Guide to Building a Budget PC

Starcraft 2 is a CPU intensive video game, compared to the majority of games which are GPU intensive (think Halo, Crysis, Bioshock). As such, this is where you want to spend your money, if anywhere - although the way the market is right now, there is really only 2 or 3 choices. This may be in contrast to most gaming computers, where you generally want to spend a little more on the GPU instead of the CPU. At the moment, Intel chips are a little too expensive to be worth it if you are just playing Starcraft 2 - so although there is no argument they are the best, the Athlon II series is the best value today. At the time of this guide, $80 is pretty much the most you'd need to spend on a CPU, so either get a Sandy Bridge when prices drop, spend more than $80 and know you will never have a problem with SC2, or get one of the CPU's I explicitly recommend in this guide when prices are even lower on them and build your PC for even cheaper.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/starcraft-ii-radeon-geforce,2728.html
This article will explain a lot, but the summation is that SC2 is optimized for dualcore @ 3ghz. See, when a game is made, it is made with the specs in mind of when they began designing the game - usually this is 2 to 5 years. So, when a game is released, you could say it is already 'outdated' from a hardware perspective. This is good news for the budget builder, as many good options exist today.

The minimum CPU you want to play SC2 with no problems is a Dualcore 3.0ghz, or an Athlon II X2 Regor. SC2 gains a huge boost from single to dual core, an insignificant boost from dual to tri, and a 'larger' insignificant boost from tri to quad. SC2 likes cache space, but an L3 cache will only yield about 0.3ghz performance boost, so you can usually find an Athlon II with no Level 3 cache memory that's much faster, for cheaper. In short, there is no reason to buy a CPU with level 3 cache memory (also note, not all Phenom's have L3 cache, which is kind of a sketchy marketing trick by AMD as that is the only difference between the 'flagship' Phenom II and the Athlon II).

I recommend, however, that if you want to spend money anywhere, spend an extra ~$15 to get the Athlon II X3 450 (or 440, 445). With the Athlon II X3 450, you will be able to play everything on Max settings, with no problem ever (I will discuss overclocking at the end). Basically, you can justify an extra core to be about 0.5ghz in speed added, although this isn't exact considering SC2 is optimized for only dualcore and that speed vs core count affects performance differently, so just take it as a rough estimation.

The Athlon II X2 Regor is about $60, and the Athlon II X3 Rana is about $79 or less depending on the speed. The next best AMD chip, a Phenom X4 is about $125, meaning about $40 for just an L3 cache, or roughly 300mhz increase in speed, which is a pretty bad speed to price ratio, and the Intel I3-2100 is just a better buy at the same price. Considering that the Athlon II series will play Starcraft 2 at max settings, there isn't a Starcraft 2 reason to pay the price premium. In short, an Athlon II is the best. There are many articles out today saying the Athlon II X3 450 is the best deal CPU for the money today as well.

crappy taiwanese Orkos electrolytic capacitors, no wonder they blew out. Many of today's motherboards have these, even 'high end' ones, on where it counts, the VRM, so be careful when you buy! Even the motherboard I have, has them, although not on the VRM where it counts.

What many people fail to understand is that as the PSU is important for supplying power to the system, the motherboard is just as important as supplying power to the CPU. This is so important, and we will save this for last in this section.

Least importantly, make sure everything fits. There really isn't much to this.

First, make sure the Motherboard has at least one PCI-Ex16 (key word x16) slot for a GPU video card. SLI/Crossfire, NVidia and Radeon's take on using multiple graphics cards, are stupid. Plain and simple, there is no reason to do it for the budget, or rational, PC builder. You do not get a 200% performance, you get somewhere between 110% to 160%, the average around 140% (according to most review sites). The extra heat can cause your system to slow down as increased heat over a certain point, generally regarded to be around 60*C, causes system parts to slow down, and the extra power you will need to invest in a heavier PSU will make the price not worth it compared to single card solutions. You may think you may one day use it, when you can get a 2nd outdated, old card to go with your outdated single card - this is stupid, just sell your card and get a single, better card. In 2 years, when you think of doing Crossfire/SLI, cards 2x the performance will drop in price to be more affordable and a better solution.

