Nope is right. Sure, you could build 'a computer' for this budget, but not one that can handle AAA games with any quality at an acceptable framerate. There are, however, plenty of smaller and indie games that a bottom-end computer might be able to handle, I think...
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Google indeed. But I doubt you could buy a new pc with 300 bucks.
If you reuse the old pc case, and power, and maybe the fans etc... maybe you could get it for that price but your frind must know to to build computers. Otherwise I'd say stretch your budget to 500/600.
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Best bet with that budget would be to salvage some parts from the old machine, and put together some sort of Frankenstein's Desktop... What are the specs of his current PC?
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Hard to tell exactly what he's got from that, but while the CPU isn't cutting edge, the biggest problem is probably his graphics card. Does the machine have onboard graphics? Judging by the "usable memory" entry, I'm guessing some of the RAM is shared by the video card?
If he has a PCI-E slot on his mobo, a good card may be all he needs to get decent framerates in current generation games (providing he doesn't try to slide everything to MAX), and put off investing in a whole new rig until he has a bit more cash.
You can get some decent deals on mid-tier cards, which will see him right for a while.
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I dunno. A decent budget-ish mid-tier card might be something like a Radeon 6870?
I assume when you say "dollars" you mean US dollars, and looking at Newegg, you can pick one of these up for around $150 incl rebate.
Other hardware gurus on here may have better recommendations. I have one of these cards, along with an archaic Q6600 which has the shit clocked out of it at 3.5Ghz and it's happily playing most any game at top settings.
Of course, your mileage may vary
Just make sure he's got a PCI-E socket before shelling out any cash though!
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Well, he might want to consider saving up at-least another 200.
Buying the bare minimum is good in the short term but never the long term. If you're going to spend money like this you really need to spend enough to last you for a while. I'd find any computer for 300 hard pressed to play anything, let alone decently. You save up that 500 and you'd at-least get a year, maybe 2 out of it.
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MY PC would burn in 10 minutes if I put it in that tiny cabinet
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Can you just buy the top separately?
The OP clearly doesn't need an entire desk.
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That's a nice desktop I might buy that, Im in need of another one.....
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Do you happen to have your hardware list on-hand? I'm just curious. That seems believable; I'm just curious about how exactly you managed it. I'm a miserly minimalist myself, with most things. I paid more for my computer than anything else in life though.
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Well friend I have to say $300 bucks is kinda strapped tight, Just upgrade your current computer. Get some ram ( 8 gigs go for around 50 bucks ) a GPU ( Decent ones go for around 150 - 200 for your price range ) and another PSU ( 50 for like a 600 watt ) AND you have a decent "Gaming" Rig that might be able to play games like BF3 and Skyrim on higherish settings
The only problem would be your CPU bottlenecking everything, and a good cpu is most of your money D:
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The best choice for you is to buy used PC on ebay, etc.
You will get at least 50% off just because "somebody used it for some time".
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Current "wishlist" (I'm more-so wishing for a 7970 and another few HDDs, but whatever)
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/1668/91136437.png
Any cheap good reputable powersupply under $30 (anywhere from 300-500 watts will do)
4GB or more high-speed ram (1600mhz or higher)
Cheap MicroATX case, I think the rosewill FBM-01 is good for this, two 120mm fans + looks okay. At the very least you'll want a 120mm back fan, and larger fans are better, as is getting more fans. It adds the ability to upgrade your cooling as well as giving you better airflow in the first place.
An FM1 AMD motherboard, I picked the MSI a55m-p33.
An AMD A6-3650 APU, or better. They are pretty cheap tbh.
Re-purpose a hard drive or buy a new one, the parts I just listed run $220 before shipping.
Pirate an OS, or use an old copy that's attached to your current one. (Effectively uninstalling the OS from the other computer) I'd say just download a copy of tiny7 as it's extremely light weight and is also "genuine" in the eyes of windows update.
No CD drives, because if you need it they are only $20. Or you could always steal one outta an old computer, most cd drives are good enough to install 4x speed games/OSes.
Pop in a 6670 and you'll get much more performance, but it's really only beneficial on DX10/11 games. Can either buy with, or add later for a performance boost instead of upgrading.
Plays BF3 on low 25 fps min 30-60 averages *@1920x1080, play @ 1280x720 and get much better performance. No, it won't run high settings on AAA games, but it WILL let you play them, and enjoy them.
If you can add in a little bit more money than just the 6670, drop the APU and just get a quad core phenom II, most any of them will do, get an AM3 motherboard, and a dedicated graphics. You can do this for about $400, about $180 more than the build I listed above. This will give you more upgradablity, and will last a little longer, but it's still "budget" gaming.
I hope I helped.
*Please note, you're not going to get anywhere with this budget and not building.
The * = Edits.
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Listen to this man; he posted about the exact same thing I'd advise. This is very solid, good advice for a very competitively priced "gaming" PC in terms of bang-for-your-buck..
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Yes, this man's advice is probably the best and has actual effort put into it out of all in this thread, I suggest you follow it DalaxV.
@nooby: How about you try to take a screenshot of your wishlist? The link you provided would only take people to their own wishlist, so it's unfortunately useless.
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My friend wants to buy a gaming computer*, because his current desktop is not so reliable. Is there a good gaming desktop under $300? Something that works, but something that is cheap.
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