Feronix
New member
Heya guys!
So this afternoon I was really, really bored and I was to a friend about the next-gen consoles. She wants to buy a PC, but has also pre-ordered the Xbox one. I tried to convince to get the PC first, so she could play online with some of her other friends and me, without going too much jehova on her. :lol:
Obviously the specs of the new consoles sound pretty exciting, 8 cores and 8GB RAM seems pretty nice. The average user probably doesn't know that the CPU is pretty much a phone processor. Not a very high clocked one either.
So the challenge I gave myself, and I recommend all of you to try it, was this:
Come up with a mid-range game PC config that has similar specs to the next-gen consoles while out-performing them and costing the same or less.
This means that the PC should have 8 cores (or an i5 at minimum), 8GB RAM, plenty of storage and all of that. Peripherals and an OS are not included.
My Console Killer:
As the Xbox costs €500,- in the Netherlands, that was the maximum budget for me. Needing 8 cores, the only wise choice would be to get the FX-8320. No aftermarket cooler for now, it would be too expensive. For those actually wanting to buy this I'd recommend going that bit over budget or saving up for one as quickly as you can.
Wanting 8GB of RAM, I went with a Crucial 2x4GB kit. At 1600MHz this is an average kit but higher speeds were out of the budget. The very very cheap MSI 760GM-P23 has 2 RAM slots, so that's a perfect fit. This does mean that you can't upgrade the RAM by simply adding more, but then again, you can't do this with a console either.
The motherboard offers plenty of USB 2 and Sata ports and has a PCI-E 16x slot for a GPU. For the GPU I wanted something mid-range. Getting an AMD GPU (like in the consoles) I quickly came to the conclusion that the MSI HD 7850 OC 2GB would be perfect.
An SSD was out of the question for a budget build, but I did manage to toss in a 1TB Caviar Blue . At 7200RPM and with 64MB Cache this is a pretty quick drive for the money. As we also need a DVD drive I went with a generic LG DVD Burner.
Finally, it's all put into the Fractal Design Core 1000. This case is about as cheap as can be and offers sufficient cooling for our components. Yes, it's a fair bit bigger than a console, but it offers room for upgrades as well. To power the whole thing I went with the non-modular Corsair CX500.
The price? €498,41! Seems like I did pretty well. Now all of you can try it! You can use any webshop you like. Come up with something that you would recommend over a console while even someone that knows nothing about specs could understand that the PC is faster! It's quite a fun challenge imo
So this afternoon I was really, really bored and I was to a friend about the next-gen consoles. She wants to buy a PC, but has also pre-ordered the Xbox one. I tried to convince to get the PC first, so she could play online with some of her other friends and me, without going too much jehova on her. :lol:
Obviously the specs of the new consoles sound pretty exciting, 8 cores and 8GB RAM seems pretty nice. The average user probably doesn't know that the CPU is pretty much a phone processor. Not a very high clocked one either.
So the challenge I gave myself, and I recommend all of you to try it, was this:
Come up with a mid-range game PC config that has similar specs to the next-gen consoles while out-performing them and costing the same or less.
This means that the PC should have 8 cores (or an i5 at minimum), 8GB RAM, plenty of storage and all of that. Peripherals and an OS are not included.
My Console Killer:
As the Xbox costs €500,- in the Netherlands, that was the maximum budget for me. Needing 8 cores, the only wise choice would be to get the FX-8320. No aftermarket cooler for now, it would be too expensive. For those actually wanting to buy this I'd recommend going that bit over budget or saving up for one as quickly as you can.
Wanting 8GB of RAM, I went with a Crucial 2x4GB kit. At 1600MHz this is an average kit but higher speeds were out of the budget. The very very cheap MSI 760GM-P23 has 2 RAM slots, so that's a perfect fit. This does mean that you can't upgrade the RAM by simply adding more, but then again, you can't do this with a console either.
The motherboard offers plenty of USB 2 and Sata ports and has a PCI-E 16x slot for a GPU. For the GPU I wanted something mid-range. Getting an AMD GPU (like in the consoles) I quickly came to the conclusion that the MSI HD 7850 OC 2GB would be perfect.
An SSD was out of the question for a budget build, but I did manage to toss in a 1TB Caviar Blue . At 7200RPM and with 64MB Cache this is a pretty quick drive for the money. As we also need a DVD drive I went with a generic LG DVD Burner.
Finally, it's all put into the Fractal Design Core 1000. This case is about as cheap as can be and offers sufficient cooling for our components. Yes, it's a fair bit bigger than a console, but it offers room for upgrades as well. To power the whole thing I went with the non-modular Corsair CX500.
The price? €498,41! Seems like I did pretty well. Now all of you can try it! You can use any webshop you like. Come up with something that you would recommend over a console while even someone that knows nothing about specs could understand that the PC is faster! It's quite a fun challenge imo
Besides they are more optimized which helps for the difference in clocks(obviously only so much but still).
.
