DIY Gaming PC for $800 or Less
ExtremeTech also have another of their Build It features, this time putting together a very nice Gaming PC for around $800. Considering that some people are spending 3 or 4 times that much for their high-end gaming machines, I think that's an excellent compromise between price and power.
For that kind of money, you get an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU on an eVGA nForce4 SLI motherboard, 1Gb of DDR400 RAM, a SoundBlaster Audigy sound card, an eVGA GeForce 7600 GT CO graphics card, a 160Gb hard drive, and even a DVD burner. Plus a few other bits and pieces, although the $800 price tag doesn't include speakers or a monitor.
If I were to build it, I'd probably go with a regular DVD player instead of the burner, on-board sound, and I'm pretty sure I could dig up some speakers, a monitor, a case, and a keyboard and mouse that would do the job. So even paying in Aussie dollars, I might be able to build the thing for under $1000.
One thing that I thought was really interesting was comparing this $800 Gaming PC to the one they built last year. Not only does this year's model have a lot more bang for the buck, but I wondered if I were to try to build the one they recommended last year, would prices have dropped enough to do it for around US$500 or so. And from what I can tell, the answer is....probably not. It seems that, for whatever reasons, prices for some of this older gear just don't drop that quickly.
To be honest, I'm not into computer games enough to want to build a Gaming PC. But with the kids getting older, I can see that it won't be long before our home computers are going to have to run a lot more than Office apps and a web browser.
For that kind of money, you get an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU on an eVGA nForce4 SLI motherboard, 1Gb of DDR400 RAM, a SoundBlaster Audigy sound card, an eVGA GeForce 7600 GT CO graphics card, a 160Gb hard drive, and even a DVD burner. Plus a few other bits and pieces, although the $800 price tag doesn't include speakers or a monitor.
If I were to build it, I'd probably go with a regular DVD player instead of the burner, on-board sound, and I'm pretty sure I could dig up some speakers, a monitor, a case, and a keyboard and mouse that would do the job. So even paying in Aussie dollars, I might be able to build the thing for under $1000.
One thing that I thought was really interesting was comparing this $800 Gaming PC to the one they built last year. Not only does this year's model have a lot more bang for the buck, but I wondered if I were to try to build the one they recommended last year, would prices have dropped enough to do it for around US$500 or so. And from what I can tell, the answer is....probably not. It seems that, for whatever reasons, prices for some of this older gear just don't drop that quickly.
To be honest, I'm not into computer games enough to want to build a Gaming PC. But with the kids getting older, I can see that it won't be long before our home computers are going to have to run a lot more than Office apps and a web browser.
<< Home