So, I'm working on a $250 budget build for my friend. For a gamer, $250 is not a lot to work with, but his chief concern was Maplestory, so anything else it can run would be gravy. Normally I wouldn't feel the need to come to a forum to double check a build, but I don't typically build in this budget range nor do I have any experience with using APUs for their graphics processing. Also, he's already got a hard drive and peripherals, which was pretty much mandatory considering the budget constraint.
MSI FM2-A55M-E33 Motherboard
AMD A6-5400K APU
G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2x4GB) @1866
Corsair CX 430W PSU
Cheapo Case & Case Fans
Skippable paragraph on decision making process:
I started my search with the case just to see how much of my budget that would eat. This was one of the cheapest cases with good reviews, and it has a lot more fan spots than most in its price range. I also factored the fans and PSU in this early on. Quality on the PSU was a must, and Corsair is known to provide. Next I searched for the motherboard again mostly to see how much it would take from the budget, since I'd read that the AMD APUs provide significantly better performance graphics wise. I obviously don't mean to say Intel is bad, but rather their built-in graphics seem to be geared strictly toward office/casual use. Next, for RAM, I would normally consider 4GB an acceptable minimum, but since the APU will be eating system RAM, I went with 8GB, which wasn't as much of a price hike as I thought it would be anyway. With all that stuff figured out, I went for the best APU that would still fit the budget, which was the A6-5400k as far as I could tell. It's dual-core, but as far as I know, Maplestory isn't multithreaded anyway lol.
I switched to the $3 more expensive Ares series because 1866 Mhz is the highest frequency the APU supports. While my previous choice was 2133 Mhz, it had worse clock ratings. My biggest concern right now is whether or not AMD provides stock cooling which is actually sufficient, but at least the case will should have good airflow with that fan pack. I'll probably slap some Arctic Silver 5 on it as well since I have it.
MSI FM2-A55M-E33 Motherboard
AMD A6-5400K APU
G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2x4GB) @1866
Corsair CX 430W PSU
Cheapo Case & Case Fans
Skippable paragraph on decision making process:
I started my search with the case just to see how much of my budget that would eat. This was one of the cheapest cases with good reviews, and it has a lot more fan spots than most in its price range. I also factored the fans and PSU in this early on. Quality on the PSU was a must, and Corsair is known to provide. Next I searched for the motherboard again mostly to see how much it would take from the budget, since I'd read that the AMD APUs provide significantly better performance graphics wise. I obviously don't mean to say Intel is bad, but rather their built-in graphics seem to be geared strictly toward office/casual use. Next, for RAM, I would normally consider 4GB an acceptable minimum, but since the APU will be eating system RAM, I went with 8GB, which wasn't as much of a price hike as I thought it would be anyway. With all that stuff figured out, I went for the best APU that would still fit the budget, which was the A6-5400k as far as I could tell. It's dual-core, but as far as I know, Maplestory isn't multithreaded anyway lol.
I switched to the $3 more expensive Ares series because 1866 Mhz is the highest frequency the APU supports. While my previous choice was 2133 Mhz, it had worse clock ratings. My biggest concern right now is whether or not AMD provides stock cooling which is actually sufficient, but at least the case will should have good airflow with that fan pack. I'll probably slap some Arctic Silver 5 on it as well since I have it.
