The $500 PC Challenge.

Malor wrote:

The last few generations of Intel chips haven't improved very much. There was a huge stride forward with Sandy Bridge, the 25XX and 26XX series, and the subsequent iterations, Ivy Bridge and Haswell, haven't been especially impressive. Each generation is 10% or so faster, clock for clock, than the prior one. (so a Haswell at 4GHz will be maybe 10% faster than an Ivy Bridge at 4GHz.)

I wrote a longer explanation, but then realized that you don't really need it, just the tl;dr: if that's a Sandy or Ivy Bridge i5, it'll make a fine backbone for a gaming machine, as long as you put a good video card in it.

There was one generation of i5 that was notably slower: if your i5 has a three-digit model number (something like, say, an 840), tell us what it is, and we can check to see how good it is. If it's a 4-digit model number, you should be fine.

Actually, you know what? Either way, go ahead and tell us the model number of the chip. It'll just take a second to check it, and be certain.

My main rig have a q6600 in it. I was tempted by a i5-650 if I recall correctly. At my job, they sell their old PCs back at recycling, but we can grab 1 or 2. Yeah, I need to pay for it, but If I wanted to upgrade to an i5 in the next 6 months or so, what should I really look into ?

Malor wrote:

The last few generations of Intel chips haven't improved very much. There was a huge stride forward with Sandy Bridge, the 25XX and 26XX series, and the subsequent iterations, Ivy Bridge and Haswell, haven't been especially impressive. Each generation is 10% or so faster, clock for clock, than the prior one. (so a Haswell at 4GHz will be maybe 10% faster than an Ivy Bridge at 4GHz.)

I wrote a longer explanation, but then realized that you don't really need it, just the tl;dr: if that's a Sandy or Ivy Bridge i5, it'll make a fine backbone for a gaming machine, as long as you put a good video card in it.

There was one generation of i5 that was notably slower: if your i5 has a three-digit model number (something like, say, an 840), tell us what it is, and we can check to see how good it is. If it's a 4-digit model number, you should be fine.

Actually, you know what? Either way, go ahead and tell us the model number of the chip. It'll just take a second to check it, and be certain.

I don't have a particular model in mind; that was a hypothetical. Last year I put together a machine on a shoestring budget with the help of fellow GWJers, and I thought the same approach might work as well or even better for my boy. Where I'm using a C2D 2.66GHz and 4GB of RAM, for instance, I'd jump him up at least to the common i5-720 if not up to an 1155-socket CPU, say, i5-2500 that was recommended a while back, and 8GB RAM. That would work well for his use case, which isn't quite in-line with the OP, but still may be viable for lots of folks.

For instance, consider the GWJ Minecraft server: we're currently running a Tekkit-modded server, which includes 109 mods. Many offer minor features, but several include vast arrays of complex additional machines and crafting and lakes of burning oil and meteors and...and, well, it ended up selecting out some folks who prefer playing vanilla Minecraft, and more specifically people who don't have the iron to push all that functionality. These folks aren't all going to order a Haswell machine, but might be able to organize stuff the earlier-adopters are replacing and end up with a very capable system. In many cases, the replaced tech (e.g., my circa-2007 CPU/mobo) still run perfectly well.

I'll write something up for the trade thread, but I thought a discussion specifically about the CPU architecture and whether the older tech someone might be vacating would suffice might be useful here. Is the market value of that i5-2500 and a compatible motherboard roughly the same as for the i3-and-mobo listed here, and will the i5 meet or beat the i3? That's the form of my main question.

Looking at Wikipedia, the i5-2500 has twice as much L2 and L3 cache as the i3-4150, is roughly clock-speed equivalent (3.3 vs. 3.5, respectively), and consumes nearly twice as much power (links are positional, not topical).

I didn't choose the i5 model for any particular reason other than familiarity, and it may in fact be that the i5 even used will fetch a higher price than the i3. But I think there's probably some room here to either get greater used power for the same new price, or the same used power for less money.

Typically, i3s aren't real cost-effective. You either want to drop back down to the Pentium-labeled chips (the G3220 is one I like, a nice solid 3GHz chip with dual Haswell cores), and there may be others that are better, now. Or, you want to go up to a quadcore i5.

There's a big price premium between the Pentiums and the i3s, and the actual performance doesn't measure up. I think part of what you're paying for is the improved graphic chip, but you're not going to be using that anyway, as you'll want a discrete card for a gaming box. The extra money going into the i3 is almost completely wasted, unless you specifically know you need a particular feature that's been disabled on the Pentium chips. (AES New Instructions is one example.)

But then the i5s get into quadcore, and that's a big step forward for at least some game engines.

