I'm putting together a build for a friend. He's planning on playing Battlefield One, Rainbow Six Siege and similar games.
I'm trying to put something for as least money as possible.
This is what I have so far: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZyxKZ8
AMD just released their RX480, which is between $200-250 and will give you performance around, or better than the GTX 970.
Why not go with a cheaper mATX board, and then get an SSD instead of the HDD?
What mATX boards are good?
DVD drive you can find on the street, Cooler comes with the CPU... you said cheap right?
All cost savings should be put toward leveling up the GPU if possible but RX 480 4Gb will do the trick if it's all about bfb
Also, can grab cheap Windows 10 from Kinguin site for like $28.
For $200 the 480 would definitely be the better performance buy over 960 -> Should probably wait on the non-reference boards though... which might end up bumping the price up a little bit as well.
The i5 6400 is not a very good CPU overall for being an i5, get the i5 6500 or drop down to an i3 6100 which is actually fairly close in performance to the slower i5 being a 4 thread CPU at 3.9ghz vs a 4 core CPU at 3.3ghz turbo
the MSI VD boards are about the best budget 1151 boards
and get a better power supply, this one is just about the best in class
If you aren't going to wait for after market 480s pick up a 380 at $150, it's faster than a 960
and don't buy an OEM key if you're going to buy a windows key, and I'd avoid the grey market, 100% free or 100% retail for me
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/xstqYJ
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/xstqYJ/by_merchant/
CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($197.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI B150M Pro-VD Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($59.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: G.Skill NT Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($29.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($47.49 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 380 4GB NITRO Dual-X OC Video Card ($208.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case ($33.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $648.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-01 21:20 EDT-0400
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i3 can later be thrown into a server board if you want ecc support for a later nas build :p
i3-6100, stock cooler, 4gb 480 (grab an aftermarket one if you are ordering this after they drop), 8 (or 16)gb of ram, an ssd if possible, and fill in the rest.
HDD is always cheaper, even when it's slower.
Nah, he needs a stronger GPU and CPU for that. An older processor generation would do this build better while buying your friend a 970 4GB at least. And you should buy two RAM sticks at least with any motherboard
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1) The 480 performs on par with the 970 for less money.
2) 2 sticks of ram isn't necessary. Ram speed is almost never a factor in game, and only having one stick makes it much easier to upgrade ram later on.
3) An i3-6100 or an i5-6400 or something should be fine without having to bother with used parts. Used is a good way to save some cash, it just isn't something that I would recommend to a novice builder as dead or troublesome parts are more likely when going used and troubleshooting can be a real nightmare if you aren't very experienced (and usually is even if you are experienced).
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budget?
$700ish. The first build he showed me was somewhere around there
Disagree, it matters enough even if you get a large GB capacity.
Not necessarily, I mean, it's a key component for APUs, but I went with cheap-ass 16 GB DDR4-2133 MHz Memory and have no performance issues.
get windows from microsoft academy, use that 100 bucks in a better video card, for the performance of a i5 6400, you can buy an fx 8350 and make me feel proud by doing some overclocking!
i5 performance:
https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/search?q=i5+6400
fx performance:
https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/search?dir=desc&q=8350&sort=multicore_score
The AMD FX CPUs barely edge out on multithreaded applications, the FX 6300 is only 7% better in multithreading with all threads than the i3 6100. The FX 8350 barely edges out against the i5 CPUs at all. For some people and some applications, there isn't much multithreading, for example, a Pentium G3258 is more practical for applications like Dolphin emulator than an FX 9590 even. Not that I would advocate buying a CPU with a measly 2C/2T count for anything more than basic gaming.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-FX-6300-vs-Intel-Core-i3-6100/1555vs3511
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-FX-8350-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4670K/1489vs1538
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-FX-8350-vs-Intel-Core-i5-6600K/1489vs3503
Bottom line, these CPUs were okayish at launch, but they are very outdated, best bet is to wait for Zen (I am more interested in that than the GPUs right now.)