Tips Smart

A gaming PC can be a lot cheaper than a console, and you also have a lot more flexibility about your budget - you can skimp now, and upgrade to the monster rig of your dreams later if you choose.

Theres an intimidating number of choices available but we can help you to build up a budget rig on your own. Our focus is on building the cheapest gaming rig that still delivers an acceptable experience. Clearly, this machine well build will not be for the purists - well do that at a later stage - but something that you can use as a reference point if you are looking to take your gaming a little bit more seriously.

The basic considerations you need to keep in mind are a CPU, which youll typically buy from Intel or AMD, a GPU, which would usually come from Nvidia or AMD, a hard drive, and RAM. First, lets talk about some of the different choices, and then well move on to our sample configuration.

On the CPU front, AMD does not have anything compelling to offer at the moment, but the excellent Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition (the G3258), is a low-priced monster that runs beautifully on its own, and can easily exceed speeds of 4GHz when pushed beyond its official specifications.

The GPU market is constantly in flux. Prices are not stable, as Nvidia and AMD keep trying new tricks to outdo each other. Nvidias recently launched GTX 750 and 750 Ti are based on the new Maxwell core which performs well and consumes very little power.

For AMD, its less clear, but repeated price drops and some pretty interesting deals on free bundled games are promising.

RAM prices have doubled since the start of 2013, and will likely stay this way for a while. As a result, we have to allocate more of our budget to memory or change our expectations.

Hard drive prices are fairly reasonable now, but SSDs are becoming more and more tempting. An affordable SSD thats only enough for the OS and applications will still make a huge difference, but it might not fit in our entry-level builds budget.

Weve given ourselves a budget of Rs. 40,000 all inclusive. This will give us modest but consistent performance, and leave the doors open to multiple upgrades over time. Heres the best we managed to do, considering high import duties and a weak exchange rate. Note that prices fluctuate every day and vary from area to area, so you might need to tweak this a little.

If youre looking for a simple list of things to buy, then the table below has you covered. But we also talk about what you can change and tweak in this list, so read on to know more.

This basic build is a little above what wed budgeted, but you should be able to save some money by using the mouse, keyboard, monitor and PSU if you have an existing PC. Your old HDD and RAM should also be used, if possible, to get the costs even lower.

With this basic setup, you should be able to get 40-60 fps with high detail settings in most current games at the monitors native resolution. If you want to step up to HD 1080p, youll need a better GPU and monitor, which would add at least Rs. 10,000 to the budget.

Intels Core i3s are fast and dont consume a lot of power - they dont quite have the muscle of a quad-core i5 but do a decent job as far as games are concerned. Disappointingly though, the i3s cant be overclocked.

The most affordable motherboard option we were comfortable with were was MSIs H87M-E35. Youll get all the important features such as multiple USB 3.0 ports and a PS/2 port as compared to the MSI board. It also has two more RAM slots, SATA 6GBps, HDMI, and PCIe 3.0.

A year ago, you would have would have been able to fit 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM into this budget, but we have to step down to 4GB due to market forces. The same budget considerations lead us to suggest Sapphires Radeon HD 7770. It is a potent GPU for the price, and should handle gaming at 1366x768 quite well.

As expected, we cant include a solid state storagedrive, but if you already have a hard drive, you could get a small SSD to install Windows to, for quick booting.

Corsairs VS450 is a nice, affordable and stable power supply, with ample enough PCIe, SATA and Molex cables for a budget build.

If you dont have an LCD monitor already, the AOC unit weve listed is a good place to start. A 1080p monitor like Dells S2240L is a nice option for Rs.9,000 but it requires a more powerful graphics card as well.

The rest of the parts are pretty standard, and even if you choose another DVD drive or cabinet in the same budget, it should make a difference.

As far as the motherboard is concerned, you may want to step up to a more feature complete board like the Gigabyte H87M-DH3. Overclockers should consider something with the Z prefix, like MSIs Z97 PC Mate, which appears to be the cheapest 9-series chipset available. Again, this depends on what savings you can make from using parts from your older desktop, unless youre ready to expand the budget.

