Thoughts for a budget build

[Jeff G]

Looking at putting together a budget gaming build.
Use is 100% gaming.
The budget of $400 for cpu, mb, ram, and gpu (the rest will be hand-me-downs from myself).
The build needs to play modern titles on medium settings with 1080p resolution.
It also needs to be able to support a graphical update in the future. Depending if the guy the build is for really gets in to PC Gaming, we may look at a 5760x1080 screen setup with a much nicer gpu in the future. So I want to make sure whatever we go with can support that down the road.

This is my thought so far:
1) Go with a used Xeon (something like the e3-1231v3 or similar) and cheap h87 board. Seen a few of these right around $200 pop up from time to time. $50 gets me 16gb of mid-range ddr3 on ebay. That leaves about $150 for something like a gtx 970. Should be a decent rig with plenty of gpu upgrade room. Downside is no overclocking and older tech.
2) Go with a new Ryzen 5 1400 and a matching board, puts me at $200. With DDR4 prices, a $60 kit of 2x4gb is all that fits the budget. That leaves me again looking for a used gtx 970 under $150. I gain new tech and the ability to overclock, but loose out on the fact that Im at 8gb of ram instead of 16gb and the ryzen 5 1400 might be more of a bottleneck in the future with a substantial gpu upgrade.

Im really on the fence with this one. Any suggestions, changes, or other builds to recommend? With the limited budget, either option leaves right around $150 for gpu. Is a used gtx 970 the best bet in that range?

 

[Daleon]

Might go this route, for gaming its prolly better than either of those 2.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/P3ZJJV

The ram kit listed there is sold out so finding some good deals would be on you. Personally I would shoot for a 8350K and a Asrock Pro4 mb for about $80 more and you have a system that can OC and perform on par with a 7700K. Use onboard for a little bit and find a good deal on a 970 or 1050 Ti.

 

[||Console||]

Used 3770k/4770k with z87/z97 mb (or even i5s) is what i would be looking for with 16g ram .

"we may look at a 5760x1080 screen setup with a much nicer gpu in the future" ouch going to need a Nice GPU

 

[Jeff G]

"we may look at a 5760x1080 screen setup with a much nicer gpu in the future" ouch going to need a Nice GPU

Yeah, that would be like 2 years down the road. Just want to make sure the cpu isnt going to be a major bottleneck to something like the 1080 ti in case he decides to do that down road.

 

[Jeff G]

Might go this route, for gaming its prolly better than either of those 2.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/P3ZJJV

The ram kit listed there is sold out so finding some good deals would be on you. Personally I would shoot for a 8350K and a Asrock Pro4 mb for about $80 more and you have a system that can OC and perform on par with a 7700K. Use onboard for a little bit and find a good deal on a 970 or 1050 Ti.

Do you think the i3-8100 would be as good (or better) than the ryzen 5 1400?

 

[||Console||]

 

[Jeff G]

I'm honestly shocked that there's that big of a fps difference between those two, with all other things being equal. Looks like the 8100 is a decent little cpu.

 

[Jeff G]

Looking around, it also seems the $118 price point on that cpu is impossible to find. Combine that with no h370 or b350 boards, and the cheapest z370 at $100, and i think it's going to be out of budget.
Im thinking in the end I'll probably need to find the best pre-skylake cpu/mb I can in the $200 range. DDR3 will save me a good chunk of money to spend on the gpu.
With that in mind, will the older (haswell) i5's be good enough to not bottleneck a 1080 ti in gaming? Or should I really look for something like the 1231v3? While sticking with a 970ish type card for now, I want to keep the option of gpu upgrading on the table without a whole system rebuild next year.

 

[Tír na nÓg]

Looking around, it also seems the $118 price point on that cpu is impossible to find. Combine that with no h370 or b350 boards, and the cheapest z370 at $100, and i think it's going to be out of budget.
Im thinking in the end I'll probably need to find the best pre-skylake cpu/mb I can in the $200 range. DDR3 will save me a good chunk of money to spend on the gpu.
With that in mind, will the older (haswell) i5's be good enough to not bottleneck a 1080 ti in gaming? Or should I really look for something like the 1231v3? While sticking with a 970ish type card for now, I want to keep the option of gpu upgrading on the table without a whole system rebuild next year.

I think the 4560K would do, as soon as the game doesn't use more than 4 threads.

Ivy start to shows its age though.

The CPU in sig ain't no bottleneck at all for my 1080ti. Whatever the resolution is. I think it will even still be good for Volta.

Thing is with the wide spread of 6cores+ CPU's, be it with AMD or Intel, dev will certainly take their fingers out of their a55 and start coding for more cores.

So, 4 cores might not be the best bet for years to come. I'd grab at least a 4770k/4790k.

 

[Daleon]

Does he have to build right now? Know whats right around the corner right? BF baby, would be waiting for some hot deals if he can hold off a little longer.

 

[Jeff G]

Looks like MicroCenter is running $50 off motherboard with cpu purchase.
Off course, that's like a 45 min drive to get there and 10% sales tax, but they have stuff like the i3 7350k with a z170 board for $170 after tax or the i5 7500 for $210 after tax or Ryzen 5 1400 with a B350 board for $190 after tax.
All of those would be in budget, but are any of them worth getting over a Haswell i7 setup?
Again, any DDR4 system will be 8gb of ram whereas a DDR3 system will get 16gb due to ram prices currently.