Best Budget Gaming PC in India - Sep 2013

Gaming is nowadays a best time killer for youth as well as grown-ups. With the development of newer technologies, gaming is becoming more slick and realistic. But to enjoy this beautiful piece of technology, we need some sort of hardware to operate games on. To play heavy games, we have two choice and these are Computer and Console. A computer can be a desktop PC or a laptop, on the other hand we have two major console for hardcore gaming and these are Play Station and X Box

In India, console gaming is still a thing of aristocracy because of its high pricing and the games are also very highly priced making them out of reach. So we are left dependent on our PC to let us enjoy games. One more irony is that the games these days are so high that they do not support older systems and hence fail to execute when ran on these old PCs. So to overcome this problem, I have done a long research on how you can get a good budget and assembled gaming PC without burning a hole in your pocket! 

The rig that I am going to tell you about is powered by Intel parts.

Getting the perfect Rig!

The Processor

The processor is the heart of your computer and choosing the best one is the most important part of assembling a computer. Your computer's power and processing speed depends most on this hardware and hence you have to select the best processor out of competition. So what is the best budget performance processor by Intel? It is none other than Intel Pentium G640 which is sandy bridge based processor, the same technology you saw in 2nd Generation Intel Core i3/5/7 Processors. The clock rate is 2.7 GHz and the socket type is LGA 1155. The socket type determines which mother board will be compatible with the processor. So it means, Intel G640 processor can only be used with motherboards made with socket LGA 1155. Coming to the performance part, this processor scores 6.7 out of 7.9 in Windows 7 System Assessment Score which is a good mark of win. 

As the title of this post reads budget gaming PC, so the processor is also chosen with price in consideration after performance. You can get this processor in around Rs 3000 to Rs 3,500 depending on your location and seller's mood.

The Graphic Card

A gaming PC without a gaming graphic card is like a tea without tea-leave. It is then not supposed to be called so!

Just as a processor determines how powerful is your computer, Graphic card determines how powerful is your Gaming computer. Gone the days when games ran buttery-smooth on Pentium-4 PCs. Now they won't even show you splash-screen! Now I request you all to read the below paragraph with full attention.

Choosing a graphic card is very important and yes, it is very difficult if you have not purchased it earlier. Here are some points to ponder:

• The performance of a graphic card is NEVER measured by its memory. Firstly, you should see how new is the version of graphic card and its other details like shaders, processing speed, additional benefits etc
• Never expect the graphic card to be cheap. A budget one can be brought for Rs 6k but increasing your budget will obviously help you get more performance.
• ATI Vs. NVidia: ATI cards offer extreme value for money but on the other hand NVidia cards are bit costlier but after all they are more stable than ATI and last longer as compared to ATI cards. This is due to the fact that ATI cards try to give you more and more out of the hardware, which sometimes can screw your card and other hardware. So as we need performance in budget, so ATI is our first choice
• To get full performance out of your card, then you must give it power supply it wants. Many people make a huge mistake of not getting a branded and powerful SMPS, and try to run the graphic card with older and low quality SMPS, which literally leads to Diwali (Google it if you don't know!) of your GPU and other parts like CPU and motherboard who had no fault in this process.

Keeping all above points in mind and budget as the first one, the best graphic card as for now is ATI HD 6670 1 GB DDR5 version, which costs less or more than Rs 6,000 and matches the needs of current generation games. This variant of card is manufactured by many vendors like Asus, HIS, Sapphire and everyone's price varies by +- 300 Rs. So I would suggest you to go with Asus one as it is a well know brand in gaming. I have added a Flipkart link below so that you can check it out!

Buy Asus ATI HD 6670 1 GB DDR5 Graphic Card

The Mother Board

The motherboard is the hardware which acts as a link between all your components inside PC. Getting a good quality motherboard gives you a stable and long lasting PC. Also, if you get a good quality motherboard then you can expect and slight increase in the performance too. 

I would suggest you to get motherboard from any of these: Intel > Asus > Gigabyte. In the above processor part, I recommended Pentium Dual Core G640, so we should get a motherboard which must be compatible with this processor! Hence below is the best motherboard I could find that promises performance within budget.

Intel DH61HO Motherboard

This is a pure Intel motherboard, so you can easily expect it to be most stable and good in performance than those made by 2nd party like Asus and Gigabyte. Usually Intel motherboards are priced a bit higher because of their quality, but this one is priced exactly same as those made by Asus and others. So why take a chance when the best is knows to us? The best part of this motherboard is that you can anytime upgrade your CPU to 3rd generation Core i3/5/7 processor as this motherboard packs support for the same!

Not only this, you get a support of upto 16 gigs of DDR3 RAM which also makes upgrade for future easy. So your computer will be future ready if you go with my suggestions.