Second, the Northbridge. This isn't important anymore considering that CPU's today now have the Memory Controller built into them, talking directly to the RAM as opposed to before. The only reason to pick one Northbridge over another is if you're interested in overclocking. The difference between most northbridges is if they can support a GPU (revealed by a PCI-Ex16 slot) and if they can overclock (usually made obvious by details on the motherboard page). Generally, motherboard companies understand that people buying just the motherboard for building a PC like to overclock, so you probably won't have a situation where the motherboard that can overclock is cheaper than one with a northbridge that can't.

Third, the form factor. Make sure it fits your case - if the Motherboard is ATX, make sure the case is ATX or bigger. You can search this, but it's pretty straightforward. The only difference in Micro-ATX motherboards is they are smaller, generally, this means less RAM slots and less PCI-E slots. As long as it has a single PCI-Ex16 slot, and 2 RAM slots, that is all you need. There is only so much RAM you need these days, and 2 slots is more than enough. I already talked about PCI-Ex16 slots. In short, there is no reason to avoid Micro-ATX, if you so happen to find a good deal on it.

Back to what's important on a motherboard: The Voltage Regulator Module. Sound complicated? It's because it is! This is what supplies a delicate amount of Power Width Modulation to your CPU in bursts of 12v based on binary demands of the CPU, which is controlled independently on each channel by a mosfet driver transistor, which is then linked to a set of capacitors. Huh?

So you need to make sure that your motherboard can support your CPU. Do not just look at the details page, as it can be misleading. When people say their motherboard 'fried', they generally mean their VRM fried out.

This link is great for seeing what a motherboard is rated to support:
http://www.overclock.net/amd-motherboards/946407-amd-motherboard-power-phase-list.html

Generally, dual or tri core CPU's have a THERMAL DESIGN POWER (TDP) of 95w, and quadcores have a TDP of 125w. When you overclock or unlock, this power need goes up.

If you plan to go quadcore or overclock, or both, you need to have a quality board. First, most importantly, you need multiple channels. This can be indicated by the number of square blocks with a few letters on them. The channels are usually referred to as "X+1" which means CPU Power + CPU-Northbridge Power. 3+1 you should avoid completely, 4+1 is okay, and 8+1 is great. Secondly, you need "Ferrite" Chokes - which are square blocks - don't consider anything else. If you don't see square blocks, you don't see a motherboard. Third, you want 'Solid Capacitors" - make sure the cylinders by the VRM are, well, smooth and 'solid', and not 'wrapped' (understandable when you look at a motherboard). Third and a half, by the way, IF you have electrolytic capacitors, the kind that are 'wrapped' and not 'solid', you want to make sure they are Japanese - again, beyond the scope of the thread, but just search the words on the the capacitor to see the brand; for some reason Japanese capacitors are very high quality but Taiwanese and Chinese are crap. Fourth, you want those little chipsets, or MOSFETS, to have 4 'legs' instead of 3 'legs' with the center one cut (a feature of efficiency known as RDS on). Fifth, a board that uses an 8 pin power supply port is better than one that uses 4 pins. Sixth, you want your motherboard to have only 2 mosfet 3 or 4 legged chips instead of 3 identical mosfet chips - this is because cheap motherboards will use a 3rd mosfet chip instead of a 3rd, different chip called a "mosfet driver" to handle the voltage flow on the mosfet chips. You can usually identify Mosfet driver chips as the 8 legged chipsets, and even the cheapest boards have a single driver at the 'bottom' of the VRM. Finally, a heatsink on the VRM is important. You can add a few of these up to make an acceptable motherboard, but if your motherboard of choice is "no' to all of these, avoid it. The difference is that certain VRM's run hotter or cooler, and some handle heat better or worse. All the quality in VRM comes down to how hot they run and how they deal with the heat.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Everything-You-Need-to-Know-About-The-Motherboard-Voltage-Regulator-Circuit/616/1


The squares are called chokes, and in this case are 'ferrite' - good. The cylinders are capacitors, and in this case 'solid' - good. There is only 5 chokes, so it's probably 4+1 channels as opposed to 8+1 - not good. The mosfet chipsets, or those flat computer chips, have 3 legs with the center cut instead of 4 - not good. To be very in-depth and technical and beyond the scope of this thread, the mosfets are Nikos, which are horrible and no wonder no one likes MSI motherboards and they blow out all the time - not good. No heatsink - not good. 4 Pin white power supply port instead of 8 pin - not good.