RAM is simple, get DDR3-1600 with timings of 9-9-9-24 or tighter, but dont pay extra for anything beyond this, because its usually not going to be worth it as far as games are concerned. G.Skill, Corsair and Kingston are good choices.

It boils down to how much RAM you want to add and how much you want to pay for it. Wed recommend 8GB at the minimum, if you can afford it. Try and buy RAM sticks in identical pairs to ensure a stable dual channel configuration.

Graphics is a highly scalable market. The more you pay, the more performance you usually get, so it comes down to how smooth you want your gaming to be and at what resolution.

While the 7770 is good till 720p resolutions, wed recommend getting at least a GTX 750 Ti for higher ones (900p or 1080p). It is priced between Rs.10,500 and 11,500 online, and we certainly wouldnt pay more.

The next step up would be an AMD R9 270X at around Rs.14k, and its a solid deal considering its basically a higher clocked Radeon HD 7870.Note that you still wont always get 60 fps at 1080p. The GTX 760 is a good way to mostly achieve that; prices start from 17k.

Finally, the R9 280X and GTX 770 are the highest wed mention in this article; both cost around 25k and provide a solid 1080p gaming experience.

As far as HDDs are concerned, Western Digital and Hitachi are known to be reliable, so just pick any, really, if you simply want a secondary storage drive. For the boot drive, pick an SSD from Intel, Samsung or Corsair, and you should be good to go.

Cabinets are 80% functionality and 20% personal taste and aesthetics. A decent cabinet can make the difference between bruised fingers and awkwardly crammed components, and a nice, clean, easily serviceable system.

While the Elite 311 will get the job done, look towards cases from Fractal Design, Antec, NZXT, Corsair or higher end cases from Cooler Master itself, like the HAF 912 Advanced.

Easily removable filters, good airflow and fan/water cooler mounts, relevant front panel ports (e-SATA will go waste, as will FireWire), a bottom PSU mount and space for cable management are all things to look out for. The case should be tall enough to accommodate the CPU cooler you want to use, and long enough for the graphics card of your choice. Removable drive bays and a CPU cut out are good ideas too.

CPU Coolers are fairly simple: From a pure functionality standpoint, the Hyper 212 EVO from Cooler Master sells for around Rs. 2,000 and is quite excellent. Noctuas Noctua NH-D14 is probably the only other air cooler you should consider; its one of the best there is (but over twice the price of the Hyper 212). Of course, smaller cases may need smaller coolers like Noctuas NH-L9i 95mm SSO2, or you may want something fancy looking like the Cooler Master V8 GTS.

Note that if youre not overclocking, the boxed cooler is usually sufficient, but if it spins up too often and is too noisy, or the CPU starts hitting temperatures above 80*C, you may want to consider getting a third party one.

Power supplies are mostly simple too. Antec, Seasonic, Corsair, and certain Cooler Master PSUs are good choices, usually. You wont usually need more than 550W for a single GPU build, unless youre using a GTX 780 Ti and Ivy Bridge-E CPU together, where it would be on the safer side to consider a 600W PSU.

Otherwise, just make sure you have the appropriate connectors (especially PCI-e for the graphics card) and that theyre long enough to route behind the motherboard tray. 80%+ efficiency is also a good thing.

With that in mind, consider the Corsair VS 550, Seasonic ECO 500 or Antec VP 550, among others. You may want a modular PSU, to reduce wire clutter and increase airflow inside the case, or for Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX enclosures. Such PSUs are appropriately marked (usually with an M somewhere in the name, like CX430M or M12II 520) and usually more expensive. Try and avoid fully modular PSUs (in which all wires can be removed), as some undesirable electrical characteristics can be more pronounced on the higher power rails with such designs.

If youre considering sinking 20k into a GPU today, we say save another 10 till the end of September and go for the GTX 880 when it launches. Itll be well worth it.Of course, it means that your budget gets a little bigger, but the difference in performance will be equally noticeable.