Extreme Budget Gaming Rig (Under $400 - With links and prices)

[Doyle21]

Hey guys,

I just bought all these parts and am almost done with the build. I thought i'd share my options. The ram and cpu or the real downfall, although a dual-core 3.0 Ghz isn't bad, a 1Mb L2 Chache is. And I would prefer 4Gb RAM, but this thing was reaaalyyy cheap! Enjoy!!

Motherboard: ASRock N68-S UCC AM3/AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a Micro ATX
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157202
Price: $44.99 - $2.99 Shipping

Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 250 Regor 3.0GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 65W
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103681
Price: $62.99 - FREE Shipping

Graphics: Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125236
Price: $99.99 - $6.98 Shipping

RAM: Kingston HyperX Blu 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104195
Price: $45.99 - FREE Shipping

Case/PSU: Rosewill R101-P-BK-450W MicroATX Mid with 1x 120mm Fan, 450W Power Supply
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147091
Price: $44.99 - $9.99 Shipping

Hard Drive: HITACHI 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145338
Price: $33.99 - $7.28 Shipping

Optical Drive: LG Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136180
Price: $17.99 - FREE Shipping

Toatal Price: $378.17

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(Optional) Windows OS Choices:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116752
Price: $99.99 - FREE Shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116752

Windows XP Home Edition SP3 32-bit
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116583&cm_re=XP-_-32-116-583-_-Product
Price: $99.99 - FREE Shipping

 

[berry120]

Only word of caution I'd give is be careful with the cheap PSUs that tend to come with cases - they do tend to go wrong more than the more expensive ones, and they do tend to do more damage when they do go wrong (taking every component down with them isn't unheard of!)

That said, I've been using one for years in a budget rig without any issues whatsoever so it's not a dead set route to a dead PC - just be aware it's a possibility!

 

[Chimaera1]

Only word of caution I'd give is be careful with the cheap PSUs that tend to come with cases - they do tend to go wrong more than the more expensive ones, and they do tend to do more damage when they do go wrong (taking every component down with them isn't unheard of!)

That said, I've been using one for years in a budget rig without any issues whatsoever so it's not a dead set route to a dead PC - just be aware it's a possibility!

A very real possibility, I had one running in a spare PC for friends to use at my place if we wanted to play a LAN game, and it ran fine... Until it didn't one day, and took everything else with it.

I'd be inclined to spend that little more to get a reliable unit. Corsair has a nice 400watt PSU that wouldn't put the price up too much - which is probably the way to go if somebody is considering copying this build but already has HDDs or something.

 

[Rakuma]

Horror Story with Cheep PSU.....

Had a case/psu combo were the psu went bad and it fried my Mobo and GPU. I cracked the psu open after the fact and found out that a poorly wound coil crossed some circuit or component. it was ugly.

 

[Doyle21]

Thanks for the info guys. I was following a guide from another site, and they used a standard psu. I had no idea they could do that. Man, I need to brush up on my computer skills. I am actually building this for someone, so I'll be asking them if they want to spring for it, but this really helps me for choosing parts for future builds.

Thanks again!!

 

[berry120]

I had no idea they could do that.

Strictly speaking, any power supply might. The better ones though generally have fuses in place to prevent excess current / voltage finding its way along the rails, so if something did go wrong your rig would just power down rather than self destructing.

It's not always a hard and fast rule, my budget rig cost much less than £200 and doesn't hold any critical data, so I decided another £50 or so was a comparatively high price for insurance when it'll probably be ok (it's well, well under the maximum rating of the supply which again decreases the chances.) Worst comes to the worst it's not the end of the world at all.

I did hear of someone once who took a similar philosophy to a huge server rig he was building with 2 quad core xeons, a handful of tv cards for media server work and 6 hard drives in RAID 5. That's where it's really not sensible - after a word of advice he actually got 2 high end power supplies for redundancy and used them in tandem, but that's a story for another day