Also, avoid MSI motherboards. It's beyond the scope of this thread to discuss why, but basically they have horrible quality VRMs.

If you do not plan to overclock/unlock, do not worry, just get what you can afford. If you are pro like me, you can attach heatsinks to your motherboard or even replace your mosfet chipsets with soldering, along with spot cooling. But generally, try to at least get 4+1 with solid capacitors, and if you are a genuine overclocker, get a board with 8+1 or heatsinks. You can also just buy copper 'chipset' heatsinks for $8 along with thermal tape, and attach them to the heatsinks.

For example, I bought a Athlon II X3 + Biostar A770E3 combo. My mobo has 3+1(bad), Ferrite chokes(good), solid capacitors(good), 3 legged mosfets with no RDS on(bad), 4 pin PSU port (bad), and no 8 legged mosfet chip driver but a 3rd 3 legged mosfet chip (bad), with no heatsink, suffice to say, even though it's 'rated' to be okay for 125w/quadcores, it's probably not advisable to do so. I sawed up an old heatsink and taped it on to help, but if my motherboard blew out I wouldn't be surprised. The price was good and I didn't know better at the time.

my custom VRM heatsink

Now, SC2 is CPU limited - but if your PC can play at minimum settings but struggles at higher settings, that is because of the GPU. This may sound obvious, but when you go for higher graphics settings, that is all on your GPU. Now if you struggle at low settings, that is a CPU issue.

The best card out for the money today is the GTX 460 768mb, no argument about it. Having 1GB or more of VRAM is unnecessary, as Starcraft2 Ultra only uses 512mb and Extreme, which only applies in single player and is insignificant, will still look good on 768mb. I've seen this at $95 (that same card is back to $150 now) but you can get an MSI 460 for $126 right now. This is a relatively powerhungry card. However, it is complete overkill for SC2. Get this if you can afford it, no doubt, otherwise we have 3 other players:

GT430 - a pretty bad card, relatively, but if you can find this in a combo with a decent PSU, Motherboard, or anything, and have the relative price of this card at under $30, it's a great contender. It will play Medium.

Radeon 4830 - this card will play on High settings unless at max resolutions, and at around $60, a great deal.

Radeon 4850 - at around $80, this is probably the best card to get not just for a budget build, but for any computer made just for Starcraft 2. This card can arguably play on all settings maxed, with a sacrifice in a few settings only if you play at higher resolutions. If you are playing at 'medium' resolutions (around 1400 or less pixel width) this card will be the best choice.

Here, a great article benchmarking all of today's GPUs in relative performance. The above tomshardware article is useful too.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Note, that while the Radeon 5670 and 9800 GT comes highly 'recommended' as budget cards, the 4850 is a much better card at a lower price, and the 460 is a much better card for slightly more. While the 5670 is 'newer' the 4850 is just more poweful and SC2 is an 'old' game. Generally Radeon cards run much cooler, quieter, and less power-hungry than their Nvidia counterparts, and are generally 'better' budget cards, NVidia is generally 'better', and the 460 is such a beast at such a low price today.

Note that resolutions impact framerate more than settings do. If you are playing at 1900 pixel width, you may need the GTX 460 for max or just get high on the 4850. If you are reading this guide, you probably aren't playing on 1900x1080 resolution (on the other hand, theres no reason this article isn't for rich people - going anything above this guide's maximum recommendations is overkill for not only SC2, but most games out today). Also note that you need to play on your monitor/TV's native resolution. Screens/resolutions/monitors are beyond the scope of this thread, as you probably have one anyways, but besides the fact resolution is about the 3rd or 4th most important thing (read: not most important) on a screen, playing above the number of pixels your monitor actually has may look nice by making things look small, but is really just reducing picture quality.

