Guild Wars 2

Hey guys—hoping to get a little help from those more experienced than I with PC hardware .

So, I am looking to do a budget rebuild on my girlfriends PC so that she can play Guild Wars 2 with me. I have done basic things (replacing optical/hard drives and installing graphics cards) but nothing on this scale and I feel that I’m a little bit out of my depth.

She has a PC currently with a dead mobo, so I can cannibalize parts from that to hopefully bring down the price of the rebuild—all in all I am hoping at the end of the day to have a system that can play PvE at around 30fps, med settings on 720 resolution. And I’m hoping to do it for under $300. A tall order, I know—but I’m hoping you guys can help me with that .

Parts available from her old PC:

Case: Micro-ATX
PSU: 300w
Mobo: DEAD
CPU: Athlon II x4 (will prob have to be replaced anyway)
GPU: None
RAM: 6gb (DDR3 1333, I think, but it doesn’t say on the sticks)
Optical Drive: DVD Burner
HDD: 1tb

I was looking at maybe picking up an a10-6800k APU and an FM2 mobo to try and keep costs down, but am concerned that most reviews tend to say they run hot and the case only has one fan (well—plus the PSU fan and the stock cooler that will come with the APU). Also—I’m a little concerned about if they could handle the game. I’ve seen youtube videos that show less powerful a8 and a10 APUs getting that type of performance even with fraps but I have also read reports of people getting as little as 15fps with low settings. Not sure what is causing the discrepancy. But with only 300w to work with, the APUs are looking like a decent option.

So…yeah. Help? I’m not married to the APU idea if someone has a better solution.

Thanks in advance for the help!

You’ll be able to use any AMD AM3/AM3+ motherboard for that but since the PSU is only 300 watt you might be able to get away with up to a GT640 Nvidia GeForce.

By far the best low power card (doesnt require aux power pin) is the radeon hd 7750. It is significantly faster than a 640 and uses less power to boot(only 45w compared to the 60-70 for the nvidia).

Specs say it need like 3-400w but runs fine on a 250- 300w psu (peak system power while playing is 150ish watts). Gets 60 fps on high in low pop areas, 30 ish in zergs/cities with a core i3 cpu.

The trinity/richland apu’s are very nice if you dont go with a dedicated graphics card, but redundant if you decide on discrete graphics. IMO the performance gain even from a low end card like the 7750 is significant enough to make them not worthwhile.

The total part cost for and i3+motherboard and a 7750 and would be around $250. You can keep costs down by going with a fx 4000 and compatible motherboard, but it offers slightly less performance but pulls alot more power, which can be significant for a 300w psu.

You can technically reuse the cpu, but the athlon II x4’s cant really handle any more than a low on the character limit. on the other hand this would reduce the cost of a build to around 125 usd(new mobo and gpu).

Video card HD7790 119@ Frys.com
Powersupply 550W PSU 59.99 (Cooler Max, or something that has high renews on newegg.com)
motherboard – AM3+, You’ll want 4 DIMM Memory Slots, and probably 2 or 3 PCI-E 16x Slots. the 990FX is a good chipset, but the boards run between 119-179 for a GOOD board. Again, use Newegg for reviews.

But if you did the board, GPU, and PSU you can come in under 300 and get exactly what you want and be able to upgrade down the road with out doing a system overhaul.

I would have brought up the Radeon HD 7750 if I believed it could run with already a nearly full system on a 300 watt power supply. We had a basic i7 4770 desktop for a week or two here and nothing could be added to it that would still allow it to boot. a Radeon HD 7750 draws more power than a 640 I’d reckon but Sirsquishy’s input here looks the best.

im running on board graphics in a new acer Desktop cost 350.00 us dollars and im running gw2 in medium no issues. good game play too even in wvw..

AMD 2.2 gig quad core 4 gigs ram AMD Radeon HD 6530

Rated total power draw of a 7750 is 55W while for a 640 its 65W. However under test conditions its pretty much a wash with a minor difference of a few watts either way. The performance on the other hand is significantly better with a 7750

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5969/zotac-geforce-gt-640-review-/12

the 7750 is by far the best low power card for gaming on the market today, in terms of power usage and performance. Hopefully amd makes a decent successor to it, since it is a bit old.

