me about that, though. Are you not comfortable building a PC yourself?

[Lagmonster]

I can install components; video cards, new hard drives, new disk drives, etc.. No tech training, but I've never had anything go wrong. I try to be meticulous and read manuals carefully. It's not out of the question to build it, but my problem is I don't have the know-how to buy the correctly-matching parts to begin with.

[Terralthra]

Places like NewEgg sell combo deals where you can evaluate the parts individually, but they all match. Correctly matching parts is basically a binary these days anyway. Most modern (ie, still sold as new in stores) Intel processors work in almost all Intel motherboards, and most modern AMD processors work in almost all AMD motherboards. They both take DDR3 RAM, with the only real concern being the speed of the RAM (which is easy to google). All HDDs and SSDs use SATA by now, so are interchangeable (though some are faster, if you get SATA3 on both motherboard and drive, even a SATA1 and a SATA 3 are interoperable; they simply work at the lower speed). All graphics cards are PCIe. And so on...

[Forgothrax]

A lot of the difficulty with building a sub-500 gaming PC is that Windows takes up $100 of your budget. Here is a fairly decent build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1VdoF

With addition of this card: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... QgodnQcAJg

This case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811147060 (with code "EMCWXVL57")

And this PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139050 (with code "EMCWXVL53")

Total comes out to $676. If you already have a disc drive and a case, you can cut that down to $620. You might be able to trim some off if you'll accept a smaller hard drive (about $10 for a 500gb instead of that 1tb). Maybe 50-60 or so if you accept a less capable motherboard and processor, but that significantly cuts down on future-proofing. I can't really see getting much lower than that unless you get some specials or accept significant compromises in capability, or know someone who can get you a cheap copy of Windows (students at specific universities can get a free copy, and all students IIRC can get a copy for $70). The build I've put together will run all the games you've mentioned and probably most current-generation games on high settings, some medium. In a year or so, you can upgrade the video card to a current-generation card and maybe add a small SSD for games and applications (possibly migrate over your OS) and you'd have a pretty sweet machine.

Buying off the shelf, though, is pretty much out of the question. At the $500 range, anything you get is going to be pure shit.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Don't be shy about asking if you have any doubts about compatibility.

You'll probably want to stick to the Intel for the CPU though, from what I've read the i# series outperform the current AMD chips at all price ranges in gaming, and most applications to boot. Heck, from what I've read my 4-5 year old Phenom II X4 955BE at stock speeds outperforms most of the newer AMD chips when it comes to gaming, with the possible exception of the highest tier chips. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong/outdated.

How much storage does your wife need? It may be possible to get a small SSD and still be in your price range, though it may be more practical to stick with a decent mechanical drive now, and upgrade to a SSD for the OS and frequently used programs (keeping the mechanical for storage and less frequently used applications) at a later date.

Not quite sure how it works since you're in Canada, but it's going to be Black Friday/Cyber Monday down here in about a month. Newegg.com generally has some pretty good sales on then, as do other retailers.

[Dominus Atheos]

If you're worried about buying parts that match, just buy a bundle.

Tigerdirect sells a bundlethat has:

Asus FM2 F2A85-M Pro MoBo

AMD Quad-Core A10-5800K 3.8GHz Radeon HD 7660D APU

Kingston HyperX Red 4GB Memory Module

Ultra LS600 Lifetime Series 600W PSU

Toshiba 1TB HDD

ENYLE E-Series Case

For $410 before a $50 MIR. Drop in an AMD 7850 for $140 before a $30 MIR and you have a great mid-range gaming pc.

[TheFeniX]

Surprisingly, Best Buy offers a range of ASUS PCs that aren't stupidly over-priced, such as this one. I'm not a huge fan of the current series of AMD CPUs, but that's a decent amount of computer for under $600.

You're going to have to dig around if you decide to go retail. I've found so many great deals just going out to different places. Dell sometimes puts out i5s or i7s with 4+GBs of RAM for under $500. The integrated cards are garbage, but will still run games fine as long as you don't want super-masturbatory graphics. And with the right form factor, you can wait a year or two and pop in an ATI or NVidia.

All that said, Low-cost gaming PCs are everywhere. People are just expecting them to deal with everything being set to "Ultra" and maintaining 60FPS. That will not happen in the desired price-range just as it does not happen on consoles.

[fordlltwm]

I built myself a fairly allright gaming pc for £407, having just looked it up, it runs Skyrim at 60+ fps, don't know about the other games listed, as skyrim and fallout are what I'm mostly playing at the moment.
Here are the specs, this was built into my old case, and reused my existing PSU.

It could've done with a CD drive, but that's not too important when you can get most everything on steam these days

This order contains the following items;
Item: Asus M5A99X EVO 990X Socket AM3+ 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Qty: 1 Cost: £80.78

Item: AMD FX-4 4170 Black Edition 4 Core 4.2GHz Socket AM3+ 8MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Qty: 1 Cost: £88.69

Item: Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz Vengeance Memory Kit CL9 1.5V
Qty: 1 Cost: £33.33

Item: Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM
Qty: 1 Cost: £54.99

Item: PowerColor HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card
Qty: 1 Cost: £81.65

-----------------------------------------------------------
Shipping method: FREE at £0.00

Sub Total: 339.44
VAT Total: 67.91
Total: £407.35

[Hawkwings]

Do you want something that will be fine for just now, or do you want some expandability and future-proofing? Hardware these days doesn't go obsolete in 6 months, so it is actually possible to keep a gaming system running well and playing the newest games for quite a while.

