Computer for games in 2022 — what to choose with a budget of 60,000 rubles | Articles | Computer technology

The gam­ing indus­try pleas­es with new prod­ucts and loud announce­ments, but the require­ments of devel­op­ers are grow­ing. Com­po­nent prices are volatile. We found out which com­put­er can be assem­bled for 60,000 rubles for games and what it will be capa­ble of.

With­out good hard­ware, the door to the gam­ing world is closed. Pho­to: tomsguide.com

Parts and expec­ta­tions from the com­put­er
CPU
Cool­er
Moth­er­board
RAM
video card
Pow­er Sup­ply
Stor­age device
Frame
Final parts list and prices
Ready-made assem­blies — pros and cons
Results

Parts and expectations from the computer

A gam­ing com­put­er is a gam­ing sta­tion for run­ning any games at max­i­mum graph­ics set­tings. Water cool­ing sys­tems, heavy-duty proces­sors, rare video cards — it takes from 150,000–200,000 rubles to assem­ble com­po­nents.

But this does not mean that with a dif­fer­ent bud­get, noth­ing can be col­lect­ed. For 60,000 r, a com­put­er for games is assem­bled — a machine that can run any new prod­uct. Yes, not at ultra set­tings, but this does not inter­fere with the plea­sure of the process. A PC for 60,000 r can eas­i­ly cope with the hits of past years — on medi­um-high and high graph­ics pre­sets.

Any assem­bly rests on the bud­get. But the most impor­tant thing is bal­ance. PC com­po­nents must be of the same lev­el, class, must com­ple­ment and reveal each oth­er. A com­put­er with a pow­er­ful proces­sor but a weak graph­ics card will lim­it its own poten­tial.

All prices are valid at the time of pub­li­ca­tion of the arti­cle. They can be found at the end of the text.

CPU

The com­pe­ti­tion between AMD and Intel has grown, and now the choice of a low-cost cen­tral pro­cess­ing unit (CPU) is no longer lim­it­ed to one brand. The Ryzen 3 1200 AF, a bud­get gam­ing mod­el, will stand out in the AMD line­up.

1200 AF has become a “peo­ple’s” proces­sor due to the increase in per­for­mance and low price. Pho­to: overclockers.ru

The mod­el is 15–30% faster than its pre­de­ces­sor, Ryzen 1200. Four cores with a clock speed of 3.1 GHz (up to 3.4 GHz in tur­bo boost) elim­i­nate freezes and prob­lems in games.

If you want to bet­ter under­stand the CPU device, study our detailed arti­cle.

On aver­age, the Ryzen 3 1200 AF pro­duces between 30–40 FPS (frames per sec­ond) in pop­u­lar games. This is enough for a smooth, com­fort­able game with­out image jerks.

The Ryzen 1200 AF hits up to 60 FPS against oth­er CPUs in Metro: Exo­dus on ultra graph­ics set­tings. Pho­to: overclockers.ru

Bud­get proces­sor from Intel — Core i3-10105F. The mod­el with 4 cores runs at a base fre­quen­cy of 3.7 GHz and accel­er­ates in boost mode to 4.4 GHz. The i3-10105F has 8 threads ver­sus 4 for the 1200 AF. The proces­sor from Intel is more pro­duc­tive than the com­peti­tor from AMD, but its price is high­er. Whether it is worth over­pay­ing 1000–2000 rubles for an 8–10% increase in games and going beyond the bud­get is a debat­able issue.

The Intel i3-10105F out­per­forms even the Ryzen 3 3100 at a low­er cost. Pho­to: sgamerzindia.com

Proces­sors are sold in two con­fig­u­ra­tions: box and OEM. In the box — the CPU itself, the box, the cool­ing sys­tem (cool­er). In the OEM ver­sion — only the CPU. For assem­bly, it is more log­i­cal to choose a cheap­er OEM option. There will be mon­ey left for a cool­er that will cool the proces­sor more effi­cient­ly than the stan­dard mod­el out of the box.

Cooler

Both proces­sors have a TDP (ther­mal dis­si­pa­tion) of 65W. To remove heat from the CPU, a cool­er with a pow­er dis­si­pa­tion of 65 watts is enough. But then the blades will work in the max­i­mum mode. This will cause unnec­es­sary noise in the sys­tem unit.

The com­pact Ice Edge Mini FS V 2.0 cool­er fits even in a small case. Pho­to: 3dnews.ru

Qui­et­ly and con­fi­dent­ly, tow­er-type cool­ers cope with heat dis­per­sal. The pro­pri­etary mod­el from DEEPCOOL Ice Edge Mini FS V 2.0 dis­si­pates up to 100W of pow­er. The cool­er has a sim­ple mount­ing sys­tem — instal­la­tion takes 10 sec­onds. Ice Edge Mini is com­pat­i­ble with Core i3-10105F and Ryzen 1200 AF moth­er­boards.

Oth­er suit­able mod­els are ID-Cool­ing SE-903-SD with 130W pow­er dis­si­pa­tion, Aard­wolf PROXIMA 360 RED with hydraulic bear­ing to min­i­mize noise.

