Need Help With A Low Budget Gaming Pc

So, Yesterday was my birthday, and now I finally have 300$, which is the budget I wanted to get into pc gaming, but I have no pc building experience.
So I need you guys's advice on what parts to pick and stuff like that, and 300$ is a very tight budget.

I don't have too many demands, I just want something with a decent amount of storage, and something that can run modern games like Fo4 on decent settings and things like that. Also keep things like delivery costs in mind, but I got a friend who can get windows on it, so that's not a problem.
The main games I'd like to be able to run are:
Fallout 4 (I don't know if this is really possible with a 300$ pc though.)
GTA 5 (I think a 300$ pc can handle this properly, but yet agian I'm not sure)
Scrap Mechanic (This game is definitely a must have for me.)
Minecraft (Should be easily managable.)
Terraria (Anything except my shit laptop can run this.)
If you pc builders out there could show some builds on pcpartpicker, Or give advice and stuff, I would greatly appreciate that.

-Troll4ever31

Edit:
Well, I got a pc, so don't bother giving me advice anymore, however, this thread might be useful for some other people, so I suppose there's no reason to close it, or not. Idk.

 

Oh man I know that feel

It's building the PC that's the hard part for you and me

We both have similar problems

I'm wanting something that's around $400 that can run Minecraft, Team Fortress 2, etc. at a nice and steady 60+ FPS

I'm sure there are people here that know their PCs.

 

Yeah, luckily I got an irl friend who knows a lot about pc gaming, and he can help me put it together, the parts is the main problem for me.

 

@awemanrank100 can help for sure ( i guess)

 

I think it has an APU, which combines the CPU and GPU

 

yeah I still wouldn't get an APU, a gpu is still far better

 

Ok, then agian, I don't know much about pc building.

 

Nope! I'm a programming guy, not a computer-parts person.

 

Well it depends, a GPU is far better than an APU, but a GPU costs money, money that he probably doesn't have
I actually have an edited build that has the same PSU, CPU, and hard drive.
The problem is that the Case and the MOBO don't go together, this means I had to get a new case
The RAM seems fine, The APU might not be able to handle GTA V and FO4 because those games are GPU intensive and you might need a better GPU to play on those, you might be able to get away with it on low settings, but not med.
Also make sure you have y our "essentials" as I call them.
A Mouse, a Headset, a Moniter, and A Keyboard.
Depending on how nice you want these items to be they can be very costly. My PC Build is $330, but my total comes out to be $670 for all of those (I chose to get nice essentials though)

Also Asuna I have no idea why your paring them up with 4gb of 1333MHZ RAM
If you want a Gaming PC nowadays you NEED 8GB+ with 1600MHZ
That RAM would definitely be to slow and would need more to run GTA V or FO4

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/loganthegreat/saved/M2mtt6
I would change the RAM to 2x4gb instead of 1x8gb, but besides that this should be decent
Minecraft 6 Chunks +
Terraria it would be fine
GTA V low settinngs 45 fps
idk about fallout 4 though.

 

This APU can run GTA V with 1080p
The SSD is obviously faster, and the RAM is a little faster too, but not much

Most APU's are crap, but this is one of the best APU's on the market and is well worth the price. You can't get the same CPU performance while buying a GPU with better performance.


That Mortal Combat X


Thats minecraft with the APU with practically no other large spec differences.


Same guy playing Terraria


And look, FO4 with the APU

This APU isn't a crappy APU with no GPU power and minimal CPU power. It can run most games at low to mid-settings, which is exactly what you want out of a budget build.

 

I got a monitor, keyboard and mouse already.
All I really need besides the pc is a proper headset.

 

That moment a 3 year old has a better pc than you.

 

Yeah, not like his dad is the head of a large tech corporation or anything....

 

Dude save up another $300 cause a $600 pc is 20 times better then $300 pc

 

An SSD is not happening with his Budget.
I'm about to build a $600 PC, and it doesn't even have room for an SSD. (Budgetwise)

Alright. Troll. Approximately 3 months ago I was in the exact same position as you. I knew little about PC Building, Wanted to build a PC for Gaming, and that was it.

Now, I've spent around 100 hours doing research on all kinds of PC related things, and which Parts were best for me.

I'll try to make a list for you. P.S. I'll probably mention some terms you might not know yet. I recommend doing some research on how parts work and how their specs are noted etc.

These are parts which are necessary to build a PC. Video Card, Processor, Power Supply, Hard drive, Case, Motherboard and RAM.
Other extras are Optical Drive, SSD, Extra Fans and a GPU Cooler.

The most important parts in a PC are the GPU and CPU. (Video Card and Central Processing unit) I suggest trying to look up videos of certain GPUs, to try and find what your "bottom line" is. This is the worst performance you could live with getting. (P.S. I know little about the performance of APUs since my budget always allowed for a CPU.) I would then try to find the bottom line of CPUs that don't Bottleneck your GPU. (You don't want your Processor to be too weak to take full advantage of your Video Card power.)

