Anti-crisis upgrade: assembling a gaming PC for $500 (second half of 2017)

AMD FX processors are like good wine, they only get better over the years. The average FX-6300 has six cores (the younger 4300 chips are quad-core subseries, the older 8300 models are octa-core), but at the same time it costs one and a half times cheaper than the four-threaded Core i3-7100.

Of course, the performance per core of the AMD Piledriver architecture, which debuted back in 2011, is lower than that of the brand-new Intel Kaby Lake. But the additional two cores help a lot in well-parallelized games like Watch Dogs 2, where with four threads there are often second freezes that make the gameplay simply unbearable.

You can scold the FX-6300 for the noisy cooler supplied in the kit (much better coolers are already applied to the new AMD Ryzen processors, see the article "AMD Ryzen AM4 platform: processors and motherboards"). In addition, the FX-6300 does not have a built-in graphics accelerator (not all AM3+ motherboards have a chipset with integrated graphics). But all this is excusable, since AMD FX-6300 is still one of the best options in terms of price and number of cores.

Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 is a well—deserved veteran among motherboards. Its first revision appeared on the market even before the release of AMD FX processors (2010), namely during the Phenom II (2009). Now, being structurally complex (two chipsets, a reinforced power supply circuit), it costs even cheaper than competing Intel H110 motherboards.

The Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 is built on a bundle of 760G+SB710 chipsets, the latest set of AMD system logic with an integrated graphics accelerator. The graphics of the Radeon HD3000 are very weak and no modern games pull at least some, nevertheless, it can still display an image on the monitor, for which thank you.

Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 does not have newfangled SATA III and USB 3.0 interfaces, which, however, given the low price, is excusable. Most low-cost SSDs (see the article "Will speed up any PC: the five best SSD drives of 2017"), not to mention hard drives, still work at speeds lower than SATA II. So you can safely buy in addition to the AMD FX processor with four, six and even eight cores.

Even after the release of the new DDR4, the old-style DDR3 RAM does not lose relevance. There are a lot of processors and motherboards on the market that support only DDR3. The most popular of them are AMD AM3+ and FM2+ platforms.

The Value Edition DDR3 RAM is more of a reputational than a profitable product for AMD. AMD itself does not produce memory chips, but buys them from someone from the trinity of Samsung, Hynix and Micron (see the article"How to choose RAM for a computer or laptop?").

Nevertheless, the Value Edition RAM allows you to assemble a monobrand PC for a true AMD fan: with a "red" processor, a "red" motherboard chipset, a "red" graphics card and even a "red" Radeon R3 SSD. In addition to AMD Value Edition DDR3, DDR4 modules are available for sale, and two series at once: R7 Performance Edition and R9 Gamer Series. For a medium-level gaming computer, 8 GB will be just right. The main thing is to buy one bar so that the second RAM slot on the motherboard remains empty for a future upgrade.

After a significant rise in the price of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1060, caused by a surge in the popularity of mining, the GTX 1050 became the optimal graphics card for gamers. It has also gone up a bit (to the level of the old GTX 1050 Ti price), but this is tolerable against the background of a twofold increase in prices for older models.

The ASUS RoG Strix GTX 1050 modification is equipped with an ultra-efficient cooling system with copper heat pipes and a pair of 10-cm fans. Perhaps, for a 60-watt GTX 1050, there is even an excess of such a cooler. No wonder, apparently, the fans are turned off in idle time, so as not to make noise at all and not to wear out. In addition, the graphics card supports Aura Sync technology, that is, it glows with all the colours of the rainbow, and synchronizes the flicker frequency with the ASUS motherboard. Unlike the reference GTX 1050, the RoG Strix version requires a 6-pin power supply.

GTX 1050 is the cheapest GeForce graphics card, which, firstly, supports the NVIDIA Share hardware video recording and streaming function (the old name Shadow Play), and, secondly, allows you to play new products, at least on average graphics settings. However, 2 GB of video memory is not enough for some particularly demanding games right now. For example, Watch Dogs 2 consumes twice as much memory even on average settings. In the future, the lack of video memory will manifest itself more often.

Toshiba P300 is the cheapest single—terabyte 3.5-inch hard drive in east european retail, which replaced the Toshiba DT01ACAxxx DT01ACA100 1 TB Price from 1 691 up to 1 963 ₴, which is gradually retiring. It is a classic HDD with a high rotation speed of 7200 rpm and a SATA III interface, backward compatible with old SATA and SATA II motherboards.

The sequential read and write speed of large files is 180 Mbps at the beginning of the disk, while it drops by about a third towards the end. Small files scattered over the entire surface of the disk are processed even slower. Partially eliminates this disadvantage of a large 64-MB cache from RAM by the standards of hard drives. But for even greater acceleration of the PC disk subsystem, it is recommended to regularly perform software defragmentation.

Being cheap and at the same time fast enough, the Toshiba P300 is great for building an entry-level gaming PC (see the article "Building a gaming PC for $300 for WoT, CS:GO, Dota 2 and GTA V"). With an extremely limited low-cost that does not allow you to fork out for a separate SSD, the P300 is quite worthy to cope with the role of a disk on which both the operating system and games will be installed. And even its only drawback — relatively high power consumption — in the case of a desktop PC cannot be called critical.

Aerocool VX-400 is one of the best low-cost power supplies in east european retail. It is built on a reliable electronic platform Andyson, the efficiency of which is 81 percent, which is only a little short of the high energy efficiency standard 80 PLUS.

On the +12V line, the VX-400 outputs 324 watts, that is, 81 percent of the rated power, which is an average (90+ percent is considered good). Moreover, this line is divided into two sublines, which is why it will not work to power a very energy-hungry processor or graphics card from it (one reinforced line is needed).

You can connect a graphics card with one 6-pin connector to the Aerocool VX-400, that is, power consumption up to 150 watts. Fortunately, for modern low-cost and even some medium-level video cards, this is enough. The disadvantage of the VX-400 is the relatively high fan noise under load — up to 31 dB. For lovers of complete silence, it is better to find a more expensive model (see the article "Energy hunger: TOP 5 computer power supplies"). In addition, only one 6-pin power connector will complicate the upgrade of the graphics card in the future.

Wave V2 is the cheapest case in the Deepcool model range. In comparison to this, even the Smart LED, once considered a state employee, already looks like a strong middle man. The main savings affected the fans, which are not included in the kit, only three empty seats: front, back and side. To buy or not to buy them, and if so, which ones, everyone will be able to decide for themselves (see the article "5 proven tips on how to cool a PC in the summer heat").

Another simplification of Wave V2 was the small space for installing a tower PROCESSOR cooler (height less than 145 cm, see the article"Air, water and copper pipes: the 5 best CPU coolers of 2017"). Low legs are not critical, since the power supply is placed on top and there are no ventilation holes on the bottom panel.

The rest of the Wave V2 is quite a solid case of medium-sized MiniTower format. There are three slots available for 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives, which should be enough for everyone, and a graphics card of any length (more than 30 cm) can also be placed. The sheet steel of the walls is of an average thickness of 0.5 mm, which is confirmed by the body weight of 3.2 kg (some very thin cases weigh so much together with the power supply). Considering the above, we recommend Deepcool Wave V2 for building office and not particularly hot gaming PCs. For flagship systems, it is more reasonable to choose a case initially equipped with numerous fans (see the article "TOP 5 best computer cases of 2017").