The Cellar - New Budget Gaming Box

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New Budget Gaming Box

We've seen how you can spend $1,200 and get a nice gaming box. Unfortunately, not everyone has $1,200 laying around to blow on a computer.

A friend of mine, whom I play Quake with, had his computer melt down this weekend. He's sent it to me to fix, but he told me that he wants to build a backup computer. Something he can game on if he has to, and something that his wife can use the rest of the time. He's also not rich, so money has to play a role. He asked me to put together a "spare" computer for around $500-$600. I think he'll be surprised with what I've come up with.

Processor - AMD Athlon XP 1900+ should be plenty fast (and, actually, faster than what he currently has). I still like AMD's a whole lot and I'm super familiar with them (as a matter of fact, I just put together another Athlon 1600+ box last night). Price - $98 in retail box

Motherboard - Asus A7N266-VM. It's an nForce based board with integrated GF2MX video, sound and ethernet. Now, the video's mostly useless, but it's good to have in case we need it. Price - $84

Case - Enlight 76020B1. I'm not in a position to be picky here. It's Micro ATX, it has a 300 Watt power supply and it's ugly as all hell. But it's cheap and should do the job quite nicely (no inverted PSU, etc). Price - $45

Video Card - Crucial Radeon 8500 LE 128MB. This card actually outperforms a GeForce 3 Ti500 at Quake3. Nice. Price - $123

Hard Drive - IBM 40GB 120GXP. Shut up. Just shut up. I don't need to hear it. 40GB should be sufficient for a back-up computer. Price - $72

Memory - Kingston 512MB PC2100. It's not Crucial, but it's still got a lifetime warranty. I'm sure it'll be just fine. Price - $119

CD-ROM - Sony 52X CDU5211. We just need something to get the operating system installed. Price - $24

Total - $565. Not too bad for what we're getting. Not too bad at all.

However, it may be too much for some folks. Perhaps you don't need 125fps at Q3 and you can live with a slower processor. Great! We can save some money. First, we'll replace the Athlon XP 1900+ with a 1700+ at a savings of $22 ($98 - $76). Then we'll put in a 64MB Radeon 8500 LE (which will still give some very respectable Q3 performance) for $88, a savings of $35. That brings our total to $508. Nice!

You can save even more by putting in a GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR card (will still play Quake very well) for $47, a savings of $41. Grand total? $467!

In any of the incarnations I've presented here, this is still a very capable gaming box - yet the price wouldn't have you believing that.

Now, before Xugamad chips in that he can get everything cheaper - yes, I know. I've just dealt with the fly-by-night businesses enough to know that I'm tired of dealing with them. :) NewEgg has provided me with great customer service for the past year and I don't see that changing. So I'm happy to give them some business.

Anyway, that's the dealie for this box. High-end performance, low-end price. The best of both worlds.

Quote:

Originally posted by dhamsaic
Case - Enlight 76020B1. I'm not in a position to be picky here. It's Micro ATX, it has a 300 Watt power supply and it's ugly as all hell. But it's cheap and should do the job quite nicely (no inverted PSU, etc). Price - $45

Newegg has perceivably superior cases (bigger form factor, equal PSUs, more fans) at lower, or equal prices. Anything that disqualifies them? (I'm not directly questioning your decision, I'm interested in the decision-making process)

