The Pentium Gaming Rig

[Thinkfreely]

So for a early father's day gift I decided to build my father in law a pc, as his current one is older than I am. He makes custom guitars (which are awesome!) on the side of being a master carpenter. I decided to make him a entry level gaming and light editing machine as to upload youtube videos. Full video assembly on my profile, but per forums rules will not be posted here.

 

I had 3 goals for this rig.

Had to be under $400,

Had to game at 1080p medium settings decently,

Had to be upgrade-able.

 

So here is the pc part list of the build. And a picture of everything arranged. Bought this over a few weeks so prices may of fluctuated.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($62.49 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus - H110M-A/M.2 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($50.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws 4 series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($48.44 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte - Radeon RX 460 2GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card  ($93.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Xion - XON-310_BK MicroATX Mid Tower Case  ($21.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA - 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply  ($29.88 @ OutletPC)
Other: WINDOWS 10 - Kinguin ($30.00)
Total: $337.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-06-03 23:55 EDT-0400

 

The heart of this build is intel's Kabylake G4560 Pentium CPU. Now I wouldn't recommend a Pentium CPU for gaming or editing, or pretty much anything. At least up to the release of this years Kabylake. What makes this CPU unique is not only does it perform at the same level as a current gent i3, its dual core, with 4 threads and Hyper-threading! Making it a silent beast for light editing as well as gaming.

 

Gamer Nexus also did an excellent bottleneck video that shows anything up to a RX480/GTX 1060 won't bottleneck on this CPU, with FPS well in the 100's on most games. Since those are the top tier cards for someone gaming at 1080p, I knew a RX 460 wouldn't face any kind of bottleneck. I also went for more storage then a SSD as that is a easy upgrade down the road.

After assembling everything and wondering why it didn't turn on, I realized I missed the 4 pin motherboard power connector "DOH"

Gaming wise results where pretty fantastic. I tested a lot of games that would fit within this build, and everything handled beautifully. I was actually pretty blown away by the performance.

Best part is everything is upgrade-able (With the exception of overclocking. You can upgrade the ram, the cpu, the psu on the board as its Kabylake. I hope this helps with those budget gamers just getting started, that you can buy a cheaper CPU like this to game on really decently actually, and then just swap out the parts as needed.

 

 

[Lord Nicoll]

damn, builds like this really make me question the i7 7700K, it cost almost as much as that whole PC.....

[Thinkfreely]

8 minutes ago, Lord Nicoll said:

damn, builds like this really make me question the i7 7700K, it cost almost as much as that whole PC.....

Right? And you don't bottleneck with it until after a rx 580 or 1060, its kind of amazing that you can game that good for that cheap.

[Lord Nicoll]

18 minutes ago, Thinkfreely said:

Right? And you don't bottleneck with it until after a rx 580 or 1060, its kind of amazing that you can game that good for that cheap.

That said I love my I7 7700K, at 5GHz, it's a lovely processor.

[Thinkfreely]

18 hours ago, Lord Nicoll said:

That said I love my I7 7700K, at 5GHz, it's a lovely processor.

Yeah for 4k and 1440p gotta have it. For 1080p this is good entry level

[Lord Nicoll]

54 minutes ago, Thinkfreely said:

Yeah for 4k and 1440p gotta have it. For 1080p this is good entry level

not really, most games can now use it, but for those resolutions it is manly the GPU you need, I use mine for power in single threaded workloads, I have dual xeon servers for multi core work loads

[Izzdy]

21 hours ago, Thinkfreely said:

 

 

 

I also have that situation with my pc

[Thinkfreely]

20 hours ago, KhaierKaizer said:

I also have that situation with my pc

I have built 8 personal rigs and 30+ for others and I wanted to include this to show you can still make simple mistakes.

[Thinkfreely]

12 hours ago, Lord Nicoll said:

not really, most games can now use it, but for those resolutions it is manly the GPU you need, I use mine for power in single threaded workloads, I have dual xeon servers for multi core work loads

Im saying that a Pentium would bottleneck at 4k and 1440p. Nexus Games did a good vid on it like i said that shows where this one starts to bottleneck.

[Lord Nicoll]

7 hours ago, Thinkfreely said:

Im saying that a Pentium would bottleneck at 4k and 1440p. Nexus Games did a good vid on it like i said that shows where this one starts to bottleneck.

It's not entirely due to the resolution, that doesn't have a load on the CPU, it's you also need a much more powerful GPU, and the CPU would definitely bottleneck say GTX1080ti GPU, but not because of resolution. 

[Not_Sean]

Great build man, I'm a huge fan of these CPU's as the price they just so capable, although I'm always more partial to a second hand i5-4460 / i7-3770 

 

all that system needs is a solid state and it'll be awesome! 

[Thinkfreely]

21 minutes ago, Lord Nicoll said:

It's not entirely due to the resolution, that doesn't have a load on the CPU, it's you also need a much more powerful GPU, and the CPU would definitely bottleneck say GTX1080ti GPU, but not because of resolution. 

Right, I am just saying the point at 1080p you bottleneck is anything past a 580 or 1060. Although at higher res (I play at 4k and 2k on my current rig) it won't be nearly as cpu bound, if it can't keep up it would still bottleneck.

[Thinkfreely]

On 6/5/2017 at 3:10 PM, Not_Sean said:

Great build man, I'm a huge fan of these CPU's as the price they just so capable, although I'm always more partial to a second hand i5-4460 / i7-3770 

 

all that system needs is a solid state and it'll be awesome! 

Yeah I figured for him space was the better value. Solid state will is always a easy upgrade.