Motherboard

The Ryzen 1200 AF requires an AM4 sock­et board. Nine out of ten cas­es, the GIGABYTE B450M DS3H will go to bud­get gam­ing builds. The pop­u­lar­i­ty of the board is not acci­den­tal:

• Chipset B450. Com­bines an M.2 port for installing a high-speed SSD dri­ve, 4 slots for DDR4 RAM (you can add RAM in the future). Lots of ports for periph­er­als.
• Reli­able pow­er sys­tem for sta­ble oper­a­tion of the proces­sor in nor­mal mode and over­clock­ing.
• Sup­port for over­clock­ing (over­clock­ing the CPU fre­quen­cy).
• Micro-ATX form fac­tor. The board will fit in all medi­um to large sized cas­es.
• Two PCI‑E slots and SLI/Crossfire X sup­port for con­nect­ing two graph­ics cards.

The B450M board sup­ports eight-chan­nel audio, video out­puts for con­nect­ing any exter­nal dis­plays. Pho­to: gigabyte.com

Giga­byte has worked hard and cre­at­ed an intu­itive BIOS. Any set­up is done quick­ly: there are hints and expla­na­tions every­where.

Build­ing on an Intel plat­form will require a board with a dif­fer­ent sock­et — LGA1200. MSI H510M PRO‑E is a micro-ATX form fac­tor mod­el. The board has two slots for DDR4 RAM, M.2 con­nec­tors and USB 3.2 Gen1 for fast data trans­fer. Core Boost tech­nol­o­gy — for sta­ble oper­a­tion of the proces­sor. MSI’s BIOS makes it easy to adjust the fan speed. Com­bined with a good tow­er cool­er, this gives you con­fi­dence in tem­per­a­ture con­trol.

H510M-Pro will pro­tect your graph­ics card from pow­er surges. Pho­to: msi.com

RAM

The key char­ac­ter­is­tic of RAM is fre­quen­cy. High­er score means bet­ter PC per­for­mance. The sec­ond selec­tion cri­te­ri­on is tim­ings. Their val­ues ​​reflect the time delay of the sig­nal. RAM with high fre­quen­cy and low tim­ings is the first choice for gam­ing.

Both boards in AMD and Intel assem­blies sup­port DDR4 RAM with a fre­quen­cy of up to 3200 Mhz. To acti­vate the dual-chan­nel mode of oper­a­tion (it dou­bles the per­for­mance), you need two brack­ets. The required total amount for games is 16 GB.

RAM A‑Data XPG Gam­mix D10 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) with tim­ings 16–16-16 is a good heat sink, con­ve­nient for dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions in a low pro­file case.

The slats look nice and will not spoil the look of a new, expen­sive assem­bly in the future. Pho­to: ichip.ru

Over­clock­ing mem­o­ry in a bud­get build (even with­out expe­ri­ence) makes lit­tle sense. Fash­ion­able heatsinks and LED back­light­ing can be sac­ri­ficed for the sake of fre­quen­cy and tim­ings.

RAM can also be select­ed in the tra­di­tion­al way. Moth­er­board man­u­fac­tur­ers pub­lish a datasheet on their offi­cial web­sites — a list of test­ed brack­ets. Any RAM from the datasheet is guar­an­teed to run on the board.

An exam­ple datasheet for the Giga­byte B450M board is at the link.

Any RAM from the datasheet is guar­an­teed to run on the board. It remains only to choose what suits the fre­quen­cy, works with min­i­mal tim­ings and is on sale.

video card

The assem­bly proces­sors do not have an inte­grat­ed video core. A video card is required. She is respon­si­ble for image trans­fer, tex­ture pro­cess­ing. With­in the bud­get — the GeForce GTX 1650 mod­el.

The GTX 1650 is imme­di­ate­ly 70% more pro­duc­tive than its pre­de­ces­sor, the GTX 1050. Pho­to: iXBT.com

4 GB of GDDR6 video mem­o­ry is enough for ren­der­ing frames in heavy games. In con­junc­tion with both proces­sors, the video card pro­duces an accept­able FPS for the game. The GTX 1650 and i3-10105F han­dle RDR2 at medi­um set­tings of 45–50fps. In the hit Cyber­punk 2077, at low set­tings, FPS remains with­in 45 in the city and about 50 in more remote loca­tions.

The sec­ond option is the Radeon RX 6500 XT. Video card 2022 with 4 GB of video mem­o­ry. In bench­marks, the RX 6500 XT deliv­ers slight­ly more FPS than the GTX 1650, but this dif­fer­ence is with­in the mar­gin of error.

With the new AMD RDNA 2 archi­tec­ture, the 6500 XT com­petes con­fi­dent­ly with the GTX 1650 and oth­er peers. Pho­to: iXBT.com

Impor­tant: video cards and proces­sors of the assem­bly for 60000 r are designed for play­ing in Full HD res­o­lu­tion (1920x1080). To go to 2K or 4K, you need oth­er com­po­nents and oth­er invest­ments.