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=11-150-028-01.JPG/11-150-028-02.JPG/11-150-028-03.JPG/11-150-028-04.JPG/11-150-028-05.JPG/11-150-028-06.JPG/11-150-028-07.JPG/11-150-028-08.JPG/11-150-028-09.JPG/11-150-028-10.JPG">Some</a> (<a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=11-154-004-01.JPG/11-154-004-02.JPG/11-154-004-03.JPG/11-154-004-04.JPG/11-154-004-05.JPG/11-154-004-06.JPG/11-154-004-07.JPG">of</a> <a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=11-182-001-10.jpg/11-182-001-11.jpg/11-182-001-15.jpg/11-182-001-14.jpg/11-182-001-13.jpg/11-182-001-16.jpg/11-182-001-12.jpg">several<a>) <a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=11-127-005-01.GIF/11-127-005-02.JPG/11-127-005-03.JPG/11-127-005-04.JPG/11-127-005-05.JPG/11-127-005-06.JPG/11-127-005-07.JPG/11-127-005-08.JPG/11-127-005-09.JPG/11-127-005-10.JPG">examples</a> <a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=11-150-029-10.jpg/11-150-029-11.jpg/11-150-029-12.jpg/11-150-029-13.jpg/11-150-029-14.jpg/11-150-029-15.jpg/11-150-029-09.jpg">can</a> <a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=11-154-003-01.JPG/11-154-003-02.JPG/11-154-003-03.JPG/11-154-003-04.JPG/11-154-003-05.JPG/11-154-003-06.JPG/11-154-003-07.JPG/11-154-003-08.JPG">be</a> <a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=11-126-109-02.jpg/11-126-109-03.jpg/11-126-109-05.jpg/11-126-109-06.jpg/11-126-109-04.jpg/11-126-109-01.jpg">found</a> <a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=11-127-002-01.JPG/11-127-002-02.JPG/11-127-002-03.JPG/11-127-002-04.JPG/11-127-002-05.JPG/11-127-002-06.JPG/11-127-002-07.JPG/11-127-002-08.JPG/11-127-002-09.JPG/11-127-002-10.JPG">here</a> ...

X.

He needs a small box. He doesn't have a lot of space and he specifically stated that he didn't want a big tower. :) I took a look for Micro ATX cases and they didn't have the one I have my Celeron 800 in (great little case, $31), so I went with the one above.

The first one you posted actually looks semi-promising. I'll check the dimensions on it and see how large it is.

You know, I really think an 80 GB hard drive is a much... aw, never mind. ;)

Hello,

I like it. Good choice. I'd go for a Seagate over the IBM HD, since IBM HD's are not the most reliable ones out there.

Meanwhile, the Athlon 1900+ is just fine. Just get an extra cooler :).

Mitch

My computing needs are relatively modest since I don't use mine for gaming, but I have to chuckle :biggrin: at the concept of a system where the video card costs more than either the CPU or the motherboard!

Most gaming boxes are like that nowadays. The video card in my new gaming box is going to be about $390; the processor is only about $250 (yay for price drops). If you buy a high-end video card, well... that's probably going to be the most expensive part of your system, except for maybe the monitor (I just bought a 21" Trinitron FD for $555 including shipping).

Anyway... sad as it is, that's the state of things currently. The high-end cards are stupidly expensive. But it's encouraging to me that the Doom 3 movies that id is showing were rendered in real time using a 2.26GHz P4 and a Radeon 9700 :)

The Nvidia cards have chips on them that are more complex than the CPU. The GeForce4 has more transistors on-chip than either the Pentium 4 or Athlon XP.

It also has faster memory. 250Mhz DDR SDRAM is not cheap. Neither is 300Mhz DDR SDRAM.

Nvidia has turned the motherboard and CPU into something that feeds the graphics engine.

In other words, PCs have officially become just like the Amiga, seeing as how there's a chip that processes the graphics that is just like Agnus or the AA chipset. Nvidia takes this even farther with the Nforce chipset, by integrating it on the chipset. DirectX 9 should take better advantage of this, I hope.

Mac OS X 10.2 and Windows NT 6.0 (Longhorn) take this to an extreme by having these GPUs actually do a lot of your GUI work for you on the GPU chip. Quartz Extreme in 10.2 is an example, with Microsoft to follow in NT6. Instead of the GPU chip just being dumb, it's now a co-processor.

Mitch

And Quartz Extreme is so completely sexy. Good lord do I love it.

Anyway, Linux should have support for this by the time my daughter has a beard...