The only drawback is that it has support for only two SATA cables, of which one will be used for DVD writer? and one for Hard Disk. Usually, motherboards by Asus and others give you support for four. So if you are not gonna connect more than two hardware through SATA, then this Motherboard is the best choice.

Buy Intel DH61HO from Flipkart

The RAM

RAM is where all your apps and games execute. The purpose of RAM over hard drive is that RAM is many times faster than hard drive. Nowadays DDR3 RAM is used the most though DDR4 RAM is set to launch this year, but as for now we are with DDR3. The main question that comes related to buying RAM, is how much you need and of which brand. If you want to enjoy lag-free gaming, then start thinking from 4 GB as below that, PC will hang at times. One more thing to note, is NEVER ever buy Chinese RAMs or the name of company you have never heard. Always buy genuine branded RAM from Kingston, Transcend, Corsair etc, because if you use local RAM, then welcome hardware issues within a month of assembling of PC. 

A good quality, like below one of Kingston RAM, can cost upto Rs 1000 per 2GB. So you need to spend near-about Rs 2000 for buying a good quality RAM
Buy Kingston HyperX BLU 4 GB DDR3 RAM from Flipkart

The Power Supply Unit (PSU or also called as SMPS)

This component is very less talked about while buying a PC, as the vendor himself installs a generic one without any prior asking to the buyer. He is doing good, but as far as we are having a graphic card in the house, the SMPS must be of good quality and should be compatible with the graphic card too. It means, if the graphic card says 500 W of power supply is needed and you install it on a PC with a 350 W SMPS, then after turning on a game or graphic intense program, you would possible see fire in the cabinet and burning smell in your nose!

The graphic card that I recommended you draws power from PCI slot itself so no need to worry about the above issue but make sure that you get a good quality PSU which should be atleast 450 Watts.
Here are my recommendations:
Zebronics ZEB-450 Gold

Cooler Master Thunder 450 W

The Cabinet 

This one is totally upto you, the cabinet is the structure inside which the motherboard, PSU, Hard Drive and other hardware are mounted. You can get a good quality and good looking cabinet for around Rs 1500, but adding a little more will help you find a cool gamer type too. So its all upto you, as it is the only thing on which you can save money or spend it all! My recommendation is that you should go with iBall ones as they are stylish and budget friendly too.
One more thing to note that most cabinets come with SMPS installed inside themselves, simply remove these are they are mostly 250W to 300 W which I told you, can prove to be dangerous for your hardware.

The DVD Writer

Though less useful these days because of pen drives, Internet and torrenting system, DVD  proves to be useful when Installing OS using DVD or writing discs for sharing with people who doesn't have pen drives with them. You can also skip this one but I recommend you to have it on your PC as it costs no more than Rs 1000 and the best ones are manufactured by LG.

The Hard Disk

Hard disk is where you store all your stuff and games too. Nowadays there is a need of lot of space because the games are too big in size. Also, the movies are now releasing in Blu Ray qualities which also fill the space. To get over this problem, you will surely need a big and spacious hard drive. But, there is a problem because of the havoc in countries like Thailand in the 2010, I guess, due to which there is a drastic changes in the price of hard disks. But we can't wait for it to recover, so we are left with the current ones which are priced upto 3 times more than the original prices. That's the story, now the solution is to buy current ones and the best one I can find is that of "Western Digital" known commonly as WD. The 1 TB blue variant of the hard drive will cost you no more than Rs 4,000 in the market.

The Speakers

Getting good quality speakers in the market is a thing of pain because of rising competition of new companies and also the high prices of the branded ones. To get the utmost clarity and natural feel of music, good quality speakers are a must. By good quality I mean that the highs and lows of the satellite speakers and the bass of the sub-woofer. A new contender has packed its space in the market and it is F&D also called as Fenda. Their speakers are  really good performers and the bass of the sub-woofer is enough to shake the table. There are many models of their speakers, you can choose any of them as they use the same subwoofer of 5000 Watts PMPO which is very powerful and the pricing can be anywhere between Rs 1700/- to Rs 2000/-

Keyboard and Mouse

They both are an essential gadgets to play games with. Since we are already tight on budget, you can go with a cheap one and by cheap I mean cheap in price and not in quality. For long lasting use, you can go with Microsoft Keyboard and Mouse combo which will cost around Rs 500 only.

Conclusion

So the list of hardware is ready and its time to calculate the bill that you are gonna pay for your gaming PC. Also note that there can be a slight increase or maybe even decrease from the estimated price as their prices change day by day.

And the total cost of the assembled PC will be around Rs 24,000 or so. If you are having better suggestions to the above PC, feel free to share with us your knowledge. Forgive me if price of any commodity change without any prior notice as they are supposed to.