What’s the cheapest gaming rig you can build?

In this article, we’re going to attempt at putting together a build for a gaming rig that is close enough to the price of a console and offers a similar level of playability.

If you’re a gamer, chances are you’ve already looked at buying a console. You’ve heard about their longevity and the fact that they’re getting cheaper and the game bundles continue to look more and more tempting. In the meantime, you stare at other people’s builds on the hardware sub-forums and can’t imagine ponying up R8,000 or more for a gaming computer. You begin to wonder if there’s ever a chance that you can get something equivalent that will play any game you throw at it.

Well now you can! Well, at least you’ve been able to do this for a while now, if you know where to look and what components to pick. We’ll show you what components you’ll need to put together to assemble a neat budget gaming rig.

The table below shows the various components available from local retailers. The lowest prices are highlighted in Bold. For this article, prices for components that aren’t in stock in a particular store but are in supply with another will be included, as it is expected with larger orders like a full rig that the supplier will attempt to source stock for you.

Component	Rebeltech	Wootware	Ikonix	Titan-Ice
AMD A8-5600K 3.6GHz Quad-core	1327	1336	1257	1349
MSI FM2-A75MA-E35	674		746	729
Corsair Vengeance DDR3-2133 4GB	724		729	775
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB	627		689	679
LG 24x SATA DVD-RW	169	199	170	189
Corsair VS350 350w	368	430	393	419
Cooler Master Elite 344 Silver with PSU 350/400w	312	414	313	329
Wireless Xbox 360 Windows controller	549		536	549

Final cost: R4,667

AMD is the better choice for budget gamers, offering both a quad-core chip and built-in graphics capable of running most games at 720p resolution with medium-to-high details at a playable frame rate. While it may seem more sensible to pick a dual-core from Intel and slot in a discrete card, like the Radeon HD6670, that’ll only give you slightly better performance and chop your core count in half. With more games taking advantage of four or more cores, picking a dual-core is a silly idea.

MSI FM2-A75MA-E35

Because APUs benefit from faster memory, I decided to ramp up the RAM frequency while keeping price reasonable and settled on Corsair’s Vengeance DDR3-2133 4GB kit. I could go with cheaper Kingston memory at the same speed or ADATA Gaming memory at a cheaper price with double the available memory, but few retailers stock it and it would have made the roundup a bit unfair.

Going through the rest of the build, I decided a 500GB hard drive would be big enough, so I stopped at the Western Digital Caviar Blue. Its not a SSD, but it’ll do for now. An optical drive was added but since many people now buy their games online through portals like Steam, Good Old Games, and Origin, optical discs are needed less and less every year. By 2015, the DVD standard may well be redundant.

Cooler Master Elite 344 mATX

Rounding up the last three items, this combination of hardware won’t use more than 140w of power from the wall so the Corsair VS350 is my weapon of choice. It still has enough headroom for a discrete GPU and the Radeon HD7790 or the Geforce GTX650 Ti would fit in nicely here. This is a small, console-like rig, so the Elite 344 is both big enough for all the hardware and small enough to not be noticed. The efficient design and high airflow will keep components cool.

Finally, no console replacement is complete without a wireless game pad. More and more console ports from the Xbox 360 support the same controller on Windows by default, so using the wireless version for the desktop would enable you to put this mini-rig next to your TV and enjoy some armchair gaming. And it only cost you R4667!