TheGameguru wrote:

His is way over $500 though...without an OS license as well... I was already cheating so his build is really just a $750 build which is a ton more flexible.

Yeah it was, but the main difference being the core i5. You swap that out for a core i3 as you are building and move to the 260x you're back down to your $500 price point. Just wanted to point it out for anybody who wanted to do this same build, but in a smaller box.

Malor wrote:

Typically, i3s aren't real cost-effective. You either want to drop back down to the Pentium-labeled chips (the G3220 is one I like, a nice solid 3GHz chip with dual Haswell cores), and there may be others that are better, now. Or, you want to go up to a quadcore i5.

There's a big price premium between the Pentiums and the i3s, and the actual performance doesn't measure up. I think part of what you're paying for is the improved graphic chip, but you're not going to be using that anyway, as you'll want a discrete card for a gaming box. The extra money going into the i3 is almost completely wasted, unless you specifically know you need a particular feature that's been disabled on the Pentium chips. (AES New Instructions is one example.)

But then the i5s get into quadcore, and that's a big step forward for at least some game engines.

Yeah, looking into this more and more, especially considering a possible CPU upgrade in 12-18 months, I think I might rather pop for the G3220 and spend the spare ~$40 (versus the i3) on GPU. Again this strays from the challenge stated but fits my needs.

Just tagging to follow this into the future.

Malor wrote:

Typically, i3s aren't real cost-effective. You either want to drop back down to the Pentium-labeled chips (the G3220 is one I like, a nice solid 3GHz chip with dual Haswell cores), and there may be others that are better, now. Or, you want to go up to a quadcore i5.

There's a big price premium between the Pentiums and the i3s, and the actual performance doesn't measure up. I think part of what you're paying for is the improved graphic chip, but you're not going to be using that anyway, as you'll want a discrete card for a gaming box. The extra money going into the i3 is almost completely wasted, unless you specifically know you need a particular feature that's been disabled on the Pentium chips. (AES New Instructions is one example.)

But then the i5s get into quadcore, and that's a big step forward for at least some game engines.

i3's have more threads than those low end Pentiums. It's similar to the advantage the i7's have over the i5's. Same physical core count but double the threads. Given the price difference I think the i3 is a solid choice in the $500 build given the difficulty investing back the savings into anything meaningful GPU wise. We will see what the R265 offers though over a 260X...that might swing the CPU choice.

I'm down with the challenge as gameguru has it so far. A pure box vs box hardware capability comparison. Peripheral and software requirements and prices vary wildy based on the user. those problems I believe are better addressed on a case by case basis where a GWJer comes forward with their desires and situations, and our community tells them how to get teh best bang for the buck.

Why spend more time debating the scenarios when we can watch gameguru build ridiculous computers and test them for our pleasure?

This thread is like a MaximumPC article, except it's well researched!

You can save $20 on the RAM here
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...

A 7850 GPU for $80 here
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

This looks interesting mobo+G3258 for $100
http://www.microcenter.com/site/bran...

Go overboard on a 750 corsair psu for $10 more
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

I am completely lost on how the 6xxx series radeons compare but a 6970 for $100? That has got to be good:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

Corsair 600 psu for $35:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

r9 280 for $209:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

I'm not trying to refute anyone. I am just offering up examples of how $$$ can be saved with an ear to the ground and if you don't want it all right now.

With those prices you can drop the cpu to a g3258 for $80, take the extra $20 from the RAM and upgrade from the 260x to a 280 and save yourself $7 over your current build. ($12 if you want to upgrade to a 600 psu) Or you can save an additional $37 by also upgrading to a 7850, remove the $50 HDD and have enough to buy a $200 512GB SSD.

This looks interesting mobo+G3258 for $100
http://www.microcenter.com/site/bran...

Sweet setup, there. The 3258 is claimed (by Intel!) to be very OC-friendly.

Malor wrote:
This looks interesting mobo+G3258 for $100
http://www.microcenter.com/site/bran...

Sweet setup, there. The 3258 is claimed (by Intel!) to be very OC-friendly.

One of those Microcenter in-store-only bundles though.

Good if you can take advantage of them, though. A year and a half ago, when I had tickets to a Jaguars game in Houston, I extended my return drive slightly to grab one of these in-store CPU/mobo bundles from the Microcenter there in Houston, and saved a nice chunk of cash.

Man, I'm really tempted by that Microcenter deal. There's one about 90 minutes away.....

fangblackbone wrote:

You can save $20 on the RAM here
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...

A 7850 GPU for $80 here
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

This looks interesting mobo+G3258 for $100
http://www.microcenter.com/site/bran...

