Introduction
Personal computer AKA pc is a only console that can be used for multiple purposes .people use pc for different tasks such as ,for playing gaming , watching movies , for graphics designing , and many other tasks .but many peoples only get pc for playing games they spend hundreds and thousands of dollars only because of games and good graphics .
Many people think that for playing games they need to get a powerful computer or they need to spend too much on a pc and many of them think that low end pc can’t play games but when it comes to gaming to some extend they are wrong , pc gaming was never too expensive a normal pc with low end components can play games at good frames and smooth settings because the main thing necessary for gaming is a good graphics card and without it we can’t play games are similar as graphics and development applications but the main difference in games and application is graphics requirements, many applications are buildup to work on normal graphics or in other words they don’t use more graphics memory but for gaming we need more graphics memory and good hardware to render the games on the pc .I m not going in depth of this thing and coming back to my original topic.
I saw many peoples spending a lot of money on a pc just for gaming so I m giving a general graph of all the pc components from which you can play almost all the latest games on good settings and with good resolution (1024, 1200) all of these components are on general base design you can change them little according to your use and product availability
Motherboard
Motherboard is an important component of pc and for this budget pc we have to choose LGA 775 socket processor as 1156 socket is expensive platform and we can’t buy a 200-300$gaming rig with LGA 1156 setup . there are many old Intel chipsets that are not much expensive in price but give good performance \ price ratio these are from intel G series like G31, G43 and G45 but there main difference is graphics so as we will use a external graphics card with the pc a G31 chipset would be best for the pc so a motherboard with G31 chipset of any brand (msi, asus, gigabyte, foxconn preferable)
I m selecting ASUS P5KPL-AM or GIGABYTE GA-G31M both costs about 54$(4500PKR) and both are good motherboards according to there prices but I my self like asus from these two and both support all core 2 processors with dual channel memory support
Processor
2nd components of our pc is processor for budget rig like this a dual core processor is enough as we are spending small amount of money of the pc so a dual core E5400 which costs about 69$(5800PKR) is completely fans in the rig like this it have 2mb cache with a clock speed of 2.7GHz and 800MHz Fsb makes this a good processor in its price you can change processor to e6500 or e6600 if your budget allows
Ram
Selecting ram for pc is a easy task as these types of motherboards usually have 2 ram slots and support dual channel memory so we will use its advantage and get 1x2gb ram to gain more performance from the ram and 2gb is enough for a gaming rig to run games and windows 7 with ease . We will select Kingston dual channel (1x2gb) 800MHz value ram in the price of 40$(3500PKR) . Kingston Value RAM is ideal for budget pc users as there specs meets with other memories in high price
Graphics card
For graphics card we select a low end budget card but I m selecting card from new generation means DX11 so it can fully support dx11 graphics at this time the best dx11 card with price \performance ratio is 5670 that costs about 80$ and with ddr5 memory and dx11 this card perform well in games although its not a gaming card I m selecting sapphire 5670 which costs about 77$(10000PKR) and have better cooler then others and price is also low then other cards you can purchase other brands too like (msi ,asus ,xfx ,etc) and you can change graphics card to 5750 or if anybody wants to buy NVIDIA then 9800gt if you want or if anybody’s budget allows
Hard Disk
As we are building a budget pc so I m adding a low space hard drive you can extend it according to your budget and use a Seagate 500GB 7200.12 internal hard drive costs 54$(4200PKR) and its performance is much better then other hard drives in its price and before buying the hard disk make sure you are getting 7200.12 drive in order to get the better performance
Casing
For a budget setup no need to get expensive types of case or case with high price or good ventilation as all the components in the pc will remain cool as long as you use them without overclocking. a normal Atx casing costs about 10$(100PKR) without the power supply and with at least 1 fan installed in it and before purchasing the case make sure its Atx form factor and mid tower case
Power supply
As the whole setup is not a power hungry setup a m-Atx or Atx motherboard + dual core processor consume about 100watt and with a graphics card like this the whole pc consume about 200watt of power but for overclocking advantage and full potential we will go for a power supply with at least 20a on 12v rails means we will go for a power supply that gives at least 220watt of output power ,there are many unbranded and branded power supplies that gives about 20a on 12v rails but we are selecting cooler master 460 watt power supply which is available worldwide and costs 29$(3600PKR) you can change power supply with any other brand but before buying only check its +12v rail
Final words
The above mentioned setup costs about 329$(32600PKR) so I think for a pc under 350$ or little more this with a graphics card and a dual core processor is surely a win
This pc can easily play all the latest games on low to medium settings and for rts fans like C&C ,AOE ,WOW AND SC this pc can serve as a gaming rig for them many peoples moved on from pc to different platform but still want to play games on pc but don’t have budget so this pc is good for them too and if you want to purchase a pc for your children’s but don’t want to spend too much on a pc then a setup like this is good enough for you .In short this pc is great for RTS games and costs much low then a ordinary gaming setup and its also better for children’s and for console gamers and it can also used as a HTPC and atlast a budget gaming pc
And with this pc you can play games at 1024 1200 and for some games you can play 1400 resolution
note : all the prices the prices are taken from newegg and PKR are based up on local prices and this does not means 77$=10000PKR this right now 1$ means 85PKR but some products are expensive then dollar price and some products are cheaper then $ price like hard disk cost 54$ at new egg means 4590PKR but locally its price is 4200PKR and graphics card costs 77$ means 6545 but this card cost about 10000PKR here
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