Guild Wars 2

As the title says i am looking to build an affordable destkop gaming pc that can get 60-80fps normal play and possibly a good 30-40 in wvw.

Not expecting miracles here, but you all know far more than i do.

Graphics card/motherboard/RAM/SSD/Processor. That works.

Thanks in advance. Links to sites welcome.

Intel i5 3570 / 4570 (if you want fourth)
8 GB DDR 1600
GTX 660 / AMD Radeon HD 7850/7870 (7770/7790 also good choices)
650 watt PSU
Mid tower PC case (60-80 dollar variety Cooler Master)
120 GB SSD from any of the major brands like Mushkin, Kingston, OCZ, etc
500 GB Seagate Barracuda
Asus motherboard with Z77 chipset
or equivalant motherboard for 4th gen Z87
Standard DVD drive (woo, 20 bucks)

And of course, Windows. If you do not already have a product key for Windows 7 or 8 or whichever. Or you have a legal activator and a copy of either.

The cheapest build here should run the game fairly well (if a 7770 or 7790 Radeon HD is selected for graphics) and should only run you about… 800 dollars?
Although ‘Gaming’ PC for outside of GW2, you’d see good results from like a GTX 650 TI BOOST and a Radeon HD 7790/7850, 7870 if you want to stretch that far.

Also apologies for not specifying exact parts via links but this should help give an idea!

Note: I left out the K to indicate non-overclockable processors. Why? A bit more money saved. Affordable gaming PC is the topic!

I bought :-

ADMI AMD Bulldozer FX-8150 8 Core 3.60GHz – Asus M5A78L-M USB3 HDMI Motherboard – Patriot 8GB 1600MHz Dual Channel DDR3 VIPER 3 BLACK MAMBA RAM Memory Bundle
£245.

OCZ 850W ZX Series PSU 80+
£116

60GB Chronos
£60

XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 HD-687A-ZHFC Graphics Card 1 GB PCI-e GDDR5 Memory DVI HDMI 1 GPU
£100

Installed these in an existing case with a HD already running Win 7.

I got reasonable results even with Eyefinity using triple monitors (3 of Acer G246HLBBID 24 inch Widescreen LED Monitor £100 each)

I later upgraded to a XFX Radeon HD 7950 Graphics Card 3GB £250 – the improvement was not a lot – only slightly better resolution on the 3 monitor setup but the card runs a lot cooler and quieter.

The most important thing Danno you need to build an affordable gaming PC is having reasonable expectations.

Of course you didn’t define what’s “affordable” to you. Also you didn’t mention resolution you wish to play at. I’m sure we could come up with a very affordable gaming PC that plays at 1280×720@60fps at the performance setting.

Hi Danno,

As you can see, I am also in the process of building a new gaming PC, and I can tell you the people here are very helpful.

However, you will need to give us more information about your goals. What’s your budget? What will you use it for (other games, video editing, etc)? Do you want to overclock? Are you ok with upgrading the PC in 1-2 years or do you want it to last for 5 years?
Anything you can tell us helps, however @Avelos gave you an excellent $800 configuration (similar to what I’m getting), you can use that to decide where you wanna go from there.

Since you also requested links, here are a few websites I found really useful:

PCPartPicker -If you are lucky enough to live in NA, you can find the best deals here. Also, it’s really handy that you can just copy links to all the parts here (BBCode) or on Reddit.
Build a PC subreddit - Speaking of Reddit, this is a huge source of comments on basically all kinds of PC configurations. Of course these are not professional review, but for newbies like me, they provided some useful tips.
Tom’s Hardware - I admit I’m biased, but this is probably the most useful site. The reviews and charts are great, and I’ve found dozens of forum topics containing the same questions I had, answered by trusted experts.
AnandTech - Good benchmarks, easy way to compare 2 similar CPUs/GPUs.
TechPowerUp - Also a great source for reviews.

Of course this is very arbitrary, and I probably left out some important ones, but you will stumble across those anyway.

Good luck!

my budget would be 5-7 hundred dollars. I am on a fixed income and even that’s pricey. I will be even scouring craigslist and possibly ebay for parts if i have to (like computer cases) It’ll take me 2-4 months to build the PC. Overclocking wouldnt be a bad idea for a later date, but mostly i just want to run the games i have now like GW2/SWTOR/TSW/and any other game that comes out in the next 1-2 years. I could upgrade a little in the time frame. i guess.

I’m kind of an idiot when it comes to building a computer anymore. I was top notch back in windows 98 days, but things have changed so much.

So if anyone could help me build a system for even under my budget i would be appreciative

Danno.5269:

As the title says i am looking to build an affordable destkop gaming pc that can get 60-80fps normal play and possibly a good 30-40 in wvw.

Not expecting miracles here, but you all know far more than i do.

