If you’re interested in buying a PC gaming rig this month, you’re spoiled for choice in pretty much all of the different price ranges. There has been the release of AMD’s Radeon Rx series, although apart from the Radeon R9 290 and Radeon R9 290X all of them are pretty much identical to the previous 7000 series generation. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
For gamers who’re planning to be playing the big releases over the next month or two and without tons of money to burn, the following rigs are pretty damn good money for the buck. They’ll easily be able to play games like Batman: Arkham Origins and Battlefield 4. And you’ll of course be able to play these games at 1080P with 60FPS, just as nature (and the games developers) intended. All of the options are easily to configure, and it’s likely that you’ll have a case / PSU / HDD / something you can reuse to get the price down even further if necessary.
Budget Gaming System | Option 1 | Option 2 |
CPU | AMD FX-6300 6-Core Processor Black Edition £89.99 / $120 |
AMD FX-8320 FX-Series 8-Core Black Edition £115 / $153 |
RAM | Kingston HyperX BLU XMP 8GB £62 / $57 |
|
Motherboard | AMD MSI 970A-g46 Dual SLI / Xfire £65 / $70 |
AsRock 990FX Extreme3 Motherboard Quad SLI / Xfire AMD 990FX £79 / $110 |
GPU | MSI Nvidia GTX 760 2GB £180 / $240 |
XFX RADEON R9 280X GPU £240 / $310 |
HDD | Western Digital 1TB internal Hard Drive – Caviar Blue (3.5 inch) £48 / $65 |
Get an SSD to fit your budget |
Case | Up to you (around 30 – 60 depending) | |
PSU | Antec VP450P PSU Dual Rail £40 / $40 |
Antec VP550F 550W PSU £55 / $60 |
Optical | Cheap DVD Writer – 10 – 20 | BluRay Reader or Writer |
TOTAL | £525 OR $652 | £651 (with 1 SSD – no blu ray) |
$850 (with 1 SSD – NO Blu Ray) |
Intel CPU’s are a little too out of the price range for this budget without sacrificing other parts. The AMD FX 6300 and FX 8320 are more than enough for most games. I’d personally be tempted to opt for all of the parts from option 1, BUT I’d go for the Radeon R9 280X and I’d plop in a AMD FX-8350 FX-Series 8-Core Black Edition. Most PC Gamers won’t need to build a PC with the features of the Asrock 990FX Extreme 3, but I’ve included it just in case you might. 8GB of RAM should be more than enough for the next few years, and RAM is easy enough to add more in.
Since the CPU’s in the list are the Black Edition, this means they’re going to be easy to overclock. The FX8320 and FX8350 are based on the same parts, but the FX8350 is speed binned higher so generally will be able to clock higher at lower voltages. This is why if you’ve got the cash, I’d suggest going with the FX8350 + MSI 970A + Radeon R9 280X. All of the components in Option 1 however will be more than enough for most games on a single 1080P screen. You’ll also have ease of change parts over, PCIE3 support, and more.
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