Finally, I want to stress this:the difference between medium and Ultra, is it really worth a price premium to you?

Memory is simply a matter of do you have enough, or not. Benchmarks have shown that the difference between the fastest, $250, overclocked RAM and simple 1066 RAM is less than 10% (money better spent on the CPU or anything else, really). 2GB will be able to play SC2, but you will need to close out everything, and 4GB will be enough to play SC2, stream, have multiple browsers, download, play music, and run a movie at the same time. There's no reason to get more.

When shopping, look at the price of 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB models. Sometimes getting a single, bigger RAM is cheaper than less, multiple RAM, which seems counterintuitive.

Of course, DDR3 is the only choice today.

Also, AMD system prefer 'tighter', or lower timings, as opposed to speed in mhz, so do not get caught up in 1600mhz vs 1333mhz. Some Phenom CPUs also can't do 1600 mhz settings, so check on that when buying RAM and your CPU. I've found that Kingston is not only the cheapest, but the best in terms of quality, overclocking, and warranty. Also, heatspreaders are really unnecessary, and do very little to cool RAM. Case setup is more important. If you are going to spend more money on RAM, don't, but if you do, you want to aim for tighter timings as opposed to speed. Also, you can underclock the RAM and go for better timings to get a bigger performance boost. I'll go over overclocking later.

Hard drive is simply a matter of space - higher or slower performing hard drives only affect boot times and loading times, read: not performance. The difference between, say, 1000RPM Raptor hard drives and 7200RPM Caviar Blue is only a few seconds. Solid State Drives are absolutely amazing, about 5 times faster, but the price premium is just absolutely ridiculous.

Note how much space you use on your current system (also note that you can simply use the old drives in your old system). Do you need 1000GB? Do you even need 200? If you delete all the porn and movies you download, you'll realize you don't even need 100GB - I have downloaded many games, torrents, movies, and operating systems, and none of the PCs I have ever owned have gone over 100GB. Just delete the movies after a month after watching, if you don't delete them right away. But whatever you need in space, get.

You need to get SATA connection, you need to get 7200RPM, and that's really it. You can find great deals on used/open-box/recertified hard drives, and Caviar Blue, WD's newest HDD line, can be had for as little as $20. WD, Seagate, or Samsung for common quality brands.

You can go caseless! In all seriousness, you can buy the case later

There's no comparison to getting the NZXT Gamma. Tomshardware and other review sites have shown only one or two other cases that come close in value, which reviewed when the Gamma was much more expensive. Due to price drops, there is no discussion on this one. As an owner, it's an extremely solid case with great airflow, space for tower cooling and up to 7 fans (and that's just the open slots, not extra places you could cram them or fit them, I have 7 fans and not even using 3 slots). The fan the case comes with is also surprisingly high quality (as reviewed by silentpc). The look is unique though, some people love it and some people hate it, so always google up a case so you know what it looks like, before buying.

But to understand them...

When buying a case, you need to check to make sure it fits your motherboard. This is a simple making sure your motherboard is the same "ATX" form factor or smaller than the case. Also, good things to have in a case is a bottom mounted power supply (better air ventilation), fans slots (although you can drill holes easily), space behind the motherboard and slots for cable management, a solid build (something you just need to read up on the case for), and most importantly, well, the look! Don't worry about drive bays, as things like CD drives and floppy drives are a thing of the past, and your case will more than likely be able to fit extra HDD's in unconventional places if 5 HDDs is not enough for you.


you do not want to see my PC from the other side, my side panel barely fits with my wires from 7 fans and system!

Chernobyl: A blown Power Supply Unit

When people talk about the PSU, the saying is "Spend cheap, spend twice". However, this is usually said by people who don't understand them, as the motto should really be "Spend smart, spend once". While a PSU may say something like "Over 9000 watts!" the 'true' power may be much less. This is because modern, reliable PSU's by reliable companies will have most of their power on the 12v rail, whereas crappy, unreliable, or old PSU's have the power on the 3.3v or 5v rails - essentially it is misleading.

