ultra-low budget gaming PC

[Eclipse]

After a little bit of research i've figured out that my current PC is in no way capable of playing PS2 at anything resembling decent settings. Unfortunately, my current budget to upgrade is practically non-existent, which leaves me in a bit of trouble.

However, i am working towards scrounging up some funds, and was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers on the cheapest way to achieve (theoretically, since beta's not even open yet) a machine capable of at the very least getting PS2 to function at minimum settings.

A little bit of digging has given me a few suggestions, namely the Radeon HD 5670 or Radeon HD 6670 (~$65) and the Pentium G630 (~$70) for a GPU and CPU respectively.

The component i have the biggest worry about is the motherboard, simply because i have absolutely no idea what all the technical jargon means and whether i'll need any of it for a very simple, cheap, bare-bones gaming rig.

The RAM, PSU, hard drive, case and screen are all important, of course, but again i have absolutely no idea what i can get away with if i'm building a PC almost -purely- for playing Planetside 2 at the lowest possible cost.

If anyone could give me advice on budget parts, overclocking and money-saving tips, as well as possibly explain some of the techno-mumbo-jumbo surrounding PC components i would be VERY grateful.

i apologize for being such a noob about this kind of thing, by the way.

[EDIT]

i stupidly forgot to put this in. Oh well, that's what the edit button is for i suppose.

1. Are you building this computer yourself or having one built for you (Like HP, Alienware, or even a small shop)?
Building it myself

2. What is your budget and does that include shipping/taxes?
As low as possible... probably $100-$300, and that's a long shot.

3. Where do you live (Please list town, state, and country)?
White Plains, Maryland, USA.

4. What do you need this computer to do (like gaming, Photoshop, and so on)?
Pretty much only play Planetside 2.

5. What parts will you need for the computer? List what parts specifically, saying you need everything will not do.
Most important part is the GPU, then Motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU and i guess a new case and screen would be nice, but probably unnecessary.

6. Are you reusing any parts for this computer? If so say what parts (make and model).
Don't know the exact make and model, but i have a keyboard, mouse, screen and Hard drive which should be able to be re-used without too much trouble.

7. What kind of monitor/resolution do you have or want to get to use for the computer?
i'd like something half decent, but honestly i don't think it really matters. i haven't seen anything on my PC past 1024x768 in so long i don't even know what the difference would be for me.

8. Do you have already have a OS or do you need one? What OS is that?
i have Windows XP (64-bit) but i'd love Win7 for future-proofing. Of course, by the time i have the money to upgrade again we'll be at Win9 or something ridiculous.

9. What are you looking for the motherboard to have feature wise? Like SLI, Crossfire, Firewire, USB 3.0, Sata 6.0 Gb/s, and so on.
i... have no idea what any of that means. i guess i should go find a motherboard glossary or something?

10. Any plans to overclock the CPU or GPU?
If it'll get me better performance without spending extra money, F***K yes.

11. What time kind of time frame are you planning on ordering these parts?
Preferably within the next couple days/weeks, but i can wait as long as i need to if i HAVE to. After all, Planetside 2 is going to be around at least as long as its predecessor, right?

[Mutant]

If you can wait look at AMDs Trinity

The A10-5800K should be about $120 (though not confirmed) And should just scrape you through on low settings

The CPU is on par with Intel Core i3 2100.
The GPU is about the same as a 6650.

If you could then scrape together a few $ later you can add a 6670 for Dual graphics for a nice cost effective upgrade.
http://media.bestofmicro.com/E/I/341370/original/dual%20graphics%20wow.png

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-5800k-a8-5600k-a6-5400k,3224.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-5800k-a8-5600k-trinity-apu,3241.html





If buying today what you posted if a good selection.
Here is my $200 build;

For keeping cost low use Windows 8 Release Preview (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/release-preview) its free until January 16, 2013.
Use old or scrounge from friend: DVD drive, HDD, Case and Monitor.

CPU:
$68 Pentium G630 is a good low end chip prob not far off the minimum but OK for PS2
$100 Pentium G870 gives you 400Mhz (13%) and is worth the extra $32

Graphics:
$50 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102988)HD6670 is prob the best low end Graphics card atm.
$90 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006662&IsNodeId=1&Description=7770&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20) HD7770 would be a nice step up if you can find those extra $.

Motherboard:
$45 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157315)ASRock H61M-DGS cheapest LGA1155 I could find.