Graphics card/motherboard/RAM/SSD/Processor. That works.

Thanks in advance. Links to sites welcome.

I’ve read the thread and here is what I think…you won’t be able to get the 40FPS @ lowest WvW detail, and lowest culling (seeing the most amount of people) in WvW zerg battles. Try as you might, even beastly processors like the i7 3930K simply can’t push the game fast enough. You can see 30FPS though if you overclock. You said you were an enthusiast back in the good old days, its time to get back into the ring :p

Since overclocking is necessary to meet your requirements, I would recommend an i5 4670K and get a nicer cooler for it. We’re talking something like a Noctua DH-14 or an AiO water cooling unit, like Corsair’s H60.

After that you’ll want to grab some RAM, 8GB is standard for gaming now a days. Speed, get 1600Mhz+ with timings like 9-X-X-X.

You’ll need a nice power supply to power everything, for that I would recommend a Corsair power supply as I used to buy cheapo units that never seemed to last beyond a year. I’ve been running this same supply for 5 years now, no issues. 650W should be plenty.

Case, grab whatever for now. I was never big into choosing cases.

Graphics card, At least a GTX 650Ti boost for Nvidia. If you have the money, grab a GTX 760 or HD 7870XT.

Grab a motherboard that suits your needs, Gigabyte and ASUS are the reliable players today IMO. All my current and previous boards have been from them, and I have had zero issues with them. Even with some mal-use and sending the boards through electrical surges resulting in some leaking capacitor juice. My first ASUS board still worked till my P4 just wasn’t enough and ditched the LGA 478 club for the LGA 775 club.

Likely an SSD is out of budget at this point, keep it in the back of your head for a future upgrade. For now, stick with hard drives, anything will really do now a days.

After all that you’re likely beyond budget if you don’t find some slick deals. Since you’re building over time, you can wait for some nice deals.

If you want the best bang for your buck, you should get PC that you can overclock. I don’t see any other way to achieve your FPS-goal within you budget. You should probably get a 3570k (only $5 more than a 2500k!) and the cheapest, decent Z77 motherboard. Use PCPartPicker to find combo deals. Also get a good, cheap CPU cooler for OC’ing, like the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO.
If you don’t want to OC, you can save a few bucks, but you will definitely not reach your FPS-goal.

I think even a 120GB SSD is out of the question for now. I’m building a $800 rig and still decided to postpone buying one for budgetary reasons.

Based on your OP, I’m assuming that you have a PSU (gonna need at least 500W), a case, and an HDD. So whatever money you have left will decide what GPU you should get.

Seriously you shouldn’t build a PC around Guild wars 2, most of the issues are server side. I have a GTX 770 and roaming around I can get up to 154fps with everything on max, average is around 100, 70 in busy places like LA. In WvW I average 60fps, average fights around 30-50 big zergs it will drop to 18 so you see even a $400 vid card doesn’t help. As for RAM 1333 and 1600 there is no performance difference. SSD is nice for load times but that’s all. (FYI even on SSD there’s still a 5 second wait lol)

The biggest thing to look out for is the motherboard make sure the chipset is up to date and upgradable you don’t want to be stuck with a board that doesn’t support newer cpu’s and such.

all this seems like mumbo jumbo lol Is there any way you could use the pc builder sites and help me out a bit?

Much appreciated

Behellagh.1468:

The most important thing Danno you need to build an affordable gaming PC is having reasonable expectations.

Of course you didn’t define what’s “affordable” to you. Also you didn’t mention resolution you wish to play at. I’m sure we could come up with a very affordable gaming PC that plays at 1280×720@60fps at the performance setting.

That would be a fine resolution for me.

Also 30-40 is unrealistic in wvw. I’d be fine with just 15-25 actually. Where its not a slide show

Your best bet is to go to somewhere like Tiger Direct..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=6&cm_re=Homepage-_-Spot%2025-_-CatId_6

Or NCIX or something like that. You can go to their site and see their prebuilt machines, most of these site allow you to customize and the prices are cheaper the say best buy. Then go check out the benchmarks on how they perform like CPU and GPU and whatever. Then build your PC on their site, if it’s in your budget go for it, if not. grab the pieces from craigs list. You’ll have to do some research I can’t tell you what to buy.

Okay here is what i am looking for on http://pcpartpicker.com/.

CPU quad core i3 or AMD equiv
A motherboard and processor that can be overclocked with a fan for the extra cooling. Motherboard must have 8 gigs of ram but upgradable to 16 if choose (if that’s too pricey 8 will be fine).
Hard drive. I just need a fast accessing hard drive. Whether it be SSD or not.
Video card that can handle many modern games at a fair price.
I don’t know what kind of power supply to get. Or what kind of case to get. Just as long as it’s affordable im on board.

