The console war haven never seemed so alive than in the recent months, and it’s not just limited to the PS4 or Xbox One. Nintendo is also in the mix, and PC gaming is being brought up quite often too. The main argument against PC gaming is the fact that it generally costs more than console gaming, and this is why a lot of people prefer to pick a PS4 or Xbox One off the shelves, and enjoy several years of care-free gaming while only spending $400-500. But playing games on a PC doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to spend $2000 on a decent setup. In fact, consider this: most users have a desktop PC or notebook laying around somewhere anyway. While this might not be a gaming rig, it’s still likely to cost several hundred bucks. You can’t really browse the internet on a 2002 PC anymore.
So, bottom-line is this: You have a $450 console (let’s take the average retail price between the Xbox One and PS4), and you have a $250 PC already that you can’t use for anything else than browsing or perhaps seeing a movie. That nets us with a $700 budget. We decided to go more extreme, and set a budget of $600 to see if we can get a decent gaming PC built from scratch. This rig has to handle current games at high settings at least as well as the PS4 and Xbox One currently do.
To provide alternatives, we decided to build two different rigs, one focusing on AMD components, and one build with an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU. Since we’re not promoting piracy, we also included the operating system costs to the mix. Because Windows 8 isn’t all that great, we went for the reliable Windows 7, which can be found for as little as $40 in an open-box state on Ebay or Amazon. You don’t need a brand new Windows to stay legit. To include shipping costs, taxes and varying prices, we set the OS costs to an average of $55, to stay on the safe side. We also included a mouse and keyboard that do the job well enough, but did not include a screen. After all, no console sells with a TV included in the price either.
[promo title=”Intel/Nvidia System”][/promo]
Most PC gamers prefer Nvidia and Intel today, because they are generally easier to manage, set up, and Nvidia card drivers tend to be more reliable. As such, we went with the more standard version first. When considering gaming PCs, the most important part is obviously the graphics card. That does the bulk of the work, and has to be up to the task. The Nvidia GTX 750 Ti is currently among the best you can get in terms of value. In fact, it’s among the most highly rated GPUs in terms of value. It’s on the cheap side of things, and yet runs surprisingly well. It’s also easy on power consumption, which allowed us to go for a modest (although reliable) power supply unit from Coolermaster, which came as a bundle with a solid case.
We chose an Ivy Bridge, 3rd generation i3 CPU. These aren’t the fastest CPUs on the market, but they do a good job, are relatively cheap and have some overclocking potential. This is limited by the modest motherboard that we’ve picked, but adding a few bucks to the motherboard would allow you to get surprising results from a 3rd generation i3. A reliable 1TB hard drive should give you plenty of room for games, and 8 GB of 1600 Mhz of RAM from Crucial also provide plenty of kick for the money. Worth noting is the fact that we opted for a dual-channel kit for the added performance, and we opted for CL9 RAM for better performance. Last, but not least, we included a basic keyboard and mouse kit from Gigabyte. These are basic, but the keyboard does a decent job and is spill-proof, while the mouse uses an 800 DPI optical sensor.
The total cost based on Newegg prices is $569, with almost all components including free shipping. Even with the extra shipping costs and taxes, we’d still be under the $600 budget, and with some digging around, you can pick up some of these components even less. Heck, if you really want to save some cash, you can opt for bulk or open-box versions to save considerably.
- CPU: Intel Core i3-3240 Ivy Bridge 3.4 GHz – $119.99
- Mother Board: ASRock H61MV-ITX LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Mini ITX Intel Motherboard – $49.99
- Graphics Card: GIGABYTE GV-N75TOC-2GI GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB 128-bit DDR5 – $139.99
- Hard Drive: Western Digital WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache – $59.99
- Case & Power Supply: Cooler Master Elite 350 – Mid Tower Computer Case with 500W Power Supply – $59.99
- Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 – $69.99
- Mouse & Keyboard: GIGABYTE GK-KM3100 Black USB Wired Standard Keyboard + Mouse Combo – $13.99
We tested the configuration through multiple games to see how it holds up. It’s a budget-friendly rig, so we were not expecting to see mind-blowing performances. That being said, well, we were pleasantly surprised. We first ran the configuration through Battlefield 4, with a resolution of 1920x1080p and High settings, 2x MSAA, reaching an average of 54 FPS. At Ultra settings, the GTX 750 Ti showed its limitations, dropping to an average of 29 FPS (with a minimum of 26). Still, that’s on-par with how some console games run, and it’s still completely playable, while looking visually superior. We’ve also tested the configuration in Elder Scrolls Online, where we got an impressive 48 FPS at the highest settings. High settings in Assassin’s Creed IV and Titanfall resulted in 43 FPS and 52 FPS, respectively, although AA was disabled in our initial Titanfall test. With AA activated, the configuration’s performance dropped to 39 FPS on average.
Titanfall ran surprisingly well on our Intel/Nvidia system, with 52 FPS at 1080p on High Settings, and 29 FPS on Ultra. That’s a lot better than the Xbox One’s performance. Our AMD setup did even better!
To conclude, it’s clear that our Intel/Nvidia setup did a fine job. If it’s above your budget and want to trim it down, you can make due with 4 GB of RAM instead of 8, 500 GB of storage space instead of 1TB, can go for a 3rd Generation Intel G CPU (which will still have similar results) and opt for a cheaper case and a smaller PSU. For an i3 or G-series Pentium CPU, combined with the GTX 750 Ti, you don’t even need more than a 300W PSU to run things. If you really want to trim down things, you certainly can cut off at least another $100 while keeping about 80-90% of the performance. That would land our budget Nvidia/Intel gaming PC at a price of arounf $450-500, which is on-par with Microsoft’s Xbox One for instance.
If on the other hand, you want to go higher, for a few extra bucks you can grab an SSD, which would greatly boost performance. You could also opt for a slightly better motherboard, which, combined with a $20 cooler could allow you to get at least 20% more from your CPU.