EPTa) Please consider that the prices in my country are really high due to transportation fees and taxes, so you might be able to spend way less on these parts.
b) If u cant stand low graphics, this is not for you, unless youd be willing to spend on a discrete gpu
This is actually not asking but more of an informative. So in this thread i was asking opinions on the cheapest stuff in my country's market, and decided to build this PC:
CPU: G3240
$68
As the g3220 was not available, I picked this over the A4-6400 because of the recomendations on being the stronger single threaded processing, even tho the graphics is actually a bit better, the difference should not be that strong, specially since the smoothness/FPS of SC2 depends on CPU when it comes to 200 vs 200 armies
MB: Gibabyte H81M-H
$57
No real reason just the cheapest 1150 socket micro atx board I could find. Micro atx because the cheapest cases are also micro atx.
GPU: No gpu, just using the one with the cpu.
RAM: 1 slot 4gb kingston 1866mhz(running at 1600mhz) HyperX Fury Red
$42
Again cheapest I could find.
CASE: Halion Dataone Argos
PSU: ATX P4-600w
$28
Cheapest case+psu combo. The case its not great but it is fine, its a standard case and great for the price. As for a basically free psu, it will get the job done, this thing says 600w but prolly runs reliable 240w-300w and has a 24amp +12v rail, so asking people with experience on this, 4ex a GTX 750 (non OC non Ti) in a future upgrade will run with no problems with it.
Monitor: LG Flatron w1934s 1440x900 / Dell CRT 17" M782
$0
Already had them lying around, the crt is mine and the lcd is my friend's
HD: Seagate 7200rpm 500gbs HHDD
$0
Already had it from previous PC.
So I spent $195 on it. But you probably can get all these for $150. So lets get to the testing part
+ Show Spoiler [Explanations] +
First thing is to know, this wont run games in medium+ settings in a playable fashion. It runs not demanding games in LOWEST settings with decent framerates. One thing to have into consideration is that I am only running one slot of 4gb ram. Having the GT1 graphics on 1gb shared ram, leaves only 3gb ram for the system and game, which is not that great. However this was gonna make it go past the $200 mark and I wasnt gonna go there. Eventually if u wanna put another 4gb ram, the dual channel and the more ram will actually improve the performance overall in games. That said for the price the PC does its job.
So why the 2 monitors u might ask, well the LCD was not working, so I started using the CRT cuz it was working but I noticed a bit of a blur with text, so i decided to investigate how to fix the LCD, its problem was that it would go black after few seconds, i found it was one of the blacklight cables was burnt and no powering it up, so i weilded it and it started working for a day, so i had some tests with it. The next day the problem came back, and as i went back in to fix it, i broke the LCD panel which rendered the monitor useless. So im stuck with the CRT
Something to notice is that for some reason, probably compatibility with newer technology the PC in general and in games ran as smooth or even better on the LCD monitor at 1280x720p than it runs on the CRT 1024x768p, which was a surprise for me, 720p being more pixels to render
So why the 2 monitors u might ask, well the LCD was not working, so I started using the CRT cuz it was working but I noticed a bit of a blur with text, so i decided to investigate how to fix the LCD, its problem was that it would go black after few seconds, i found it was one of the blacklight cables was burnt and no powering it up, so i weilded it and it started working for a day, so i had some tests with it. The next day the problem came back, and as i went back in to fix it, i broke the LCD panel which rendered the monitor useless. So im stuck with the CRT
Something to notice is that for some reason, probably compatibility with newer technology the PC in general and in games ran as smooth or even better on the LCD monitor at 1280x720p than it runs on the CRT 1024x768p, which was a surprise for me, 720p being more pixels to render
SC2
+ Show Spoiler [Settings] +
![[image loading]](http://i60.tinypic.com/9iwns6.png)
In both 1024x768 and 720p the results were basically the same. With these settings, everything low and mid textures. the game ran at 90fps at the starts of the games then lowering to most of the time 60 fps, and going down to minimum 35 fps. I did something to test too. i filled up the screen with creep tumors and shift comanded around 150 zerlings through it, the result in this screen:
+ Show Spoiler [test1] +
![[image loading]](http://i61.tinypic.com/205sfp1.png)
37fps for this is very good, as for me the limit between smothness/playability is 35fps, anything bellow that you can feel it and well... its annoying. But as you can see it does not go bellow 35 fps. keep in mind that these are from 1v1 ladder, if you try Arcade or 2v2s or more, you will probably not achieve anything playable.
