Extreme budget PC

Classics · May 21, 2020

Budget (including currency): £200 - £300

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: GTA5 @ 1080p 60hz

Other details: The main requriement is being able to play GTA5 comfortably at medium settings 1080p 60hz. No peripherals are included in the budget, it's purely for the tower.

I've not kept up to date with parts over the past couple of years so I'm not really sure what to go for to get the best price:performance whilst maintaining an incredibly low budget. This computer is for my girlfriend whose most demanding task will be the GTA5.

Something to note; I've already got a 240GB SSD lying around so I won't need any additional storage for now.

So far I've been putting together a parts list and it's seeming really hard to find anything that would even be close to this for the budget:

CPU: i3 9100f (£63)

MOBO: Asus Prime H310M-K R.20 (£57)

RAM: 8GB of cheap stuff (£35)

PSU: Kolink 500w 80+ Bronze (£40)

Case: Anything that's £20 doesn't matter.

So far that puts us at around £215, leaving me with £85 to find a GPU with. Going 2nd hand isn't something I mind doing so I'd probably search for a preowned 1550/1650 or maybe even a 970.

My main question is this; are there any cheaper cpu/mobo combos that could comfortably run GTA5? From what research I've done the i3 9100f is by far better than anything else at its price point.

I was also thinking I could drop the RAM to 4GB but I'm not sure if that would choke up GTA5 or not, if anybody could answer that for me that would be great.

Will be looking forward to any suggestions, thanks.

EDIT: I'm also considering an APU but last I checked APUs were terrible, does anybody know how the new Ryzen APUs could handle GTA5?

SupaKomputa · May 21, 2020

Get an AMD Ryzen 3200G cpu and the cheapest B450 motherboard.

If you need a GPU, search for Radeon RX570.

To get a decent gaming you'll need at least 8GB Memory.

Classics · May 21, 2020

3 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Get an AMD Ryzen 3200G cpu and the cheapest B450 motherboard.

If you need a GPU, search for Radeon RX570.

To get a decent gaming you'll need at least 8GB Memory.

The Ryzen 3200G is significantly worse and actually £10 more expensive than the i3.

The suggestion for the RX570 is very good though, thank you.

And I understand that generally gaming PCs do want about 8gb, but this is a question more specifically geared towards whether GTA5 can tolerate 4GB as my partner has little to no interest in other games.