[Lagmonster]

How much storage does your wife need? It may be possible to get a small SSD and still be in your price range, though it may be more practical to stick with a decent mechanical drive now, and upgrade to a SSD for the OS and frequently used programs (keeping the mechanical for storage and less frequently used applications) at a later date.

Not a hell of a lot of space, actually. She doesn't take a lot of photos, generally operates only two to three games at a time, and streams entertainment rather than store it. I can afford to lean my dollars into speed over size.

Not quite sure how it works since you're in Canada, but it's going to be Black Friday/Cyber Monday down here in about a month. Newegg.com generally has some pretty good sales on then, as do other retailers.

Anything American generally has a Canadian equivalent; if it doesn't, there are dozens of enterprises designed to facilitate cross-border shopping (not the least of which is living an hour from the border itself), so nothing American is strictly off-limits.

Do you want something that will be fine for just now, or do you want some expandability and future-proofing? Hardware these days doesn't go obsolete in 6 months, so it is actually possible to keep a gaming system running well and playing the newest games for quite a while.

Future-proofing and expandability is not strictly my primary concern. Gives me more flexibility about form and, I expect, lowers cost.

To the rest of you I didn't address; I'm bookmarking and reviewing online stores that have been suggested one at a time, comparing shipping rates, overall costs, third-party business reviews, etc.

[TheFeniX]

If future proofing isn't a huge deal, an i3 with 4+GBs of RAM could get you by with little issue. We found a box set at Walmart a few years back with an older Radeon and 18" monitor for like $400, $350 with the mail-in rebate that took for.fucking.ever. to come in. It wouldn't have been worth that, but it came with Office 2010. The wife could play Saint's Row 3 on medium to high without it wanting to blow up. The only problem is, Walmart sells a lot of smaller form factor PCs, which means you have to buy low-profile video cards which usually aren't that powerful, and the cost vs performance is high. But since you aren't future proofing, this shouldn't be an issue.

In Texas, retailers have to honor whatever price is listed on the box (I don't know about other places), which is why I've found it beneficial to scour them when looking for computers. Mismarked electronics have saved me a lot of money over the years.

SSDs are nice, but for general gaming, they aren't a big deal. I've noticed considerable load time improvements on games like Skyrim when you've installed gigs of high-res textures and model replacers. But I didn't even bother loading Saint's Row 4 or anything else onto it, just leaving them on my HDD.

[Joviwan]

For budget builds, where please-don't-hurt-my-wallet is an issue, I actually recommend basically any AMD CPU over an i-series. They're significantly cheaper and games don't really give a crap about whether or not you have the latest intel or a dumpster bin AMD, as long as you've got a couple+ cores at decent hertz, and you can save $50 or $100 on CPU/Mobo alone compared to Intel stuff.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819113291
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819113287

These are $10-20 cheaper than the lowest i3 on Newegg, and both will play any PC game you throw at it, and probably will for years to come.

[Hawkwings]

Check out this sweet rig.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G43 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill REDBONE U3 ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NS95 DVD/CD Writer ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $492.92
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-11-01 01:00 EDT-0400)

$576 before rebates. As a bonus, everything is from Newegg and they have quick and free shipping.

If you can spare a bit more, upgrade to a Radeon 7870 which would be about $90 more.

This is some serious bang for your buck, and if you're not afraid of putting your own computer together (and you really shouldn't be, if you are even marginally handy) then it is way better than any prebuilt cheapo system in the stores. Those skimp on little things like power supply and motherboard. This gives you enough power to play current gen games at decent settings, and has room for expansion if you choose to upgrade. The only real upgrade this thing would need in the future would be a better graphics card. When games get a bit much for this computer, spend between $120-$200 on a new graphics card.

[Comosicus]

You can try and use some info from this article. It has even some pre-made configurations starting from as low as $400 to about $600. If you can go higher, here's a $750 system with Windows and SSD drive. Both articles are pretty up-to-date in terms of prices and components. Best case scenario: you can keep the configuration in mind and shop during Black Friday when prices drop.

[Napoleon the Clown]

I built my fiancee's computer using an APU, one on the lower end of things, and it can run Skyrim at lower settings just fine. If you got with a relatively weak computer you can massively boost Skyrim's performance (don't know about others) with a few changes in Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini. By default it doesn't recognize multiple cores. Don't ask me why. Messing with these settings made framerate go up with better responsiveness to boot.

Skyrim doesn't really ask for a lot, and it will probably be the most hardware intensive game you mentioned. An APU will spare you about $100-$120 over getting a CPU and dedicated graphics card. Just don't expect to run modern-ish games at max settings. You'll be able to stand to look at it without wanting to gouge your eyes out and the frame rate will be very playable. Where price matters, avoid Intel. The performance difference won't be noticeable for what you plan to do.