building the kid a low-end gaming PC for xmas

GORDON
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Post by GORDON »

Are on-mobo graphics chips to the point yet where a gamer could forego a graphics card?

Looking to keep total price under $500, and the monitor is 130 and windows license is 100.
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Post by Leisher »

Depends what games he'll be playing.

I don't think he'll be playing high end games with graphics maxed out, so he should be fine.

Keep in mind that Minecraft runs on iPhones...
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Post by GORDON »

LOL, Supcom2. Supcom will probably be the hardest on the machine performance-wise.

I hope I can get a 4 core i5 chip at the minimum and 4 gb ram. I may be dreaming.
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Post by Cakedaddy »

$500 is going to be TIGHT if the monitor and Windows is coming out of it. As far as graphics, not for high frame rate fps games. But, Sims 3 and stuff will work fine. Supccom 2 will have to be turned down, definitely. LoL should work. I played that on a 5+ year old laptop with crap graphics.

There are benchmarking sites that would give you frame rates and settings info for various games on various graphics cards, including integrated Intel HD 4000, 5000, etc.
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Post by TheCatt »

Leisher wrote:Depends what games he'll be playing.

I don't think he'll be playing high end games with graphics maxed out, so he should be fine.

Keep in mind that Minecraft runs on iPhones...
Just yell if you need more Windows.

I probably have a spare 19" flatscreen IPS Dell monitor if you want?
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Post by GORDON »

Looks like the dual-core i3s are more in the price range I want.... most software runs pretty good on just 2 cores, right? Been a long time since I had fewer than 4.
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Post by GORDON »

TheCatt wrote:Just yell if you need more Windows.
If you're offering will accept. I have no problem saving a hundred bucks a pop.
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Post by TheCatt »

GORDON wrote:
TheCatt wrote:Just yell if you need more Windows.
If you're offering will accept. I have no problem saving a hundred bucks a pop.
I'm offering. It's MSDN, I've got keys for everything. though, not as many as they used to give.
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Post by GORDON »

Awesome. AS LONG AS YOU WOULD NEVER USE THEM, of course. Otherwise I would feel obligated to pay for them. ;-)

Mobo option 1. Asus P8B75, upgradable to i5 and i7. $68

CPU option 1. Core i3 4370 $160

Video card option 1. EVGA GT 740 $100

Memory Option 1 2x4GB DDR3 1600 $90


So that's $420 and I still need a power supply, case, and monitor. Hmmm.




Edited By GORDON on 1410568722
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Post by TheCatt »

I would only use Home Premium licenses if I ran out of Ultimate ones :)
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Post by GORDON »

And a hard drive. Yikes.

But that'll only be about 50. He doesn't need a huge one.
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Post by Cakedaddy »

I'd guess you'd be hard pressed to find a $50 hard drive.

Skip the video card for now. Buy that upgrade for his birthday or something. Killing the PC to put a meh video card in seems counter productive. What's he playing that would benefit from the video card at the cost of everything else?
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Post by Cakedaddy »

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Post by GORDON »

Great system at that price...

A refurb....

What does "debranded" mean?

And the first thing I would do is erase win8.
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Post by TheCatt »

Debranded just means they took the HP nameplates off. They do that for monitors too.

I probably have spared hard drives around in various sizes. Let me check.
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Post by TheCatt »

I have 4 spare hard drives I can part with:
2x500GB
2x1TB

3.5" SATA, 7200 RPM
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Post by Leisher »

I can probably give you a monitor for nothing.

And keyboard.

And optical mouse.
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Post by Cakedaddy »

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Post by GORDON »

Out of stock.
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Post by Cakedaddy »

http://www.newegg.com/Product....&cm_sp=

Not familiar with ITX though. Looks really small. Could be cool. Not sure if you could put a video card in that PCIe slot either. I'll let you do the research to see if this would work for you.

OH, and when you add it to your cart, you'll see that it also comes with 8GB RAM.




Edited By Cakedaddy on 1410747661
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