A Really Good Budget PC For Under R5000

With the recession going on, and a general economic downfall atmosphere; I have decided that everyone deserves to game. Because, well, at least gaming keeps your spirits up. We are now going to look at what goes into a budget gaming PC, and why.

Do take note that we will only be building the box — we hope that you have a screen, keyboard and mouse, etc.

The PC is built with the mindset of enjoying big explosions, some stunning graphics and an all round good gaming experience. We will be going with a bang for buck parts (recession mentioned above) scheme. I will include 2 sets of parts one for AMD fanboys, and one for Intel.

CPU

The CPU is the brain of the PC, so you don’t want to have a slow brain messing things up. Remember, this is a budget PC so no i5’s or i7’s as they just end up making the cost rise too much. Forget the famous dual-core vs quad core battle as we will be going with a dual-core for 2 reasons: 1 it is cheaper, and 2 the difference is not that great enough to warrant us using a quad core.

When looking at the boards, I tried to find one that had a Gigabit Ethernet, on-board sound and maybe an on-board VGA. Unfortunately Intel’s prices are the not greatest on the lower end stuff.

Contenders:

From AMD: for R847 we have the AMD 6000+
From Intel: for R1064.65 we have a Core2Duo 2.8

Motherboard

The motherboard very important. It is the body, and if the body weak it will slow the whole setup from top to bottom. AMD seem to change their sockets a lot, so we need something that will be able to handle the extra power.
From AMD: R752 we have an ASUS board (Onboard VGA 256mb)
From Intel: R747.00 we have a MSI board (unfortunately not as great as the top board)

RAM

With the DDR3 introduction, the price drop for DDR2 800 has been significant. Remember that you can never have enough RAM (especially if you get it cheap). We got 4gigs here, and this is because most systems run that nowadays.

XP Machine: R234 for a single 2GB stick
Vista, or W7: R777 OCZ 2 x 2GB

Graphics Card

Now the part that makes this the gaming PC.

If we go to low you will be playing Call of Duty in perma slow-mo, and if we go to high we bust the budget. We need to find something that just right for this PC. Remember, this is the single part that can make the biggest difference in your gaming experience.

I have chosen the ATI card as the leader,  as NVIDIA has not yet released a low end card with the modern features in it. The lower end ATI cards are definitely worth the cash. As you may notice the NVIDIA card is cheaper, but for that extra R90 you are getting a card which is faster by almost 100 MHz. Oh, and it has DDR5 memory.

From ATI: ATI 4770 for a killer price off R984.00
From NVIDIA: NVIDIA 9600GT for R897.40

Hard Drive

This is the second easiest without a doubt. You will be taking a 1 terabyte. Why you may ask? Well in this age where game sizes are growing you will definitely need the space. A terabyte HDD also sells very cheap nowadays, and they can be picked up for around R700-R900. We spent a bit more here, but this is important as you can always re-use this. I included 2 prices here, the first is for the TB — if you got the cash –, while the second is for a 500GB.

Seagate Barracuda for R798.00
Seagate Barracuda for R498.00

DVD Drive

This is the easiest. You would not really need the DVD writing capabilities as flash drivers are taking over, so just a normal DVD drive would do fine. It will most be used to just install your games or run the odd DVD off it. Keep in mind if you shop around a bit more, you could pickup a DVD writer for about R50-R100 more.

SATA DVD Drive for R256.02

Case & PSU

This is our skin for our little beast. We want something that comes with a PSU, as the power unit does get a bit expensive. Moreover, we also want something that looks neat. I have gone with the iSonic as it is cheap and has a 400w PSU which should handle our setup.

iSonic for R219.63

Total Cost: R3704 — R4846

Please do note that if you shop around you may get bit better prices on some parts.