My First Build (Working Titile)

Suspensa · February 15, 2017

I just finished building my first computer for gaming. The total cost was about $360~ my concern with that was that I planned on doing this as a challenge build by spending no less than $50 per part by either buying used or finding some great deals. After I list the parts you'll see that that wasn't going to happen. (I did get the GPU for $45 but finding a CPU and ram was the problem)

PARTS LIST

CPU

AMD X4 870K 3.9GHz Quad-Core

This was my challenge killer for the "Under $50 per part" because finding a CPU that was gaming ready at least in some sense (AKA anything quad core with decent GHz) so I decided forget it and tried to go for an AVERAGE of under $50 per part. I had also bought the MOBO before making a proper CPU choice so I had locked myself in to an FM2+ socket so lesson learned. I came to this CPU after lRooking up some benchmarks compared to my laptop's CPU and this one had scored better and fit the rest of my requirements.

Ram

G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory

There's not much story or explanation behind this ram. I wanted at least 8 GB and dual channel. Check. I was told speed of ram isn't going to make a huge difference so I didn't worry about that too much. This was highly rated on newegg and fit the price point at least closely. Check. It has designer heatsinks (I think that is what they're called) which is an unnecessary but necessary point for me. I just think it looks cool. Check.

MOBO

Biostar Hi-Fi A70U3P Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard

Again not much story behind this but it is my least favorite and imo the weakest part of this build. It has dual channel memory (The ability for quad-core would have been nice but lesson learned) which isn't that hard find. It was an AMD board which was chosen for price reasons. This board was also on sale which let me hit the challenge's price point. Some drawbacks are that it only has two fan headers; one CPU and one for a case fan ( my case came with two fans) and it only has one PCI-e x16 3.0 slot which can come back to haunt me for upgrade ability but now its fine.

STORAGE

PNY CS1311 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

This was on sale and it was an SSD. Its going to be a boot drive and used as the storage until I buy an HDD to act as actual storage. After that it'll be a boot drive and used for games with long load times.

CASE

DIYPC DIY-F2-W ATX Mini Tower Case

As soon as I saw this case I fell in love. It looks cool as hell and came with LED fans and fell under my price point while it was on sale. It isn't very big for cable management which was a nightmare but otherwise I love this case. It doesn't have any space or openings for things like disk drives but I don't need one of those so no harm no foul.

PSU

EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply

Its a reputable manufacturer and it was in the price point do I really have to say more. My only wish is that it was modular or at least semi-modular it would make cable management easier.

GPU

XFX Radeon R7 360 2GB Double Dissipation Video Card

This was the catalyst for this build. I bought this from someone on craiglist who said he never used it (sure it was still in box and had the plastic protective wrap on the GPU and came with the original box but I still took it with a saltbae amount of salt) but the caliber of this GPU for $45 dollars I couldn't say no. This is my pride and joy of this build and it was a very noticable upgrade for me considering the last 3 computers I had and used for gaming all had integrated graphics. Sure it isn't a GTX 1080 and there's many like it but this is my first computer and this one is mine.

BENCHMARKS

This will be quick and off the top of my head but in 3dmark skydiver it got ~11000 and for fire strike (I DONT REMEMBER RIGHT NOW BUT ILL UPDATE THIS WHEN I GET BACK TO IT AND RUN THE TEST AGAIN TONIGHT) I'm happy with the performance considering the cost and I've been able to play more games at higher resolutions than I ever was able to, I'm very happy and proud of my build.

FOREWORD

Eventually I am going to add a 1TB HDD to get more than a minimal 120 GB of storage. I also want to change out the motherboard to one that I can overclock with better and that has more ram slots as well as more pci-e slots for something like a network or wifi card.

NAMING

I do not have any ideas for a name for the build so please post some suggestions below I look forward to seeing them.

If I forgot to mention something please let me know and I'll elaborate more on it.