Power Supply

There are no strict PSU require­ments for an inex­pen­sive gam­ing PC. It is enough to choose a cat­e­go­ry mod­el from 80 Plus (indi­cates effi­cien­cy). Find out the appro­pri­ate form fac­tor, which depends on the case. For assem­bly for 60,000 r, a 500–600 W PSU is enough. Heavy duty pow­er sup­plies with a mod­u­lar sys­tem — beyond the bound­aries of the bud­get and tech­ni­cal needs.

The 500W DEEPCOOL PF500 is the ATX work­horse. Built-in pro­tec­tion against pow­er surges, over­load, short cir­cuit. The PF500 is rat­ed for 100,000 hours of uptime. Sim­ple and angry.

The PF500 does not have a back­light, but has a reli­able coil and long life capac­i­tors. Pho­to: deepcool.com

If you plan to upgrade in the future, you can buy a slight­ly more pow­er­ful PSU. The 600W Ther­mal­take ATX 600W TR2 S 80+ will set the stage. Inex­pen­sive ATX mod­el with 80 Plus cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, cool case and low noise lev­el.

Storage device

New games have become demand­ing. The devel­op­ers write: rec­om­mend­ed SSD. With a sol­id state dri­ve and games it’s good, and the OS loads and runs faster.

SSD 2.5″ Tran­scend 512Gb with a write and read speed of 520/560 Mb / s will give the desired per­for­mance boost. The tra­di­tion­al 500 GB West­ern Dig­i­tal Blue assem­blies are no less qual­i­ty. But their price is too unsta­ble.

SSD saves space inside the case, stores up to 5–10 games at the same time. Pho­to: onlinetrade.ru

Frame

It is cus­tom­ary to save on the case of bud­get assem­blies. The beau­ty and thick­ness of the met­al will not add FPS. The main thing is the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of the case size with the form fac­tor of the moth­er­board and PSU.

Aero­cool CS-107-A-BK-v2 com­bines gam­ing style and good ven­ti­la­tion with 4 fans. There are three bays for SSD and HDD. The Mini-Tow­er for­mat design will eas­i­ly accom­mo­date all assem­bly com­po­nents.

Acrylic win­dow and light­ing cre­ate a play­ful envi­ron­ment. Pho­to: aerocool.io

Final parts list and prices

Build on AMD plat­form:

Assem­bly on the Intel plat­form:

Ready builds — pros and cons

An alter­na­tive solu­tion is to buy a sys­tem unit for 60,000 r as an assem­bly. Ready-made PCs are offered by ven­dors (famous brands) and large Russ­ian assem­blers. They are less depen­dent on exchange rate fluc­tu­a­tions and demand — com­po­nents come out cheap­er for the buy­er. Options for a ready-made com­put­er assem­bly for games for 60,000 r in May 2022:

• Leno­vo Idea­Cen­tre Gam­ing G5 14IMB05 — sys­tem unit with Intel Core i3-10100 proces­sor, 8 GB DDR4 RAM, GTX 1650 SUPER graph­ics card, 512 GB SSD;
• X‑Com “Gamer Base” build on Ryzen 4700S Desk­top with 16GB GDDR6 RAM, 500GB SSD and GTX 1650 graph­ics card.

On both builds, 2022 games will run at medi­um set­tings. They are fit­ted with state of the art com­po­nents. But there are dis­ad­van­tages inher­ent in ready-made solu­tions:

one. Imbal­ance. The assem­bly from Leno­vo has a good gam­ing graph­ics card, but only 8 GB of RAM. The min­i­mum amount for demand­ing games is 16 GB. You will have to buy anoth­er 8 GB and go beyond the bud­get.

2. Hid­den sav­ings. In fin­ished assem­blies, the sim­plest cool­ing sys­tem is often installed. The buy­er will have to solve the prob­lems of high tem­per­a­tures him­self. They also save on RAM: they set the bar with high tim­ing, low fre­quen­cy. The result — PC per­for­mance is far from the max­i­mum.

3. Dif­fi­cul­ty to upgrade (build improve­ments). In the mod­el from X‑Com and sim­i­lar solu­tions, the proces­sor and mem­o­ry are sol­dered on the moth­er­board. It will not be pos­si­ble to replace them in the future. You’ll have to buy a new build.

Yes, pre-built PCs come with a war­ran­ty. The for­mat is con­ve­nient: you buy it, plug it in, and you play. No need to select com­po­nents, assem­ble every­thing in the case your­self or look for a mas­ter. Save time and effort. But the con­cep­tu­al prob­lems of fin­ished assem­blies remain. If there is no desire to put up with them, buy­ing a PC of this for­mat los­es its mean­ing.

Results

For 60,000 r in May 2022, it is real­is­tic to assem­ble a com­put­er that will not lim­it the choice of games. But with­out thought­ful graph­ics set­tings still can not do. This is a nec­es­sary, forced com­pro­mise. In the future, an upgrade is pos­si­ble — replac­ing the proces­sor, video card, increas­ing the amount of RAM — right on the assem­bled plat­form.

At the time of writ­ing, prices are almost back to their Feb­ru­ary lev­els. Large retail chains report suc­cess­ful fight against short­ages. Logis­tics chains are rapid­ly chang­ing. No one knows what will hap­pen next with prices and the com­mod­i­ty matrix in Rus­sia.