Go overboard on a 750 corsair psu for $10 more
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

I am completely lost on how the 6xxx series radeons compare but a 6970 for $100? That has got to be good:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

Corsair 600 psu for $35:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

r9 280 for $209:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

I'm not trying to refute anyone. I am just offering up examples of how $$$ can be saved with an ear to the ground and if you don't want it all right now.

With those prices you can drop the cpu to a g3258 for $80, take the extra $20 from the RAM and upgrade from the 260x to a 280 and save yourself $7 over your current build. ($12 if you want to upgrade to a 600 psu) Or you can save an additional $37 by also upgrading to a 7850, remove the $50 HDD and have enough to buy a $200 512GB SSD.

Sure.. but as indicated one of the deals was Microcenter and both those GPU you listed are out of stock and probably not really available at $209 or $89 often enough to be a general guide for a $500 build.

I'm trying to build a system that is readily available to everyone rather than try and find the absolute steal of the century with parts that aren't readily available to the common man.

If you want to start another thread and build a better $500 PC and benchmark it that would be awesome to compare how much more you can gain performance wise with some creative purchasing. I will provide some results with the Pentium G3XX over the i3 as well as the 270x vs a 260x. I think the 280/x will be out of price range this year anywhere.. next year maybe with whatever replaces the mid-range card.

Malor wrote:

Man, I'm really tempted by that Microcenter deal. There's one about 90 minutes away.....

I'm stopping by my Microcenter on the way home today to get this bundle. Thanks for the discussion. Very helpful.

Understood. Like I said above, my post was supposed to be in support of your thread. Because people might think that you were using once in a lifetime deals that they would never be able to duplicate. So my post was to point out that you were being conservative and it was still relatively easy to build a capable $500 PC.

I will add that I see 8GB of RAM for $65 all the time. Corsair CX psu's can be had regularly for $35 and sometimes $30. I regularly see 1GB HDD's for $35. And take your pick between these GPU's: 7850 (not as often), 7870, 750ti, 270 or 270x. They rotate practically every week on which one is hugely discounted.

The frequency of all these deals seems once a week if not once every other week. (aside from RAM which is that cheap all the time, it is just the quality of the RAM at that price that fluctuates)

edit: Oh and here is a newegg deal on h81 mobo + 3258 cpu for $117:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...

Again.. this is not supposed to be a definitive build.. prices fluctuate every day and new hardware is released in almost a constant stream. I'm certainly not going to update this on a daily basis to reflect new Hardforum Hot Deals etc..

That goes beyond the point of this thread.. I going to showcase what kind of 1080P performance we can expect from a typical $500 build vs current Consoles as well as higher priced PC builds.

I agree the very valid point of dropping down the CPU from an i3 to a Pentium G32XX. And I will test that.

Sorry I don't mean to frustrate you. And I will stop throwing stuff out there after this one that might prove interesting:

Have you tried pairing the amd APU's with the appropriate GPU? For instance, apparently you can "SLI" the onboard gpu of an a10 7850k with a r7 250.

fangblackbone wrote:

Sorry I don't mean to frustrate you. And I will stop throwing stuff out there after this one that might prove interesting:

Have you tried pairing the amd APU's with the appropriate GPU? For instance, apparently you can "SLI" the onboard gpu of an a10 7850k with a r7 250.

I purposely left out this config because I didn't want to mess with Crossfire in this build. It is possible the AMD APU with Dedicated GPU will be slightly faster than a i3 w/ 260x or 270x but probably not in a meaningful way from the few articles I could find that benchmarked this.

Wha? Really? I had no idea you could use those in tandem.

I wouldn't recommend it just because I have crossfire'd for 7 years and there have been several cases where I get better performance by shutting crossfire off. Drivers aren't always optimized for it and it can cause worse performance than a single-card (Skyrim, most new AAA titles until patched, V-sync defaults... lol). When dealing with a multiple GPU setup, you're best served running FPS counters and messing with CAP (Catalyst Application Profiles) or custom profiles.

I mean if you're masochistic like me, you may enjoy it, but it's a lot of face-palming and tweeking. You will also be using shared resources instead of dedicated resources. Could slow down the system overall if there's not enough there.

I haven't personally tried it with an onboard chip, but it certainly speaks a lot of trouble for questionable gain.

Yeah. Unfortunately I just read a review on Techspot that says that even among games that work well with crossfire, only 60% of them saw a gain in the APU+GPU crossfire. But that gain was very significant at 40-50%.

Unfortunately spending an extra $20-30 for a better discreet GPU was even more of a boost. So AMD's problem is that even on super cheap builds there is 30$ worth of wiggle room to be spent on the much better GPU.