I dont want mega super computer. Just something much better than this crappy laptop.

What about this ? http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1aTmr

Danno.5269:

What about this ? http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1aTmr

Where do I start.

1st the power supply that comes with that case is ancient crap. It’s also lying ancient crap as the maximum usable wattage for 3.3, 5 and 12 volts is only 330 watts. Reputable PSU manufacturers would call that a 350 watt power supply (20 watts for standby 5 volt rail and the -5, -12 rails). It also only provides about 190 watts or so at 12 volts which is pretty low. The PSU will support the CPU, just not a CPU AND a 60-70 watt video card like the one you picked.

A 32GB SSD, unless being used as a hybrid cache to a regular hard drive, is simply to small for even Windows 7/8. For that price you can get a 250-320GB 7200RPM conventional hard drive.

Unclear how much better that CPU cooler is over the stock one AMD ships with the CPU.

Monitor only has an analog VGA input, no DVI or HDMI inputs. The next three 20", 1600×900, $90 monitors the Acer, the Hannspree and the Dell at pcpartpicker all come with both VGA and DVI inputs. DVI is so much clearer.

Now assuming you did have the power for a HD 6670, you will want one that uses GDDR5 memory, not DDR3. If price is an issue always choose the 1GB GDDR5 over the 2GB DDR3. Slow video memory is like attaching ankle weights to a sprinter. Sure 2GB sounds like an upgrade over 1GB but any performance you may gain by having more video memory is overwhelmingly wiped out by having less than half of the memory bandwidth.

Memory you picked while fast had slow timings, Cas 11. Cas 9 or lower is better.

So here are my tweaks to your pcpartpicker.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1aVTo

Changed out the case/crappy PSU combo for a case and good PSU.
Picked a Cas 9 memory instead of a Cas 11.
Swapped from a 2GB DDR3 to a 1GB GDDR5 video card.
Swapped the monitor for one with a DVI connector.
Swapped out the too tiny SSD for an 10x larger conventional HD.

Yeah Belellagh seems pretty good remember you’re on a budget, also that CPU uses a FM2 socket so you’ll have an Fm2 board, there are no high end processors for FM2 that I know of,, then again I’m an itel guy. Just letting you know if you ned to upgrade the cpu you might have to get a new board.

I was thinking about swapping the A10/FM2 for a FX/AM3+ (L3 cache in the FX will help some). Not sure how much more performance this would buy (also upped the memory to -1866).

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1aWUx

I like the idea of dual graphics, I’m just not sure its there for every game.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1639491/amd-a10-5800k-hd6670-dual-graphic-hd7790.html

Personally, I only see gaming processors on the AM3+ line for AMD, APUs I don’t think were really meant to game. I wouldn’t expect this PC to run games well now, let alone the next couple years you have it. Do yourself a favor and grab at least an FX 4300 and an AM3+ socket motherboard. Then, your upgrade paths are decent, either upgrading to more cores and slightly higher speeds this generation, waiting around for the FX 9350 monster CPU, or waiting until the next generation AM3+ processors come out. With FM2 you’ll likely see an upgrade path to a marginally better APU like the 7800K, which isn’t very exciting.

Then instead of dual-graphics with a 6670 (gross), you can grab at least a GTX 650Ti or HD 7790. Those are the minimum I would recommend playing Guild Wars 2 on, the cards to get to really play Guild Wars 2 would be the GTX 660 or GTX 760 or HD 7870XT if you have money. Those cards are at least future proof for a few years.

I’m assuming your budget is at a limit that Intel isn’t worth noting.

APUs can game a kitten sight better than Intel’s and when push comes to shove and you are on a really tight budget.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7032/amds-richland-vs-intels-haswell-gpu-on-the-desktop-radeon-hd-8670d-hd-4600/2

So where is all that CPU horsepower gets you in games while using your integrated GPU Haswell?

Yes, it’s relative. How many people try to run a game on an Intel HD 2000/2500/3000 and come to the conclusion that PC gaming sucks. APUs changed that by putting a “real” GPU on chip and for the last few Intel generations stomped Intel.

Sure we are talking around HD 5550 performance levels but for someone on a very tight budget who can’t build their own rig, it’s not a bad compromise. I think of it as a way to get a PC that can play games OK under your parent’s nose if they are getting you a new PC to start college.

Okay i altered. What are y’alls thoughts on this one. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1aYIs

You are saving $11 for slower memory with slower timings (DDR3-1600 Cas 11 Vs DDR3-1866 Cas 9).

Cas is a delay needed to prepare the memory can be read or written to. Taking the speed of the two memory types into consideration as well, the delay is reduced by 30% and then memory is transferred 16% faster.

True, in the end we are talking less than a few percentage points of improvement in gaming, maybe 3-4%.

