I’ve got too many steam games for my laptop so I am thinking of building a tower to attach to my TV to use as a movie/music server as well as hold all my online games.
My current video card has a rank of 293 and my processor is ranked 1006 on passmark. Surprisingly this puts my video card at the bottom end of a ‘high end’ videocard, my CPU is the bottom end of mid range. Is Passmark up to date?
So if something comparable or better were designed or built, how much would it cost for just the tower (no monitor, keyboard and mouse I already have)?
I also need a 2-4TB hard drive. Not sure. I can probably get the OS cheaply. So the big expenses, I assume, would be motherboard, RAM, hard drive(s), CPU, video card. 2TB would probably be fine, but it would be pushing it.
Is $300-400 possible?
I haven’t built a tower in years, what slots are video cards using nowadays? According to passmark there are many high end video cards for $70-90.
Maybe I can buy a used one on craigslist, then install a new hard drive.
here’s a link to techreport’s most recent budget gaming build, which is priced at $650 (although you could probably get rid of the SSD)
Careful with some of the pricing listed in passmark, some of it appears to be quite out of date. And calling some of those videocards “high end” is somewhat laughable. Here’s a better resource for picking videocards, from toms hardware:
Keep in mind that it’s really not a good idea to skimp out on the GPU for a gaming computer.
Agreed with Palooka, if your total budget is <$400 you should probably consider a PS4/Xbone.
That’s not to say you can’t get an entry-level GPU for under a hundred bucks, but any definition of “high end” is going to be a card that’s not compromising anything in the name of performance: not just in terms of price, but power draw and heat output as well.
Agreed that $400 isn’t “new computer” money. It would get you a mid-range GPU and MB+Processor though. Unfortunately, that leaves you without a drive, memory, PSU, case or operating system (not to mention mouse+KB, monitor, etc).
$400 is more “upgrade” money than “start fresh” money.
I recently built an all new one rig (only reusing wires and hard drives) and I can send you a GeForce 9800 Gt and 8 gig DDR3-2133 Ripjaw RAM, sans wires, software, costs.
Agree that $400 is more upgrade money than start fresh money, IF you are looking for a mid range PC. Sweet spot for that is the $700-$900 range.
An entry system with some upgreadability on the other hand is doable, but $450 is closer to your target.
I’m not sure that forking $400 for a console system where you won’t get to play your Steam library, plus their monthly fee to play online plus overall higher prices for games is the way to go either though.
If you don’t want to build yourself, I’d recommend an Alienware Alpha. You want the i3 model with 8 gigs of RAM. This gives you similar performance to an Xbox One and it’s about $450-$480. IT’s tiny, smaller than a console, so it should fit under your TV nicely.
If you want to build it yourself, I’d recommend spending at least $500 for a nice entry level system that you can easily upgrade, and either use a small form factor case, or get a Steam link for $40 to stream games to your TV from your PC.
But there are many builds out there. Look online for entry level gaming pc, and sort by date, you don’t want the build to be too old.
Here’s one a I found that looks nice:
You’re basically looking for an i3 with hyperthreading for CPU, and a GTX 750ti or GTX 950 for your GPU, coupled with 8 gigs of RAM - for an entry level system.
Mid range you’re looking at an i5K series CPU and a GTX 960 GPU with 16 gigs of RAM.
For a high end system you’re paying a lot for a smaller bump in performance, but I’d say i5K + GTX970 will get you there.
Rather than focusing on the details of a possible solution, can you flesh out the requirements instead? Namely, what are the most recent games you own that you would like to play? What upcoming games would you like to play? At what level of graphics detail would you like to play them at (“low/medium/high detail”, resolution, desired frame-per-second, whatever…). Answering that will tell you the minimum CPU/RAM/GPU you need. After that, you can decide if you want to spend additional cash on top of that for even better hardware above and beyond your current needs.
You’ll also need a strong power supply (600 watt minimum) which might have the wrong connectors to hook to the new card. The industry seems to be moving to 8-pin PCIE power connectors and there likely are a bunch of power supplies with 6-pin connectors out there. Some cards don’t include the needed adapters.