RAM
$22 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313102) Cheapest 2 x 2GB kit
$39 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820576006) Cheapest 2 x 4 GB kit (a worthy upgrade)

PSU
$17 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817170018) LOGISYS 480W, will handle this build but will limit some future GPU upgrade. (I prefer to buy high quality, but we are going for ultra low price)

[Vancha]

I'm actually planning on trying to come up with a bare-minimum rig for PS2, but it's hard for us to know how low is too low at this point.

Honestly, if you have a desire to know about the techno-mumbo-jumbo, I suggest looking up guides on Google and Youtube.

[Mutant]

I'm actually planning on trying to come up with a bare-minimum rig for PS2, but it's hard for us to know how low is too low at this point.



Yeh, this will be a moving target until we get near release as code optimization will continue to take place.


I really hope SOE build some easy to use benchmark into PS2 so lots of sites can easily adopt PS2 as a standard.

[Rbstr]

Tom's did a low end comparison a while back. The AMD APU was pretty soundly beaten for the i3 + low end Radeon for gaming, though it did ok in somethings I can't recall. If you want to go that route you absolutely have to wait for the new chips out of AMD.

Honestly, I think your best be is trying to ebay together older higher end parts than go with really shitty new parts.

For instance, you can get a GTX275 buy-it-now for ~$75-100. It's going to be better at PS2 than an HD7770. There are probably better deals than that. (Shameless plug, and why I knew GTX275 prices: I've got a GTX275 I could sell you for $60 + shipping)
Same thoughts go into the CPU. It seems likely to me that a 1st gen quadcore i5 will be better than a junky Pentium. This would eliminate some "easy" upgrade routes because of the socket but it's silly to upgrade within generations anyway. Prices don't seem terribly good for those...you need a 7xx i5. The 6xx parts are dual core.
At least you can get a Core i3 2100 for $100...that gives you hyperthreading over that $100 pentium chip.

[Goku]

Oh my Eclipse. That budget for a computer just cannot work I'm sorry. To get all that you will probably need to spend ~$500. That probably not including OS, so I'm not even going to attempt this.

Now what should you do? You are on a strict budget so I recommend Craigslist, so you can haggle. Take for example this computer (http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/sys/3142475893.html) close to you (1 hour driver). Has a highly capable Core i7 920 and still ok GTX 260. This rig will be capable of playing the game better then any $500 build right now. This way you don't have to go through ebay BS and attempt to put this together also.

I don't know how far you are willing to go, so do some searching. I recommend looking for the following CPUs as the base search Core i5 750, 760 and Core i7 920, 930, 950, and 960. Find a complete build with a video card no less then a GTX 260 or HD 4870. Post it here and we can overlook the computer to make sure its a good fit.

[BudBrain]

I may have missed something here, but can you post exact details of what you already have? You may be able to re-use some parts.

[Mutant]

You guys are right the 2nd hand route would prob they the best bang for buck, but I have had a couple of duds doing that (avoid anything like "untested" or "no returns").

Should be quite a lot of i5 750 about.
GTX460 and HD5850 would also be good Graphics to target should be quite a lot about.

Something like this would be ideal
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Custom-Built-PC-GTX-460-i5-750-4GB-1333-RAM-1TB-HDD-/230828172606?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item35be6e653e

You might be able to get a decent ex office PC without a GPU then get that separate.


Tom's did a low end comparison a while back. The AMD APU was pretty soundly beaten for the i3 + low end Radeon for gaming, though it did ok in somethings I can't recall. If you want to go that route you absolutely have to wait for the new chips out of AMD.




I included the trinity reviews from toms in my previous post, Their conclusion was:

"A majority of our threaded tests—particularly the ones that emphasize integer-heavy code—go in AMD’s favor. It’ll take more than a dual-core 3.1 GHz chip to get Intel ahead in those benchmarks. Maybe the $125 Core i3-2120 is a better choice, or the $150 Core i3-2130."

I just wish we had a price tag and availability. (low end IB will change everything no doubt)

[Goku]

I have my doubts about trinity is all. Really needs to be cheap to get a recommendation from me. Chances are a Pentium and cheap video card would yield better performance. I will say Kaveri is interesting (next APU from AMD). Improved Steamroller cores plus 512 GCN cores. That can put it on equal ground potentially with a 7750, which isn't a half bad low budget card.