I have a pretty low spec pc! It was mainly to have a desktop to do basic stuff, Internet, productivity (office, photoshop and indesign, viewing movies/tv shows) and it's fine for that, but from time to time I really want to play some games, majorly and it "upset me" not being able to play Firewatch...
My pc specs are:
Intel Pentium G3220
Kingston 8,00GB DDR3 CL10 1600
MSI B85-G41 PC Mate
1 TB WD blue
I really wanted to start playing some games, I'm on a tight budget, what are your thoughts to a upgrade? Parts, tips, etc...what to buy, what not to buy. Please some enlightenment, I'm from Portugal, so I don't have access to newegg stuff or craiglist...
i notice theres no GPU in that list, if thats the case, to get going thats all you really need. ideally, a better CPU would helpful but not essential, an SSD also would help with general system performance.
but for getting into gaming, a GPU is basically all you need.
so, what is your budget?
what wattage is the power supply? does it have any 6/8pin connectors spare?
thats really important as what you dont want to do is buy a graphics card and find your PSU doesnt support it.
It really depends on what you are able to spend. But i would say gpu + cpu upgrade if you want to do it right. Something like a Haswell i5-4570 / 4670 etc. And then a gpu you could afford. You might be able to find a Haswell i5 used for cheap somewhere nowdays.
Yup, if you want to game you're basically going to need a gpu... depending on your budget and target settings the exact gpu will change to fit your needs.
As far as the CPU is concerned... yeah you probably want to upgrade to something with at least 4 threads (i3 or better). Haswell is a good choice based on your motherboard... you could get a slightly cheaper sandy/ivy bridge chip but potentially need a different motherboard (can't remember exactly which socket each generation uses). As far as ram is concerned you have plenty for gaming... more down the line isn't a bad idea but 8gb is certainly enough to get you going (I've never had any problems with my 8gb kit).
There are people here who would be able to pick exact parts if you gave an actual number for the budget... a "tight budget" for you may be a vastly different number than a "tight budget" for me.
I had very similar parts sitting around that I put together for a friend who doesn't have much money.
The only thing I had to buy him was a GTX 1050 Ti graphics card (since his PSU wasn't that good).
I did need to overclock the G3258 to 4ghz (probably could have gone higher but I had problems with data corruption the last time I did that).
After that, this machine was able to play ARK survival evolved at high or Epic settings on a 1680x1050 monitor at 30fps average. If you know anything about how demanding ARK can be, that's actually something.
The CPU will hold things back occasionally but it was relatively infrequent and brief dip in FPS in some situations. If you can put up with that, you should be ok for a GPU for now and a CPU later as funds allow depending on the game you want to play.
That CPU isnt great but it should do ok for most basic gaming. So long as the game doesnt require 4 threads anyway. I would recommend the same as everyone else though. Get a GPU.
Yes I don't have one, it's the Intel HD something that the CPU has...for the most part of what I to it's just fine really.
Yes, I forgot to say that, sorry, It's a Silvestone 300W silent with a 6 pin connector spare (brought it from a friend of mine)
I think that the 1050 or 1050TI is a good one, not super expensive, I'm afraid that with this CPU it would bottleneck...but it's going to be one thing of a time.
Here the used market it's not very strong, the prices aren't like some videos from the US/Canada people that can make huge deals with a little money...
The "problem" is that here in Portugal, the used market isn't great, I have tried to search for an i5-4570 and it's not very cheap....have to keep looking.
For the fast solution, probably is to buy a GPU and later upgrade the CPU if I can get a good deal on a good i5
Yep that would basicly be a good way to go. Maybe wenn the time is getting better, you might be able to buy a nicer cpu aswell. Not sure how the market in portugal is, but i assume its indeed not that great. A very nice cpu you could drop on your board would be something like a Xeon E3-1230-V3 for example which basicly is a locked i7 without an igpu. But i suppose that those will be hard to find in a country like portugal used for cheap.
You could basicly also use a 4590, 4690, Xeon E3-1231-V3 etc Haswell refresh cpu´s. But then you will gonne need to update the bios of the board firstly. But since you currently have a pentiumG3258 you could ofc do that without any problem.
That was another doubt that I had, I have heard @wendell talk a lot of the Xeons but I never understood if I could put it on my mobo or I needed another one, and if it's worth...probably it's more expensive the Xeons... The used market it's not great at all, we only have one website and mostly it's a little cheaper that the retail price, without warranties...
Well compaired to standard i7's, Xeon E3´s are mostly cheaper exally. The 1230-V3 4 core 8 threads Xeon normally costs arround the same as an unlocked i5 of the same series, like the 4670K.
Wenn it comes to the use of Xeon e3 cpu´s on consumer grade B, H, Z series chipset boards. This has been possible untill the Haswell platform.
Its not possible on Skylake, intel decided with the launch of Skylake, to lock the use of Xeon E3- V5 cpu´s on consumer grade chipset boards. Skylake Xeon E3-V5´s can only be used on C232 or C236 chipset boards. But on Haswell platform you can totally use a Xeon E3-12xx-V3 cpu on a consumer grade chipset board like B, H and Z series socket 1150 boards.
thanks, awesome explained! I have to be more into the prices and what can I get with my mobo cpuwise, thanks for that!
Have done a quick search and an Sapphire Radeon RX 460 NITRO OC 2GB GDDR5 costs new 120€ and on the used market an Sapphire AMD RX 460 OC 2GB GDDR5 DVI-D HDMI DP costs 140€ ... That's my reality!
Nope thats indeed a pretty high risk. But of course you also dont really need a Xeon E3 or i7 for gaming. Something like an haswell i5 will be more then fine for most games. But yeah maybe AMD with Ryzen / Zen might come with some very nice budget friendly offerings for budget gamers soon. Intel is still relatively pretty expensive with their offerings, simply because there is no competition yet.
But yeah basicly your current platform, has more then enough upgrade path in it. Msi B85 pc mate board, there are plenty of nice cpu´s to trow at it. But yeah in your situation hard to find something cheap atm.