No, sadly I don’t have a tower I can cannibalize. I have a 10 year old tower, but the power supply is 350W and I don’t want to use 10 year old parts.
In my OP I listed the passmark scores for the CPU and graphics card in my laptop. I feel fairly content with gaming on this system. When I said some good video cards are $70-90, what I meant was that cards which Passmark considered far superior to my dedicated graphics card (which I am happy with) are $70-90. Passmark scored my graphics card 925 points. Passmark says a video card that scores 3000-4000 points can be had for $70-90. Since I’m content with my current card, then a superior card for $70-90 is possible. I’m not talking about an elite top of the line card, those are closer to a grand.
Passmark scored my CPU 2013 points. They also claim I can get a CPU that scores 3500 or so for $35 nowadays. I have no idea how valid the passmark ratings are, I’m a novice at this stuff. My point is that a video card and CPU which are superior to my current setup could be $100 total.
I don’t want an Xbox one or PS4. I already have a 360 and PS3, I don’t want any more gaming consoles. What I want is a computer tower which I can use to store my many movies on as well as my 500+ GB of Steam games so I can watch movies and play Steam games on my TV.
This is my current laptop setup:
6GB DDR3 RAM
640GB HD
AMD A8-3500M CPU
AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics
I’m fairly content with this setup. I play games that are 5+ years old.
My thought was
$200 for RAM, motherboard, CPU, video card
$50 for tower and power supply?
$100 for hard drive
You don’t want a $25-$30 power supply. Also, you don’t have anything allocated for an OS, unless you’re planning on running a free Linux version of some flavor.
You might find some sort of computer around Black Friday. Something like this might be a place to start within your budget, with an eye on upgrading the video card once you can save the money. I’m not advocating it as a great system, but it’s a $400 system with a large enough case to get in and upgrade stuff (versus some office style boxes in tiny cases not intended to hold a real video card).
PSU on it is only 350W so keep that in mind when picking out your cheapo video card.
Really, its main benefits are that the “gaming” case should have room for upgrades and it comes with a copy of Windows, saving you $80ish bucks from your budget.
On craigslist I can find several people selling gaming towers for $400-500. My only complaint is that many have a 1TB HD or a SSD. I want a 2TB HD. Some have that, others do not.
I’m also kind of wary about buying a used computer, I’ve heard several stories of people buying used PCs that had illegal material on them, then they had to deal with law enforcement going after them. I don’t know how common this is though, probably not very.
I frequent places like Tom’s Hardware, r/buildapc, Newegg, etc when looking for computer parts/builds, and never seen anyone refer to Passmark ratings. So no idea how useful they are. Integrated graphic cards are not going to get you very far, almost any individual GPU should beat it. $200-300 is considered the “sweet spot” for graphics cards, where you get the best mix of power and price efficiency.
Tom’s used to do a “System Builder Marathon” where they’d have three different guys build different systems, one a cheap one, one a mid-range, and one a super-expensive, and compare them. Unfortunately the last two times they’ve instead had everyone stick to the same price range and choose different goals, but the last time they did a different-price-range one was here for the budget machine, though it’s a bit out of date.
Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are coming in a few weeks. If you’re patient, I would wait to see if you can’t pick up an entry level gaming machine in the $500-600, and then over the next year, you can upgrade the video card, expand the ram and so on. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding a decent machine with an i5 or i7, 4-8gb ram, and an entry level gpu for that price.
Spending $400 on a used Craigslist machine now is not a great deal, imo. You’d be better buying a new budget machine and expanding from there.
I mean, this machine is on the market for $599 right now. If they have any sort of holiday sale coming, it’d be a good deal. It’s not bad as is - i5 (6th gen), 8gb ram, 1tb hard drive, nvidia 730gt.
It’s not going to win any awards, but it’d play any game that’s on the market right now, and it could be easily expanded with a better gpu and an SSD.