Your system's power needs are overwhelmingly on the 12v rails - the two most power hungry components, the CPU and GPU, all rely on the 12v rail, and accessories such as fans, lights, the motherboard, sound cards, et cetera, all use the 12v rail as well. What is a 12v rail? Well, that's beyond the scope of this thread, but just understand it is where the most powerful power comes from and it's what is important.

Now, how to calculate your 'true' wattage? Given that sometimes PSU's may have more than one 12v rail, the calculation is:
12v1xAmperage + 12v2xAmperage= PSU Wattage

If you do this calculation on older PSU's or crappy, cheap ones (under $20) you will see that only around half of the power is on the 12v rail, meaning that despite the PSU being 500w for your system that only needs 350, your stuck with a smoldering burning mess.

Modular Power Supplies are power supplies where you can hook up the power lines as needed, which is amazing and very cool looking, but doesn't affect performance and the price premium is not worth it. If you are smart, you can hide the wires without a modular supply. This is where a good case with space behind the motherboard comes in.

Most power supply calculators out there, such as Neweggs, exaggerate things, in order to get you to spend more money. The only trustworthy power calculator is this one:
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

You generally want your PC's power needs to be 80% of the PSU's capability, or on today's gaming PC's, this means that your PC's power needs should be about 80% of the PSU's 12v rail wattage. This is not an issue about headroom, but about performance, as PSU's will inevitably lose their power output over time and even the best PSU's will have slight inconsistency in their power output. Even with this in mind though, 350w is all you should need, and 430w will be enough if you plan to get fans or accessories, you are overclocking, and you are paranoid. 500w is unnecessary unless you plan to overclock, have a Fermi GPU, you have quadcore (either by unlocking or by stock), and have multiple accessories, drive bays, cooling, and hard drives.

Also, you want to check for how efficient a power supply is. When a power supply says 500w, that just means it can feed 500w to a computer (which we also know can vary depending on which rails the PSU supplies the power). It does not say how much it sucks out of the wall, and crappy PSU's can draw around 800w just to supply 500w, meaning they are jacking up your electric bill and raising heat in your PC. You generally want 80% efficiency, and 80 Bronze or 80 Plus means they have a certain guarantee of efficiency.

Right now, the only PSU to get is the Antec Earthwatts. There is no other PSU that compares in terms of quality and price, as they are the only 80+ Bronze PSU's at their power levels as well as having high proportions of power on the 12v rail. I haven't seen any cheaper PSU that was quality enough to compare, and usually they aren't even cheaper than these VERY cheap PSUs that are VERY quality at $38+.

DVD/CD drives are being outdated. If you bought SC2 on CD, you can download it for free, as SC2 is actually free - what costs money is the account (check for yourself at starcraft2.com). But if you insist on getting one, just get the cheapest, these can be had for under $20, or off your old PC for free. Note you can install OS's via USB.

Fan controllers are a great way to control fan speed/noise, and the NZXT Sentry 2 also has temperature monitors. Unquestionably the best controller, and one of the cheapest at $25. Looks great, touch screen.

HSF: Right now the best value is the Cooler Master Hyper 212+, and if you search you will find it unanimously recommended at $30. However, note that it is tower cooling, and your stock HSF is radial cooling (ie it blows 'through' the case whereas your stock 'radial' cooling blows 'down' onto your motherboard, cooling everything by the CPU) so while your CPU temperature will drop at least 10*C, your northbridge and VRM (remember what that was?) will rise, even dangerously high, making it well not worth it. You should overclock your CPU and see if temperatures are a concern, before buying an aftermarket HSF, as you may find your CPU is limited by voltage or stability well before temps are an issue, and your VRM may not have the quality to withstand the added heat or your northbridge too. I myself had to saw an old heatsink to glue onto my VRM and attach with wire a fan to my northbridge heatsink to compensate, when I probably should've stuck to stock cooling since my CPU did not have temp problems at all.

Mouse: The Steelseries Kinzu is the best deal at $30. Other mice are too expensive, and the acceleration can be removed. There are more indepth articles about mice, elsewhere. idra uses it though (baller!).