If you have 2-4 months like you noted then I simply wouldn’t recommend setting anything in stone yet. That is plenty of time to find deals on much better components than those you have outlined in your pcpartpicker list.

I also noticed that in your last list you had a mobo from MC (micro center). If you happen to live anywhere near one of their retail stores, they have a mobo/cpu combo deal that’s consistently a better deal than anywhere else.

That said I would suggest you start paying attention to deal sites. Slickdeals.net being an example. From a deal site you should be able to get the most bang for you buck over the course of 2-4 months.

Also note you will need a copy of an OS if you don’t already have one….something to remember.

For gaming you won’t notice much if any difference between 1600 and 1866, and as for a better deal in 2-4 months…there’s always a better deal in 2-4 months just like HD TV’s technology keeps moving forward so… but yeah prices will go down in that time.

I did say it wasn’t much. But there’s something about picking Cas 11 memory for DDR3-1600 that bothers me like an itch on that spot on your back you can’t quite reach. It’s like nails on a black board.

Upgrading to Cas 9, DDR3-1600 is less than $4.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-memory-bls2kit4g3d1609ds1s00

Danno.5269:

Okay i altered. What are y’alls thoughts on this one. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1aYIs

You are getting a 320GB Caviar Blue with 16MB cache for $60, when you could get a 1TB Caviar Blue 64MB for only $65.

Behellagh.1468:

APUs can game a kitten sight better than Intel’s and when push comes to shove and you are on a really tight budget.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7032/amds-richland-vs-intels-haswell-gpu-on-the-desktop-radeon-hd-8670d-hd-4600/2

So where is all that CPU horsepower gets you in games while using your integrated GPU Haswell?

Yes, it’s relative. How many people try to run a game on an Intel HD 2000/2500/3000 and come to the conclusion that PC gaming sucks. APUs changed that by putting a “real” GPU on chip and for the last few Intel generations stomped Intel.

Sure we are talking around HD 5550 performance levels but for someone on a very tight budget who can’t build their own rig, it’s not a bad compromise. I think of it as a way to get a PC that can play games OK under your parent’s nose if they are getting you a new PC to start college.

Yes, AMD’s APUs do beat out Intel’s CPU+iGPU, but that isn’t what I was getting at… His budget allows him to go up to 700 dollars if its worth it. Newegg has the FX 8320 for 145 right now, so swapping the processor out for double the cores for an extra 20 bucks is worth it. However, since nothing is set in stone since its going to be a buy-over-time thing, you might be able to find something better; just a thought is all.

Since you’re going to be on a slow build schedule, you can definitely do better than a 6670. I stand by my previous post about graphics cards. The performance difference between the 6670 and a graphics card around 150 like the GTX 650Ti Boost or a HD 7790 is worth it.

Other than a marketing term, what’s the difference between AMD’s APUs and what Intel offers? I find it odd that you defined Intel’s offerings as “CPU+iGPU” when that’s exactly what AMD’s been offering under their APU banner.

AMD’s sin was designing a CPU family under the assumption that in the future all software will be written to be multithreaded, CPUs will be under a lot of thread load and that if heavy math was needed then that code would be running on the GPU under OpenCL or some equivalent. Sadly for AMD the future they saw isn’t here yet and may not be for some time to come. Oops, toss it in with personal robot man servants and flying cars.

Behellagh.1468:

Other than a marketing term, what’s the difference between AMD’s APUs and what Intel offers? I find it odd that you defined Intel’s offerings as “CPU+iGPU” when that’s exactly what AMD’s been offering under their APU banner.

AMD’s sin was designing a CPU family under the assumption that in the future all software will be written to be multithreaded, CPUs will be under a lot of thread load and that if heavy math was needed then that code would be running on the GPU under OpenCL or some equivalent. Sadly for AMD the future they saw isn’t here yet and may not be for some time to come. Oops, toss it in with personal robot man servants and flying cars.

Jesus call it whatever, there is no argument here between Intel and AMD and never was…

Sorry, I thought you were bashing AMD by implying that Intel’s offerings was a “real” CPU with a joke GPU (iGPU as you called it) simply tacked on while AMD’s APU is a gimmick. After all Intel’s GPUs have been embarrassingly weak since the original i740 and the original inclusion in the Clarkdale series was to drive nVidia and AMD out of Intel motherboard chipset market.

Oh because having an AMD / Intel fight is really going to help OP. Good job guys.

Not really a fight. I’ll still say that going Intel is the only way for gaming where the CPU is a factor and not the GPU (like Metro). It’s just I understand where AMD was going with there FX module architecture and it has merit, just not great for gaming. Plus it’s not like Intel has an inexpensive quad core like AMD. And really it’s been that way for years now. If you can afford it go Intel, if you can’t go AMD.