Other games:
LoL: All settings low min: 37fps / max:110fps / avg:50-55 fps
D3: All settings low, 800x600,no sound. min: 20fps / max: 54fps / avg: 30-40fps. Theres quite a bit of input lag, like mouse lagging on movement, unplayable for me.
*UPDATE* + Show Spoiler [Playable] +
I guess i was doing something wrong, but after a few tweaks, D3 became playable. First of all I dl and install the latest drivers from intel website for hd graphics. Second, I selected the performance option, and last i went to the D3prefs.txt and changed the Following:
HardwareClass "1"
DisableScreenShake "1"
DisableTrilinearFiltering "1"
DisplayModeWinWidth "1024" / DisplayModeWinHeight "768" (it was on 1024x720 for some weird reason)
Now the game runs at 1024x768 without deeping below 30fps and going as high as 55fps, but as it ranges a lot and most the time its on 40-45fps, Ive capped it at 45 fps, since its most of the time there anyways. The mouse input lag was created when I had increased the size of windows text and icons to 125%, when I returned to normal the mouse started working properly. So I can say the game is playable now, And if u have 8gbs of ram in dual channel, as ive researched later, i think it would be even smoother (not by much but at least 5fps on both min and max, which is A LOT for this PC)
HardwareClass "1"
DisableScreenShake "1"
DisableTrilinearFiltering "1"
DisplayModeWinWidth "1024" / DisplayModeWinHeight "768" (it was on 1024x720 for some weird reason)
Now the game runs at 1024x768 without deeping below 30fps and going as high as 55fps, but as it ranges a lot and most the time its on 40-45fps, Ive capped it at 45 fps, since its most of the time there anyways. The mouse input lag was created when I had increased the size of windows text and icons to 125%, when I returned to normal the mouse started working properly. So I can say the game is playable now, And if u have 8gbs of ram in dual channel, as ive researched later, i think it would be even smoother (not by much but at least 5fps on both min and max, which is A LOT for this PC)
SSF4AE: All settings low. 1024x768. didnt really test the fps but the smoothness of the gameplay, and all settings low means white background which isnt pretty but smooth, however if u want the stage background it would make it so that u would get fram spikes, which ofc made it unplayable.
CS:GO: Will update when i try it, Im actually not much fun of FPS but it was on sale for $4 so i got it.
Hearthstone: Medium settings, Runs prefectly. Expected tho as it runs in tablets. However high settings migh have a bit of an impact on performance of animations, but its a turned based game, so who cares.
WoW: All settings low, PTextures enabled, View distance and detail fair, Texture filter: 4x anisotropic. min: 38fps / max: 86fps / avg: 50-55fps. This one surprised me a lot, I didnt think it was gonna be playable at all, just like D3. But it does run and the game is pretty smooth most the time in open areas, and dungeons, but there are some caves and indoors that drop the performance a lot to like 20 fps, which is not normal so i didnt factor it in. 10 man BGs run above 40fps and 5 man dungeons run at 50+ fps,so for questing and lvling and somewhat pvp it is enough, but doubt u can do raiding.
Overall for the price this PC is working just fine, and achieves what it was ment to do, be the cheapest PC I could run SC2 and have an enjoyable gaming experience. Runing other games in low settings doesnt bother me either, as I have never cared for eye candy graphics, I care way more for the gameplay itself, so this gets me by while I wait for my travel.
If u have any aditional questions just reply here or send me a pm and ill try to answer.
UPDATE 1: Through some reasearch, I found out that having only 4gbs and in single channel is making the game experience worst than it should be. Although it should not be that much of an improvement, at least 5+fps could be achieve for having something that you would prolly would have gotten from the start, which is 8gbs of ram in dual channel (2x4gbs), and thats something to think about. Im getting one more for some testing, and will post the actual results here.