Fans: The Yate Loons are the best, no question. Petras Tech shop has the best 'batch' and you should not buy them anywhere else (you can google why this is true). Mediums provide adequate cooling, and Lows are the only option if sound is an issue to you. $5.

Operating System: Budget builders usually know ahead of time where they are going to get their operating system (yarrr matey) but, that aside, all operating systems these days are good - including freeware. Apple's Snow Leopard and various incarnations of the MacOS on PC make buying a Mac pointless, Windows 7 is actually good, and while Linux may seem scary because, despite of how awesome it can be, it is complicated, Ubuntu is very newb-friendly. With programs like Wine, you usually never have to worry about compatibility issues. If you are on a budget, you can just use Linux/Ubuntu for the time being, and then get Windows or MacOS when a little bit of cash goes your way. Given the huge range of free OS's available these days, the quality of all Operating Systems (even old ones), and that your OS doesn't matter when playing Starcraft 2, I am not including it in the price. It's not hard to make the cost $0 here, and no I am not referring to pirating. People argue all day about OS's but when you get down to it, your marine micro will be the same regardless and they are all good. However, Windows 7 is around $100, as is MacOS, but if you buy it with a student discount you can get it anywhere from free to $70 - just check with your campus computer center.

Monitor: Check what output your GPU of choice has, and match it up with the monitor. However since this is a budget build, and the technical aspect of monitors can be very complex (and beyond the scope of this thread), we aren't really discussing them here. I assume you are running at 1600 pixel width or lower as a budget builder, but if you are running at 1900 pixel width, you may want to get the GTX 460 or understand you may have slightly degraded performance than expected for the power, since resolution can impact FPS more than your graphics settings. As this is a budget build, I assume you have a monitor from your old PC build, but a quality monitor can be had for under $100. Sanyo has some great budget monitors, and most 'broad' review groups like ConsumerReports has great information on the subject, as this is a subject not just covered by nerds, but all men. Note that you can run off a TV, or even projector, and you don't need to get just a dedicated PC monitor.

*Note that when discussing costs, I am excluding mouse and keyboard since you can use your old ones or get temporary ones from friends for free or cheap. Monitors and Operating Systems also are something you can use from either an old build, or use for free. While some may say this is misleading, this guide is an assumption that your current PC either cannot play Starcraft 2 or suddenly broke and you need to play SC2 as fast as possible, so in that sense this guide is much more practical. The general prices for such components are discussed so it's not hard to figure them out, and since this is a PC building guide the specifics for components such as an OS or monitor can be found discussed in much greater depth, elsewhere.

Although my temps never get past 40*C, I can only get an extra 200mhz when overclocking my CPU, although I did get an extra core

Now, I'm not writing a guide to overclocking. What I will write, is how overclocking affects buying decisions.

First off, the Athlon II series can be quite interesting when it comes to overclocking. Many people have seen better results overclocking 'slower' (at stock speed) CPU's than the faster ones, so bear that in mind (which is funny, because your 'awesome overclock' may just get you barely past stock speed on a faster Athlon II which only overclocks a tiny bit). Also, the Athlon II X3 450 is generally guaranteed to overclock to over 3.8ghz, or unlock, but not both. You may want to buy a 430/440/445 instead if you are an overclocker enthusiast and okay with the risk. An Athlon II can give you great reward from great risk when overclocking. Just search the exact model to see what results people generally get, and make sure they are recent results (as newer manufactured CPUs may act differently, not to mention the general warning that all CPUs act differently).

Note that when increasing voltage with CPUs, you need a better motherboard. See the VRM section on this, as well as the link on overclock.net and googling "vrm guide overclock.net"

RAM overclocking comes all down to 'tightening' the timings when it comes to AMD systems (whereas Intel prefers faster speed). 1600 mhz is much easier to work with, because you have more 'headroom' than 1333mhz, but all in all increasing speed on RAM is neglible except in benchmarks.

CPU-NB overclocking will yield tangible results in overclocking, probably the 2nd most important thing to overclock on a system. You will see more from a Phenom II with an increased CPU-NB than an Athlon II, just fyi, but Athlon II still appreciates it greatly.