I had thought that a 250 in crossfire (through apu+gpu or gpu+gpu) would be better performance than a single 260x. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that is the case. And with spotty support for similar performance cards, it looks like support for weaker apu providing a boost for stronger discreet gpu's through crossfire fire is off the radar. (who wouldn't take any small amount of performance boost just by being able to crossfire with your apu?)

Review link:
http://www.techspot.com/review/781-a...

How did this turn out, Guru?

LeapingGnome wrote:

How did this turn out, Guru?

I'm pretty much done.. I just need a few free hours to type it all up and update this thread.. been swamped at work.

Short version though is that it turned out better than I expected.

With an AMD 260x/265 or an Nvidia 750Ti I could run just about every game at acceptable frame rates @ 1080P with Medium Details.. Certain problem child titles (Metro series, Crysis series) would require me to drop down to Low details OR 720P (Med-High) and in some cases that was a crucial decision... 720P with Med-High just looked better than 1080P with Low... in all cases I felt that 720P with higher graphical details looked better than 1080P with low details. Titanfall was another problem child.. 1080P was just to much for these cards and I was forced to go down to 720P to really enjoy the game online.

Upping to a AMD 270x provided a much better overall experience at 1080P not so much in the details level but certainly in the average frame rate. I was seeing frame rates in the high 50's as opposed to mid 30's to low 40's. Games like Battlefield 4 could run at High details @ 1080P with solid frame rates.

I didnt get a chance to drop the CPU down to a cheaper Pentium or AMD but I suspect it might not matter than much..Titanfall online might be the one area where I would have liked to see if the lesser CPU would make a huge difference

Overall though the AMD 260x/265 and 750Ti provided a near identical graphical experience to the Xbox One and the PS4. The biggest difference was the consoles had a "smoother" more consistent game experience.. the PC suffered from more uneven frame rates than the consoles... moving to the 270x solved that though.

Guru: Thanks for your hard work! I might be putting something together in the near future, and this build looks like it will be an excellent starting point for me. I'm looking forward to the full write-up!

So in GG's recent PC Expo Blowout Sale, I actually wound up buying this rig (with the 270x in it). I can report that it's a really solid little machine. I haven't run a ton of games on it yet, but I have Shadow of Mordor running at an average 75 fps according to the benchmark with everything on the highest settings except for textures, which are on High. My monitor's older, so it only runs at 1680x1050, so that's definitely helping. I know I'll lose a chunk of that performance if I ever get around to upgrading to a full 1080p monitor, but for now, this is definitely a good build.

So yeah, you can run new stuff better than consoles with a $500 build.

Well, you're right that you'd lose a fair bit of performance at 1080p, that your machine is a little on the weak side for that. But even the consoles don't do 1080p very well. They kinda do it, and the PS4 gets closer than the XBone, but they're still rather underpowered for that resolution. They'd be best suited, actually, for that same monitor you're using.

Where I think you actually do fall behind the consoles is in raw CPU power. For most people building today, I aim them at a quadcore instead of a dualie. Both the PS4 and XB1 have eight cores, but slow ones; a quadcore Intel will easily keep up, but a dual-core doesn't really have enough mojo. As you can tell, this isn't a huge problem at the moment, but I think over the next year or two that machine will start to chug while trying to run ports of console games.

As we approach 2015, the i3-4150 in your build is in kind of a weird spot, pricewise. I think the Pentium G3258 is actually going to be stronger for most gamers, if they're willing to take the time to overclock it, and it only costs $70. Most of the higher cost on the i3 is for the better built-in graphics, which most gamers won't use. Personally, I think it's better to put the $80 into a better video card.

Of course, that doesn't really apply to you, since got the usual screaming deal on Guru's used machines, so you're in a good spot. Just be aware that the machine may not have as much 'legs' as you might prefer, and you may need to go to a quadcore in a couple of years.

To really and truly match the consoles with a PC, I think $700ish is probably about the minimum build.

The long term plan for me is to upgrade both the CPU and video card over the next few years. Which one goes first kind of depends on which starts bottlenecking first. I knew this build wasn't going to have years worth of legs as is, but it should be a good base for a careful upgrade schedule.

Yeah, it's a solid machine, and it's definitely very good for most games that are out now. The only one I'm aware of that might give you a little trouble is Battlefield 4 on a big multiplayer map.

Sooo... 8 months later I have a summer intern who wants to build a $500ish machine. He has a TV that he hooks up to and a keyboard and gaming mouse.

Anyone interested in reviving the challenge for him? Or have there not been enough updates to change the previous recommendations?

I can say that the machine GG built for this (and that I then bought) is running like a champ. The only thing I've done is add an SSD to it, and it's got Dragon Age: Inquisition rocking out at 1080p and most everything pushed up to high/ultra and getting 40+ fps consistently. So I'd say you can definitely still use the recommendations here as a solid base.