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Building the Best Midrange Gaming PC - Ver: 10.05
Ameya Dalvi, Oct 28, 2005 1024 hrs ISTToday we plan to choose components with the best price-performance ratio in the mid-range segment .
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Those who have been following our PC Building Guides regularly may find something missing in the title of this article. Yes, I am referring to the budget. Generally, we set ourselves a budget and choose the best components that fit into that budget. Today, we will do things a little differently. What we plan to do is choose components with the best price-performance ratio in the midrange segment and build a gaming PC using the same. So let's get rolling. Version 10.05 - October 2005.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 939) (Rs. 7,300)
No points for guessing the best value midrange CPU. We have recommended the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ in almost every second gaming setup and it deservedly makes its way into this config. The Athlon 64 3000+ (939) is a powerful enough CPU for your gaming needs. Its core runs at 1.8 GHz and has 128 KB L1 and 512 KB L2 cache and a 1 GHz HyperTransport bus along with an integrated DDR memory controller that supports dual channel DDR RAM. The Venice core makes it a more efficient over-clocker and adds a few more goodies like the SSE3 instruction set. At Rs 7,300, it is virtually unbeatable for now.
Motherboard: Asus A8N-E (Rs. 6,700)
The ideal chipset for a Socket-939 CPU is one based on nForce 4 Ultra Chipset. With the low end motherboards and their takers flooding the market, it is a tough job finding a reasonably priced nForce4 Ultra board. FoxConn, ECS, MSI and a few others have such boards but can seldom be found. But the availability of one nForce 4 Ultra board is never an issue - and that is the Asus A8N-E. It is a full ATX board with up-to-date specifications that include a 16X PCI Express slot, two 1X PCI-E slots, one 4X PCI-E slot, 3 standard PCI slots, Dual Channel Memory support, SATA/SATA2 RAID, Firewire, USB 2.0 and a lot more. And last but not the least, there is never a question mark over Asus's performance and quality. For Rs 6,700, this motherboard is a very good buy.
Memory: Transcend 2 x 512 MB DDR-400 RAM (Rs 4,800)
The games these days demand more and more RAM and this isn't a bad time to meet their demand. The prices of RAM are quite attractive these days and this is the right time to throw in a GB of RAM. And since the CPU/Mobo combo supports dual channel memory, use two sticks of 512 MB DDR-400 RAM. Transcend would be our preferred choice of memory brand. Kingmax and Hynix are other good alternatives.
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