How to Build a Cheap Gaming Computer

A little backstory

First I want to say that it took a long time reading reviews and checking prices everywhere I could find to get the best prices on all of this equipment. Newegg is a great site for research and even though I didn't end up buying any of my components from them, their user reviews gave me a lot of good data about which stuff was good and which was crap.

The first thing to do is tell you what I had before and why I replaced it.

• AMD Athlon 1700+ (1400Mhz) processor
• 768Mb Ram
• ASUS A7N266 Motherboard
• ATI All-in-Wonder 8500DV 64Mb
• 20Gb, 40Gb, and 80Gb Hard Drives
• Generic brand dual layer DVD burner
• Decent, but fairly boring case with no front ports

This machine was plenty powerful for what we needed, though it could be aggravatingly slow at times (not that it was its fault considering I usually run serveral background programs and open up to 25 or more browser and document windows at once).

The old machine still ran Windows XP and all peripherals and programs we needed except one. City of Heroes is an online game with graphics power requirements above what my machine could handle. I could play the game better on my laptop, but even then, I wasn't getting the full experience.

I decided that it was time for an upgrade and began looking around.

The Processor part 1

The processor was first because I knew that it would determine all the other components. To find out what was good currently, I used Google to search for processor comparison charts and eventually found The Mother of All CPU Charts 2005/2006 from Toms Hardware.

The extremely bored and well funded folks there put together over 50 pages of charts and statistics, but all I needed was to look at the top of the chart to see what series of processor was the most powerful. The reason I did this was to plan for future upgradability. Several years from now, when my computer is comparatively slow, I will buy the processor at the top of that chart that sells today for $600+ for under $150.

In this case, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 (dual core 64 bit Athlons) had the best over-all scores across the board. With that and AMD's reputation for having better performance for gaming, it was the winner.

The Motherboard

Choosing the motherboard was a lot tougher since I wanted it to have support for the newest technology, but also to support a lot of the older technology so I wouldn't have to buy all new devices. For example:

The Processor Part 2

You get the most for your money by choosing a board that supports the top processor, but picking the lowest end processor it supports to buy now.

After looking at the chart and deciding on the AMD 64 X2 as my future processor, I checked the motherboards and found that the variety that supported the X2 was called a Socket 939. Then I checked the specs to see which was the lowest power processor the 939 boards supported.

In this case, the single core Athlon 64 is the lowest I could go which led me to a Athlon 64 3000+. Because the 3200+ was actually the same price at the time, it was the one I eventually chose. Note that I wasn't able to finish choosing my processor until I selected my motherboard type.

Note that it is often necessary to purchase a heat sink for your processor separate from the stock model since many manufacturers include fairly cheap ones. I read many reviews that stated the include heatsink and fan with the Athlon 64s was good enough that I wouldn't have to spend another 12 to 24 dollars or more buying a replacement.

With this method, I was able to to get away with a processor for about $150 that supports the processor worth $600 (and should also support the faster X2 processors that haven't been developed yet). In five or more years from now, I can either upgrade the processor and keep my current equipment or sell this computer which will retain its value due to supporting the newest technology now.

Once again, to choose the processor, follow this process:

• Look to the performance charts to find the best of the best.
• Find the motherboards that support your chosen processor.
• Find the bottom-of-the-line processor that the same motherboard type supports

Note that if the bottom of the line processor for your board is still in the multi-hundreds of dollars price range, step down one processor generation or switch brands until the gap between the top and bottom is greater.

The Graphics/Video Card

My timing for this was interesting in that a new technology has just been released that will likely make my current card obsolete in the future. Motherboards currently have a custom slot for graphics cards that are designed to support the massive data transfer rates required for high end graphics applications (such as games). My card uses an AGP type slot, newer cards use PCI-Express.

Now this turns out to be an important choice because unlike other types of equipment slots, motherboards very rarely support two completely different graphics card types and the ones that do cost a lot of money.