Then there's the Hard Drive. For This piece you need to think about what you want to have stored on your PC, since this is your storage. There are 3 main things to keep in mind. Amount of Storage, Write Speed and Read Speed. The amount of storage speaks for itself, and the Write/read speed is how quick the processor can save/get information on/from the Hard Drive.

RAM. Ram is your Memory. To get straight to the point, For amount I suggest getting 8GB. This means you have 8 Gigabytes of Memory. Most modern games don't like it when you only have 4, so I recommend 8. For RAM There's also speed, But for Gaming, Speed on the RAM isn't super important. 1600Mhz (a pretty average speed) should be fine.

For the Case I recommend going with the cheapest option. Do keep in mind cases have different sixes too. "APX", "Mini-APX" "micro-APX" etc. You need to make sure your Motherboard fits inside of your case. (The motherboard should also say what size it is, in the same way a Case does. (APX, Mini-APX, etc.) You also need to make sure you have a place for your Hard drive, and that your GPU fits. (Usually this info is listed at the Case's manufacturing info)

Motherboard is next. Picking a Motherboard was probably the hardest for me. There are many things to keep in mind here. The main one is that the CPU/APU you have has a certain Socket, and the MoBo needs to match that. The MoBo also needs to have enough ram slots, Slots for the GPU, (if you go the GPU route), enough in/Outputs, Fan headers etc. Usually putting all of your parts in www.Pcpartpicker.com helps, since that checks whether everything is compatible. (However I don't fully know if pcpartpicker takes into account all things.)

Last is Power Supply. For this, I also suggest using pcpartpicker.com, since it will give you an estimate to how much Wattage you will need. For example, my Parts will use approximately 380W. That's why I chose a 500W. (I wanted room for Upgrades) If I were you, I would pick the Wattage one increment above what pcpartpicker says. (For example 430 is an increment, 500 is, 600 is, 750 is, etc.)

Air flow is important in a PC. I recommend to get 3 Fans on your PC. 2 intake, 1 outtake. This creates 'positive pressure', which means particles don't come in through nooks of the case. Most cases come with a Fan or 2, so I recommend making your total 3.

An Optical drive.. Well, If you want to play games from a CD or something, you will need this.

(Aftermarket) GPU Cooler. Ehh, It slightly increases your CPU's efficiency, but For your budget it's not worth it. (You also shouldn't overclock your CPU, since this usually requires decent cooling.) I would stick to the Stock one that comes with the CPU itself.

SSDs, These are like Hard drives, but then way Faster, and quite a bit more expensive. For your budget these are a no-go.

What I did, was take the Cheapest part that does what I need it to do, and then see whether I had money left in my Budget. That spare money then went to upgrading my GPU and CPU. (I upgraded the GPU, which required me to get a new CPU too.) (Keep in mind your Wattage will increase if you get a better GPU/CPU)
If however you find out that these 'cheapest but still do what I want them to' parts are above your budget, you should probably consider raising your budget.

Another thing, You might be able to reuse components of your old machine. I wouldn't recommend reusing it's GPU for example, but maybe the RAM Sticks can be used? Or maybe the Power supply in your old PC is enough to power your new one.

Also. This is what worked for me. My budget is twice yours though, so my techniques might not work.

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Kinda. But what if you don't care about getting 60fps, and 30 is fine with you. Or what if you don't care about Max settings (like I do). Even though a $600 is a lot better, he might not need it you know.

 

Yeah, I care more about playability, I don't need to be able to play on the highest settings on the highest resolution, I just need something that works properly.

A good friend of mine who is also into pc gaming a lot, and has a father that has a hobby in it, says he can build a pc for me, by getting a used pc for cheap, scrap the parts off of it and buy a new cpu, gpu and ram.
If he could pull that off, that'd be awesome, but he's planning to put a dual core cpu in it, although i've heard that a quad core is a must.

 

I mentioned that a SSD is faster, but SSD's really don't make the much of a difference on gaming performance. While the games you want to play are open world and that is where a SSD can make a difference, you still should be able to run with 30+ fps
http://www.pcgamer.com/how-do-ssds-affect-gaming-performance/

Possibly, but you can build a $300 PC and then upgrade parts slowly. No need to wait another few months to make a PC.
For ex. Im getting the APU that I was talking about, when I start playing games where my fps is dropping Im going to get a GTX 750 ti, a very good bang for buck GPU that will work, after that I will probably also need to upgrade my PSU, but for an entry level PC (especially if your parents don't work with tech), a $300 PC will be good

 

To be honest you can get one for $300 but it is not worth it. If you save your money up like i did I got a really nice computer for $600 and I can run anygame I want with 60-200 fps max graphics. So you should probably just wait a little longer cause it would pay out in the long run.

 

I don't give a shit about having the best fps or the best graphics, I just want games to be playable.

 

Hm, well I don't know. It would probably be best to save and wait but it's your choice, just do a lot of research.