Can I build a gaming computer under $1000? (Apr 2015 edition)

It’s April 2015 and we are revisiting our exercise in budget computing: Can we build a computer that will give acceptable gaming performance for under $1000 (In our 80 pound weakling Canadian dollars)?

In the past year we have seen DDR3 memory prices go up and then ease back just a little, the Canadian dollar go down precipitously adding 20% to the cost of nearly everything, and SSDs (flash based hard drives) steadily dropping in price and increasing in capacity.

The component that has the most impact on performance in a gaming computer is the video card, so budget compromises have to be between the relative costs of the GPU video card vs CPU processor vs SSD drives. Fortunately, video cards have been improving in performance, and the latest generation of NVidia Maxwell chips is particularly impressive.

The best bang for the buck on CPUs is still an entry level Intel Core i5 CPU or a 6-core or 8-core AMD FX series CPU. For the cheapest possible machine, an AMD FM2 A8 or A10 APU could be used, or one of the fast dual-core Pentium chips, but that sacrifices CPU power to the point that it can affect game-play.

Here are suggested configurations at about the $1000 price point (before tax, Canadian dollars, current to April 25 2015) In all of the configurations, we have gone with motherboards that have:

• at least two PCI-e video card slots compatible with Crossfire (or SLI) for future acceleration (with more money, you can get 2 PCI-e x16 slots with full 16 lane support on each, but at this price level, the second slot can be limited to 4 lanes).
• USB 3.0 on board
• SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) on board
• Gigabit Ethernet (1000BT)
• 4 RAM sockets with overclocked DDR3 capability, with a mximum RAM capacity of 32 GB. This allows us to get 8 GB of Dual Channel RAM installed, with room to upgrade later as budget allows.

A micro-ATX board with 2 slots can save some cash, if you are willing to live with a single PCI-e x16 slot and 2 memory sockets with 16 GB maximum, you could save up to $50

In brute computing performance benchmarks using all cores, the 3.5 GHz AMD 8-core FX-8320 out-performs the Intel i5-4440. (However in the real world we’re often in the position where not all 8 cores are utilized to the max,, and there the 4-core i5 holds its own). We have gone with a 240 GB SSD drive as a primary drive on each machine, for the speed of booting and loading.  Its easy to add an extra hard drive if you need the space for file storage.

So here are our contenders:

AMD FX 8-Core system.

The Black edition FX-8350 chip would be fun if you want to experiment with overclocking, but it adds $40 or more to the cost plus the cost of a better cooler.  (If you’re going to spend the money, the Intel i5-4670K is about $100 more, but offers about 25% better performance than the FX-8350)

Intel 4-core system.

For today’s system we are moving the i5 up to the slightly more powerful 4460 at 3.2 GHz, and going with SSD as the primary drive, and it just sneaks in under $1000 before tax.

The video card is the obvious first step to upgrade beyond the basic level. The GTX 750ti, which runs the NVidia Maxwell architecture gives a small but real upgrade in some specific games over the R7 260X $197  (the AMD card does better in some benchmarks, and in a few titles).  Plus the 750ti is very energy efficient and does not need supplemental PCI-e power connectors.

The next big step up is the GeForce GTX960, with the second generation of NVidia Maxwell GPU architecture $282.

Some GTX960 cards require one 8 pin PCI-e power connector and some need two 6 pin connectors.  Since the CM500 Elite PSU has one 6-pin PCI-e connector, the GTX960 upgrade would require either an upgrade to the stock power supply, or some adapter cables to provide connection from 4-pin peripheral power connectors.

These computer builds rely on the stock cooling fans, which is perfectly fine at the rated clocks – if you are intending to overclock, then you may be wise to look into third party CPU coolers, and the Intel Core I5 i5-4670K, 3.4GHz Unlocked “K” version of the CPU for about $67 more than the stock i5, which will push the Intel system just over $1100. For overclocking as well, there are RAM upgrades in the 1866 MHz region for not much more, and in the 2100 – 2400 MHz region for quite a lot more.

Other upgrades:

Mouse: Logitech Gaming Mouse G500 USB $79
(note that you don’t want a wireless mouse or keyboard for gaming)

Keyboard: Logitech Gaming Keyboard G110 12 programmable keys, backlighting, USB audio $96

RAM: 16 GB rather than 8 GB  Add about $100

Next time, we’ll see if we can put together a credible $600 machine.

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Feb 2014