I don’t think it would run on a 300 watt system containing that Athlon quad core. Chances are it’s very much an older generation and could use more power unless that 300 watt power supply was actually of good quality because a GT 240 did not run within the computer that we had for a couple weeks. It was bottom of the barrel board and everything except the RAM, CPU, and hard drive. It refused to boot on a GT 240.

You have to keep in mind what the other components are like the hard drive, disk drive, RAM, everything.

intels are your best bet for lower power systems. you get the same performance but uses less power, which leave more power for a better graphics card. However intels are much pricier than their amd counterparts.

Wow! After getting some pretty dismal results when posting this same question on Tom’s Hardware (“just save up and get an i5 and a 670—it’s worth it”) I’m blown away by how helpful you guys are being. Thanks!

So after reading all the responses and doing some digging around online everything I found said that the 640 drew a little more power than the 7750, with the a10-6800k drawing the least power overall. With that in mind, I jumped on and threw a couple of comparatively-priced parts lists together. I was hoping your guys could jump on and take a look at these and tell me which avenue would yield better results in Guild Wars 2 (my gf isn’t a big PC gamer generally so this will realistically be the most taxing game she plays).

My first build was for the original a10-6800k I was looking at. I heard it ran hot, so I threw in a better cpu cooler and some higher speed memory, as I heard that makes a big difference due to the architecture of the APU.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/234FK

The second build was based around the i3 and 7750 model you guys were discussing. This one would be sticking with the lower speed 1333 memory and stock cpu cooler, but my understanding is that in an intel build these aren’t as important as with the APUs.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2350T

Thank you so much for your help on this guys—am really looking forward to getting this together so that I can play this with her .

If u can…
Ether get the i3 3250 (2core + HT, 55watt, 3.5ghz fixed) or the i5 3470 (4 core no HT,77watt, 3.2-3.6ghz dynamic)

You want to get the best clock speed u can. Preferably on a native 4core CPU, but 2core + HT can be ok though not optimal.

Get a Corsair CX430 seeing as a good PSU is the heart of any build and it’s only $20. Not knowing what the 300W PSU is makes me rather unwilling to recommend its further use.

As for part selection, go for the i3 over the APU.

@SolarNova will definitely look at the i3 3250. I was looking at the cheaper i5’s but dismissed them on both cost and power concerns. Will give them another look.

@Fermi I had thought about replacing the PSU myself, but it’s one more thing and I am on a pretty tight budget. Plus, as far as I can tell the PSU you suggest is an ATX PSU. Will it fit into a Micro-ATX case? And an HP case at that (I know they LOVE proprietary fittings)?

Thanks again for your help, guys, The discussion is really helping me clear up where my focus should be.

Hmph. Knowing that it’s an HP, I would actually be rather wary of it fitting. However, knowing that it’s an HP, I’d be even more wary of that old PSU. Even though it’s labeled ‘300W’, it might not even be safely able to supply that much.

The case’s ‘designation’ shouldn’t matter as to whether or not the PSU will fit, though; (at least with custom cases) if it’s any sort of ATX, it’ll take an ATX PSU.

And, although it’s another part on a tight budget, the PSU is the one thing that you don’t even want to skimp on. If the PSU goes, you could potentially ruin everything else in the computer, making it well worth it to spend the $20 or whatever on a quality one.

Do you know the specific model number of the HP?

Yeah changing a psu on a hp should be ok, but not guaranteed especially in the length dimension. I would suggest buying from a retailer with a good return policy. Tbh if you are gonna change the psu, might as well buy a new case as well.

Also be careful about upgrading motherboards on a pre built box like a hp. A lot of times the OS is locked (OEM license vs retail) and you might have to get a new os. If that’s the case you might be better off just buying a new low end computer (esp with black friday coming up) and sticking in a 7750 since the big builders are cheaper at the low end due to higher purchasing power. Total cost should be similar as you proposed build + 100 for windows. Just another option to keep in mind.