First Custom Gaming PC ($650)

I am currently using a Asus G74sx "Gaming" laptop. I've had it for about 4 years now, and it simply cannot handle the new games coming out. It's about time for an upgrade.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kzG7Mp

 

With the PC, I am wanting to play new games coming out like Destiny and Grand Theft Auto 5 on the best settings possible for my $600-ish budget (not including the monitor, will get into that down below.)

It would be great if any of these parts could be swapped out for something around the same price that would perform better than what I currently have on the list. I am hoping to overclock this, although I do not know much about overclocking since I have minimal knowledge on it due to never owning a Custom PC.

About the monitor; I would love for it to be 1440p but I don't think I will be able to afford that at the moment. I will also be playing games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive and I have heard that a 1ms response time really helps with games like that, but I do not know much about that.

Thanks for the help in advance. I want to make sure this PC is exactly what I'm looking for before I order it.

 

I would go 8350 as opposed to the 3258, you will get much better performance. Otherwise looks pretty good.

Will the processor be powerful enough for the gaming I am looking for? Someone told me it wouldn't be. I am very new to all this and have pretty much no knowledge of PC Parts.

Well, your part list is good so far (maybe exchange the 212 evo for a 212 plus since its cheaper, the PSU is of course overkill but very nice for the price), if you wont the using the mail in rebates you should change it though.

having a proper cooler and motherboard for a 50 $ CPU makes sense if you upgrade to an i5-4690k or so later on when your dual core isnt enough for games anymore, otherwise its probably better to go with a 6350/6300 with the stock cooler and a cheap mobo. Right now an overclocked g3258 wont affect you framerate very badly in most games, but newer games tend to be optimized for 4 cores+ more and more.

GTA5 and Destiny arent out for pc yet so.....no idea what it takes to max those out at 1080p 60 fps. If you want to play games at 1440p maxed out 60 fps you will need more than a 760 for most modern games, I have a stronger overclocked 280x for 1440p and I can use high settings with 40-50ish fps in more demanding games, stuff like tesselation that kills your fps for not a not very noticeable effect usually has to be turned off.

A 760 will do nice looking 1440p, but it will probably be with fxaa and maybe some turned down lighting effects. If you want to kinda do 1440p maxed (obviosly still not in crysis 3 and the like) and not want to upgrade the cpu later on get something like this:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hgsHpg

get the 6300 to 4.0 with the stock cooler if you can, add a used 290 (non x) with a non reference cooler as close too 200$ as you can get

 http://www.ebay.com/sch/Graphics-Video-Cards-/27386/i.html?LH_Sold=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&LH_ItemCondition=4&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sop=12&_dmd=1&_ipg=50&LH_Complete=1&_nkw=290 

and overclock that thing to 780 ti territory in 1440p.

You might also want a different case if you care about usb 3.0 btw.

 

I really shouldn't have mentioned 1440p because I can not afford that at the moment. I want to go 1080p. 

 

To be honest, I am not liking the current processor that is on my build list. Everything else I think I am comfortable with. Do you think I should maybe get an i3 or something like that? I am sort of wanting to go Intel for the CPU and Nvidia for the GPU but if I can be convinced to go AMD I might if it's benefits are worth it. 

 

Also, I would appreciate it if you could recommend me a good 1080p monitor, preferably 1ms response time and possible IPS? I don't know much about ISP and what it's benefits are.

less expensive and more than you need ... better quality IMO

Corsair Builder 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-power-supply-cx600

+1.  EVGA's NEX power supplies may be more efficient, but the voltage regulation and ripple suppression are pretty bad.

Thats what i would buy.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Dt7Y23

The i3 can be cooled quite good with stock cooler.

The r9 280 is faster and has more vram than the 760. If you could spend a little bit more you should get a SSD like the Crucial MX 100(has the best price to capacitay out there, and also performes quite good)

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-internal-hard-drive-ct256mx100ssd1

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/44ZxVn

This will get you up and gaming where you want to be, but then after a couple of months of continuing to save money, while you are able to actually play games on here at great settings, you can upgrade the CPU to an I5 and you won't even have to change the MOBO. The G3258 is perfectly fine on the stock heatsink, I've overclocked it to 4.3Ghz with the stock cooler so no worries there. So, use the G3258 for now and continue to save up for a more powerful CPU. That Pentium is a beast, it will play most games like an I7 4770k. BF4 and other multi-core optimized games will suffer, but right now there aren't that many of them out there. 

stick to a 1080p for now and when you make upgrades to CPU up to 4690K then get a 1440p and use the 1080 as your second ... just my opinion 

Maybe a different approach, but here is what I did just very recently to build a secondary gaming PC that I didn't want to spent a lot of money on:

First, I picked up two Gigabyte Windforce 3x Radeon HD 7950s from Ebay for 100€ each.
Good for starters, now I needed a Mobo and Processor. So I bought a Gigabyte 990FXA-D3 with an Athlon II X2 on it for 40€, sold the Athlon again for 20€, so the Mobo cost around 20€ in the end.
Then I got an FX-6300 for 60€ and 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance 1866Mhz DDR3 for 90€, all Ebay.

As for the Power Supply, I would not recommend going with a used one, so I bought a Corsair CS750 for around 90€ and a Thermalright HR Macho CPU Cooler for 40€.

I assembled the computer in an old case I had lying around and added two 250 GB Western Digital 7200Rpm Enterprise HDDs from an old office PC. I put these drives in RAID 0, they are Enterprise drives that are rated for 24/7 use and therefore sufficiently reliable. It doesn't match the performance of an SSD, but it's decent.

Now the thing is ready and running, the build is pretty ghetto and I will have to add some more case fans in the near future to overcome some heat problems, but take a look at the numbers.

All the parts for this rig sum up to pretty much exactly 500€ (+- some shipping cost)!

And what do you get for that?

A crossfire dual graphics setup (1100 Mhz core, 1400 Mhz RAM), with a 6-Core Processor running stable at 4,7 Ghz, 16 GB DDR3 @ 2000Mhz and 500Gb of storage. Pretty decent, isn't it?

I haven't done extensive gaming testing on it because I don't have the time at the moment, but I can tell you this much. GTA IV and DayZ are running maxed out @ 1080p with well above 60 FPS, and these games are very poorly optimized for multi-GPU configs.
(UPDATE: Far Cry 3 @Ultra 1080p with the GPUs at Stock 1000/1250 runs at ~78 FPS average)

Just a thought. It worked for me, and was a lot of fun to build.