Gadgetory

many of you guys seem to be avid counter-strike players as evidenced by my inbox which has been flooded with at least three to four emails a week ask me what kind of rig I'll build to play csgo with a budget around $500 for the cool hardware since I don't play Counter Strike all that much answering this question accurately was difficult so I've decided to change that based on what I found so far it seems like $500 might be overkill for a 1080p gaming rig the focus is solely on csgo performance therefore I recommend this build to any diehard counter-strike players that also plan on giving some of the more modern triple-a titles a shot such as Tom Clancy's the division before we continue here's the full disclaimer guys this build guide has been created with a focus on Australian and US pricing so if you live in a different region that has different price ratios then you probably might not find this build guide particularly useful also things I throw under the optional banner include an optical drive Wi-Fi adapter and aftermarket cooling additionally this build focuses exclusively on the core components or the box and all the bits inside if you will this means stuff like the keyboard mouse headset and software are all extras this stuff is all a little more personal and you might even already have it from a previous build having said that let's dive into the build starting with the CPU for this price range I feel the Core i3 is 6100 is by far the best option although this is only a dual core processor it does support hyper threading for 4 threads combine that with the excellent efficiency of skylake and the relatively high 3.7 gigahertz operating frequency and you have a processor that's capable of taking on the latest games using a powerful GPU the LGA 1151 processor and the supporting platform also provide a nice update path to a more powerful Core i5 or even Core i7 processor down the track there's a huge amount of variety available when it comes to the motherboard with a reasonably tight budget we went with an Intel H 110 motherboard as they tend to start at around 55 us or 85 Oz II there are some other decent options around the $55 mark with some of the better examples including the gigabyte H 110 ma asrock H 110 M HD v RMS IH 110 M Pro D in terms of features and design all three boards very similar really comes down to which offers the best price at the time if you do plan to upgrade to a core i5 or better down the track that we suggest considering spending almost twice as much on a zeb 170 motherboard such as the msi as f-117 a pro or as our z170a x1 both cost around $90 this will be a worthwhile upgrade if you're gonna purchase an unlocked a processor if you do go with a cheaper h1 10 motherboard keep in mind the memory will likely be limited to 20 133 megahertz there isn't much sense in buying high clocked memory if it comes at a premium all three h1 ten motherboards that we suggested support ddr4 memory we recommend an 8 gigabyte dual channel kid pricing starts at around $30 and we really like the gol Evo Potenza ddr4 2500 eight gigabyte kit for just $29 pricing will no doubt vary but expect to pay thirty to thirty five US dollars or forty five to fifty five Australian dollars now for the all-important graphics card $500 seems like a decent chunk of change to play around with the first that is until you get to the graphics card at $200 the Radeon r9 380 in geforce gtx 960 quickly going from mid-range to low-end products nevertheless they're both very capable picking between them is no easy task and frankly you can happily go either way as I see there's no wrong choice here ultimately you have to pick one so if you have a preference that makes life easier the 4 gigabyte models now cost pretty much the same as the 2 gigabyte models so that's a no-brainer the 4 gigabyte 960 and 3/8 is started $190 and for this build we go with the Radeon r9 380 however before all of you waving a green flag died for the dislike button I'll also include the gtx 960 results as well storages where things get a little complicated mostly because it pains me to build any system without an SSD in order to meet the budget we've set aside $50 for storage which buys you a decent 1 terabyte 7200 rpm hard drive or a small 120 gigabyte SSD obviously you can get both but this will inflate the overall build cost by up to $50 depending on which way you go for the hard drive we recommend the Western Digital blue one terabyte 7200 rpm model which can be had for fifty four US dollars of 70 Australian for the SSD the ADA SP 55122 body really hard to beat it just $35 well the 240 gigabyte model offers an even better cost per gigabyte ratio of $58 so choose wisely now for the case and power supply there's a few options here the most cost-effective of which is the braid max EXO which includes a 450 watt PSU for just forty five US dollars or sixty Australian granted this case includes a cheap power supplier but it'll get the job done and 450 watts is plenty for this build as you can expect the draw from the wall to be well under 300 watts when gaming if you want a fan of this budget combo than the deep pool tesseract SW for four u.s. dollars plus the raid max hybrid 2 RX 530 SS 531 power supply for another 40 dollars is another excellent wallet-friendly combo now that we have all that mostly worked out let's consult the benchmarks the benchmark and Counter Strike global Offensive we use the offline bot mode on the cruise map the benchmark run lasted 60 seconds and the average of three separate runs was reported there is a user made benchmark for csgo called FPS benchmark but I found the results weren't all that consistent with what I was finding from single and multiplayer portions of the game anyway as you can see the $500 week has no trouble keeping the frame rate above 100 FPS at 1080p with all the in game settings cranked up it is possible to increase the MSAA level but every other setting was maxed out it was interesting to find the lowly r7 370 beating out the gtx 960 in this title what's more with an average of 151 FPS the 3070 plays just as well as the 380 for this purpose gave me at 1080p it certainly seems like you could save quite a bit more money on a rig designed exclusively for csgo so what if you want to play other games like say Tom Clancy's the division while providing you're happy to use mid-range quality settings this gaming system is very capable at 1080p here we see an average of 65 FPS with a minimum of 51 FPS this time the r7 370 is a good bit slower than both the r9 380 and gtx 960 upgrading to the core i5 6600 k off his little extra performance with the 380 while the upgrade to the 380 ex will net you a little extra performance if you want to picky about frame rates the division can actually be enjoyed using high quality visual settings here at $500 rig was good for an average of 49 ft our frame rates never dip below 38 fps the I know 380 was again faster than the GTX 960 and a good bit faster than the r7 370 meanwhile the three OD X offers a mild performance bump as just the core i5 6600 K as I suspected going into this a $500 budget for a CSTO gaming machine is a bit overkill you plan to game at 1080p and don't require over 100 frames per second still if it's a well balanced and reasonably affordable gaming PC that you seek let me feel it today there's no better option the base version of our build came in at 510 US dollars or 800 Australian dollars which is very good given the performance you can expect and the latest triple-a titles adding a 120 gigabyte boot SSD to the mix along with a separate case and power supply increases the total cost around 585 u.s. or 900 Australian dollars again this is an excellent Buy particularly given it leaves the door wide open for some very worthwhile upgrades down the track upgrades such as the Radeon r9 380 X which you can expect to pay an additional 30 US dollars for though there are some bargains to be had so keep an eye out for those at the time of putting this guide together the power color pcs +3 DX can be had for just 205 dollars on new Wacom if you do plan on upgrading the CPU in the future then perhaps consider spending a bit more on the motherboard Zed 170 boards costing as little as $90 therefore much better storage options multi GPU support and considerably better features for tuning the memory and CPU also if you're worried about memory consider getting a single 8 gigabyte stick as this leaves the option of battle would add a second stick down the track for a 16 gigabyte capacity just to limit you to single channel memory performance in the meantime although it's thankfully that has almost no impact on gaming performance anyway let me know what you guys think about this build and if you have any suggestions please feel free to leave them in the comments section I'm your host Matt as always and I'll see you guys next time you