I chose to stick with AGP for a lot of reasons. First was that the PCI-Express was still brand new. I was told that very few programs were written to take advantage of the new technology. Secondly, early adoptors of the PCI-e technology were flooding the market with extremely high-end AGP graphics cards for very little money. Third, this trend will continue into the near future making it possible for me to secure the most powerful AGP graphics card ever created for pennies on the dollar in just a few years.

Now that I knew that I needed an AGP card, my goal was simple: find the most powerful card I could in my budget of 50 to 80 dollars. I did some looking around an by luck managed to find one of the people I was talking about who upgraded their system and had some high end equipment lying around that they didn't want.

I got a ATI Radeon 9700 PRO 128Mb card with an upgraded heat dispersion fan for only $50! Not only was it worth over $400 just a few years ago, it's halfway up the Tom's VGA Charts VII: AGP Update Summer 2005 chart.

The Hard Drive Controller

Not long ago, Hard drives also changed to a new technology called Serial ATA (SATA). Fortunately, all new motherboards support both SATA and the older ATA hard drive technologies so I didn't really need to worry about buying a new hard drive now, I could just use my old ones.

The problem was that I'd have to leave one hard drive in my old computer to sell it which would only leave me with two. I didn't think I'd get a very good price for a computer with only a 20Gb hard drive, but I didn't want to give up my 40 or 80Gb either. So, just to see what would happen, I looked around for a SATA hard drive.

I was able to find a Maxtor 80Gb SATA hard drive for only $40 dollars so I picked it up. I transferred the operating system and programs from my current drive (the 40Gb) to the new SATA drive and then erased and put back the 40Gb in the old computer. Now I had two 80s and a 20 in my new computer and a decent sized 40Gb in the old one.

The Memory

The next decision to make was about the memory. For upgradability, I wanted to be sure the motherboard supported the current maximum of 4Gb (some boards only support 2 or 3Gb). I also wanted to find one that supported the new speedy dual channel RAM and the current technology in case I needed to buy old RAM for now before upgrading later.

I also knew I wanted at least one gigabyte of RAM and preferred to buy a single 1Gb chip to leave as many slots open for expansion as I could. However, after reading up on the dual channel memory, I realized that the best configuration for now would be 2×512 chips of dual channel memory.

I would be using two memory slots this way, but the performance boost would be worth it and I'd still have 1Gb of memory. Also, the memory was low enough in price that I didn't have to worry about buying older RAM to keep the price down.

After looking online for a few days, I found a good deal on eBay and purchased the RAM. It was brand new, a decent brand, and a great value.

The Motherboard - Finally

With the preceeding choices made, now I was ready to pick a motherboard. Based on my research and clever selection of new vs. old technology, I knew I was looking for the following characteristics:

• Support for the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 x2 processors
• An AGP graphics card slot (if it had a PCI-e also, great, but it must have AGP)
• Support for ATA hard drives and SATA hard drives
• Four RAM slots, a total supported RAM size of 4Gb, and support for dual channel RAM

Besides those, there were a few other things I was looking for:

• A minimum of 4 PCI slots - PCI slots are the white upgrade ports where you plug in upgrade cards like the ones I had to use with my old computer to add USB2 support and 10/100 networking capability (it was old enough that those weren't built into the motherboard like they are today). I wanted plenty of room to expand because this computer was designed with future upgradability in mind and because the super-cooler fan on the graphics card was so big it covered one of the PCI slots from the get-go (meaning one less for upgrades later).
• Integrated 10/100/1000 ethernet, USB2, and sound (if possible) - The more things built in, the less PCI slots I'd have to use.
• Good quality brand - I wanted it to be a high enough quality board that it wouldn't give me trouble and would last well for many years (or else all this effort would be wasted).

After looking around and seeing what was available, I decided on an ASUS brand A8V series board. There were a string of them being offered on eBay so I stalked around for a while until I got one at a good price.

The Case and Power Supply

This was nearly the hardest purchase of the whole operation. Every time I saw a case that looked good online, I would read it's reviews and find out that the power supply was weak and blew out after about a year. In cases that had decent power supplies, either the case was ugly or cost over $100.

