Bare bones for light gaming

atothej

Afternoon all - I'm a little bit out of the loop with PC components, so would really appreciate some advice please.

My last PC build took place about 10 years ago. I've been upgrading along the way (like Trigger's broom) but finally the motherboard has bitten he dust, so it's time to upgrade the bare bones (CPU, RAM and mobo).

We're looking to use this PC for general office duties, plus a little light gaming for the kids (Minecraft, maybe some older games, but certainly nothing taxing). We're on quite a tight budget, which is why I'm asking for some advice - can't afford to over spend!

What we need -
CPU
RAM - will 8gb be adeuate?
Motherboard
USB3 hub

What we have -
Case
120gb SSD hard drive
1TB 3.5 inch hard drive
22 inch monitor
Optical drive

I know it's a tricky question, and subject to quick change, but I'm hoping someone may have gone through this themselves recently and save me the hassle of all that research!

Thanks!

EndlessWaves

8GB is fine.

CPU-wise you're looking at a Ryzen 2200G or Pentium G4600, G4620, G5500 or G5600. The Intel chips should be the budget option, slower but cheaper, but a quick look at current prices suggest they're suffering worse from the pre-Christmas price hike and are currently the same price as the 2200G, rather than the £60-70ish they should be.

I'm not sure if there's currently a consensus on cheap AM4 motherboards, it's usually hard to find reviews at the budget end of the market.

atothej

Great - thanks for the advice. I've been looking online this afternoon, and although I'd want to research a bit more on performance, here is what I'm thinking:

AMD Ryzen 5 1400 - currently £93 odd on Amazon ES
Gygabyte GA AB350 - £68 on Amazon
Crucial DDR4 RAM 2400 - £67 for 1 X 8gb stick (giving me the option to upgrade) Amazon

I get totally lost in CPU specs, so not sure if the Ryzen 5 would outperform the Ryzen 3 you suggested. What do you reckon?

mikeysthoughts

If it doesn't break the bank I would recommend 2x 4GB ram for dual channel.

Do you need a graphics card? I could be tempted into selling my Radeon 7950 if you're in the market for one...

Backspace

I just built mine, Ryzen 3 2200G CPU, Gigabyte GA-AB350M Mobo and 1x8 Ballistic Sports DDR4 2667 Memory. For your needs it's plenty. The on chip graphic is 128 bit and up to 2 gig memory, it work quite well.

EndlessWaves

You want two sticks of memory if you're using integrated graphics. A single stick drops you down to half the memory bandwidth which has a noticeable impact even in some older games.

(so your setup @Backspace has a 64-bit wide memory interface, you only get 128-bit if you use both 64-bit channels).

The 1400 is between 10% and 25% faster in CPU terms than the 2200G. However, it doesn't have any integrated graphics and requires an external graphics card. You'd need an RX550 or GT1030 to match the 2200G's graphics, which cost £70 .

So it's effectively a £180 setup compared to a £90 setup, and not worth the extra money for the small performance increase.

Backspace

I've just added a 4 gig module to the 8 gig so I have 2x4 flex with 4 gigs to boot. I configured it to 2 gig video ram and 2 gig ram disk for pagefile.

Very noticeable performance boost.

atothej

Thanks once again guys. Thanks for the explanation regarding the CPU's @EndlessWaves - it looks like the 2200G is the way to go (and also recommended by @Backspace which is always helpful)

I already have a graphics card @mikeysthoughts although it's probably a few years old, and not very expensive at the time. i'd imagine that the onboard graphics on the 2200G CPU would probably be better...

The bad news, the wife has vetoed any expenditure on this while we prepare for Xmas, so although not a huge burden for me (Portal can wait) the children won't be happy missing their Minecraft mods! At least I know what to be aiming for now...

Edit - Actually it was this graphics card purchased in 2015 - time flies! Gigabyte Nvidea GT610 graphics card (2gb, DDR3, PCI-e)

Backspace

I was planning to use my video card on this build as it was slightly better then the Vegas graphics, the Radeon HD7770 1g DDR5 PCIe but it doesn't play nice with this board or the CPU. The Vegas graphics was disabled at the time. Luckily the Vegas chip turned out to be rather decent.

supermuchurios

Id add the GTX 1050 for improved graphics capability