$500 (+/-) Gaming PC Build

[Flyn]

I saw this on youtube today and thought it was an interesting look at building an inexpensive gaming PC. Obviously, corners are cut at this price level but the host shows how you can add on for better performance later.

Good job to them for a simple, explanatory build that anyone could copy.

What do our experts think of the capabilities of this hardware? Personally, I know a graphics card is a much needed add on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFyhn6seoow

Click to read more...

 

[willizm]

I built a gaming pc with my nephew a couple years back. Actually I had him build it but I told him what to do. We did a very similar $500 budget gaming build so he could get the experience. He has since rebuilt it a few times with better components and knows more than I or his classmates did as a sophomore in high school.

My oldest son is now at that age and my plan is to have him do the same thing. It’s a valuable skill to understand basic desktop PCs and how alll the hardware, os, and drivers work together.

 

[Fish]

Its not a bad video. Nice way to watch what you need to do.

For a $500ish game machine, I would have went with Intel VS AMD, but thats a battle for another thread. Neither are going to be playing AAA games with killer FPS without a graphics card, but its not bad to build it.

In fact, after building my PC I started tinkering with other things and realized Id rather do stuff like that for fun, but dont have money to keep building PCs and I would suck at finding suckers to buy PCs to build for more than what I put into them.

 

[Flyn]

Yeah, I built a couple desktops in the past and it was a lot of fun. I was hoping the video would go into software install (maybe a future video?) because that was the most aggravating part of my builds. Took a lot of motherboard instruction reading on one of them to set it to work properly. After that, it was great (for the time/price). I imagine the software installs have gotten better now?

 

[Fish]

A 5 year old can install windows 10.

 

[Shadow99]

lol the shelves were entirely empty

 

[Fish]

This was also in February. I bought my 1070 in March and there were cards on the shelf at Microcenter. We went to Best Buy just before Mothers Day and there were more cards on the shelf.

 

[nytebyte]

I have a friend who just bought a new computer and he is just using the built-in graphics provided by the Intel CPU (it's a 7th gen i7 with on-chip graphics).

He wanted me to load some games for him, so I put on some older titles and was surprised at how well the built-in graphics actually worked. You could probably get away with that kind of setup for a while as long as you don't expect to crank the graphics settings to the max. Eventually you'll want a real graphics card though.

 

[Fish]

Im sure onboard graphics can play most games, but its not going to be pretty at all.

I wish I could throw money at builds and sell them and do it again.