As a compromise, I made an effort to find cases that didn't include power supplies so I could buy a quality power supply separately. This again was fruitless as nearly every case created comes with a stock power supply or cost over $100 alone.

Even more frustrating was the sheer volume of both case and power supply manufacturers. Trying to figure out what to do was extremely difficult.

The power supply

In the end, I came to the conclusion that a quality power supply was far more important than the quality of the case. Using two browsers, I looked through the lowest price power supplies on various sites while checking reviews of the brands on others.

I eventually settled on a well reviewed and feature rich Coolmax power supply with plenty of wattage for the various toys I would be running. It also had the necessary connections for my motherboard and serial ATA hard drives (make sure whatever power supply you buy supports all your various equipment).

The case

The last component to purchase was the computer case. Now that I had the power supply, it didn't matter if the model I bought had one or didn't (though if it did, that would be even better because then I could just sell the extra one).

The minimum criteria for my new case was that it had to be black, have a large clear side panel, and have front-port USB so I could easily plug in my USB thumb drives. Fortunately, there are many cases that fit that profile so it all came down to looking for one with the right "look" and trying to find one that didn't have absolutely horrible user reviews in terms of case quality.

I stumbled across Xoxide.com where they sold this case, the ventilator. The ventilator had the advantage of meeting all my requirements as well as including a side fan for free and having a very open design that would vent heat (which computers with high end processors and graphics cards tend to do.

Even though the cost of the case and power supply together came close to $100, I was satisfied that I not only got what I was looking for, but that I got good quality items without having to sacrifice extra dollars.

Fun Extras

The very last thing I bought for my new computer was this set of red and blue ATA cables for my hard drives and CD-ROM drive. I always wanted to get round cables because they are better shielded and promote better air circulation than flat cables.

These lucky finds were on clearance for only $10 each, were round like I wanted, were long enough to reach everything without any trouble (3 feet long), and were lighted! Whee! Since most round cables cost over $10 without being that long or having lights, I bought them and slapped them in my computer right away.

Along with the lighted side fan that came with my case, I have a really hot looking game computer!

The results!

Using Futuremarks's freely available graphic benchmarking utility, I scored my previous computer agains my new one. Even after switching the 64Mb card for the 9700 Pro, my old computer scored about 6700. With the new computer fully assembled, the score was now over 14,000! But meaningless numbers aside, see for yourself.

Below are two screenshots taken a few seconds apart of the same scene in City of Heroes. The one on the left is at the lowest graphics setting available in the game and is the mode I had to use in order to play with my old machine. On the right is the highest level setting available which shows obvious improvements in scenery color, effects, and animation (ok, you can't see the animation improvement, but trust me, it's there).

Click the thumbnails for full size photos to make a close-up comparison.

Now if you've been adding up prices you'll have come to $510 dollars like I did. There are two very important things missing from this price: The Operating System and a CD-ROM drive. Because I was a student not long ago, I got a spare copy of Windows XP which freed me to sell my full installtion copy with the old computer. As for the CD drive, I used a spare CD-writer I had lying around to keep CD-burning capability in the old machine while allowing me to take the nice dual-layer DVD-burner for my new machine.

The final specs for my old machine were now:

AMD Athlon 1700+ (1400Mhz) processor
768Mb Ram
ASUS A7N266 Motherboard
Generic graphics card (I kept the ATI All-in-Wonder 8500DV for other uses)
40Gb Hard Drive
Old HP CD-burner
Decent, but fairly boring case with no front ports

Now guess how much the old computer sold for… $290 dollars. If you're good with math, you'll realize that my total cost after the profit from the old machine for my super-powered new machine with all the cool toys was only $220. Not even considering that, how much computer do you get for $500 in a retail store? How long is it before it needs to be upgraded? Can you actually upgrade it when the time comes or do you need to buy something entirely new? Are you able to get a decent price for your old computer?

Chances are that the answer to all these questions are in the negative. Now you can see why building a computer can be such an attractive option.

If you study carefully and put in some time, you can get a high powered computer with plenty of future upgradability for a very small amount of money