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2019 Computer Build – Part 2 – Budget Gaming PC Build / Results

See part one here

Info

This post was originally published in 2019, and has been adopted to this static-site from wordpress.

Specs

Build

Monday - Parts arrive

2 days after the order had been placed, the parts showed up on my door.

GPU, PSU, Keyboard / Mouse - Thermaltake case

However- Before I can acquire the CPU/MOBO/RAM from my old PC, I need to wait for the case to arrive for my High-End Gaming PC Build. We will continue Friday.

Friday - Build Day

Time to get started with the build! I didn't document this build as well. But- here are a few images during the build.

      • After building the PC, I stole the old SATA SSDs from my main PC. It has 970 M.2 evos now.

Here are a few shots showing the current lighting. Ignore the plastic on the side- this is intended as a Christmas gift for my 10 year old step-son. The protective plastic wrapping will be removed later. Without the protective plastic, it will not appear cloudy.

      • Lastly- here is a hyper-lapse of the case lighting, taken over a minute or two.

But wait, there is more!

Next week, I will be installing RGB strips inside of the case which will be synced with the case lighting. I will take another video then.

RGB Lighting Install

As promised, it is time to install some more RGB Lighting! I ordered some RGB LED Strips off of amazon.

But, I ran into an issue, where I did not have a proper place to plug in the RGB Strips. The motherboard did not have support for RGB, so, all of the lightning was controlled by a small chip included with the case.

The case DID have an extra RGB out plug, however, it was the wrong socket type.

Wrong type of socket to plug in the RGB Strips.

To remediate the issue, I pulled out my soldering iron, and soldered a plug onto the pins.

Proper RGB Plug soldered on.

Final Build Results

Here is the finished result.

Here is a video showing the RGB lighting in action.

Benchmark / Results

Far Cry New Dawn - Ultra @ 1080p

60 fps average, 81 maximum, and a brief spike down to 38. Overall- the game would be perfectly playable. Pretty respectable numbers from a budget build.

Crystal Benchmark

Since this PC will be using the same hard drives from my old PC, I am reusing the Crystal benchmarks from that build.

OS Drive

Seagate 600 240GB SATA ST240HM000

Gaming Drive

Crucial BX200 480GB SATA CT480BX200SSD1

User Benchmark

Round 1.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/20884252

Notes:

  1. Ram is not clocked properly. 1,600mhz instead of 1,866mhz.
  2. CPU Clock is wrong. It will run 4.2ghz all day long with no issues. Currently running 3.5-3.7ghz.
  3. Needs fresh install of windows....
  4. Will perform more benchmarks later on...

Final Verdict

This will be a more then adequate gaming PC for my step-son. It is capable of playing Far Cry New Dawn at Ultra settings with no issues. I assume it should have no issues play any AAA game out currently.

Before I box it up for x-mas, I will do a fresh install of windows, with proper drivers, and the proper RAM/CPU clocks in place, which should boost the benchmark scores further.

As well, as noted above, next week, I will be installing RGB strips inside of the case which will be synced the the color of the case lighting. It should look pretty decent for him.

Lastly- I do believe it should benchmark around 10-15% higher after I do a fresh install, install the proper up to date drivers, set the proper CPU/RAM clock speeds, and give the GPU a little OC.

Overall, for a 300$ investment, not bad at all. If you were wanting to produce a similar build, without reusing parts as I did, you could build something on-par for around 500$

  1. Budget NVMe 500GB SSD: 50-60$.
  2. CPU - Ryzen 3 1200 - 60$
  3. Budget AM4 Motherboard - 50$
  4. 16 GB DDR-4 2,666mhz - 65$

Chances are- the above components would likely be faster then my ancient i5-4690k.