Dirt cheap PC for Diablo 3 on medium

[pikaporeon]

So some friends commissioned me to build them "the cheapest PC you can that'll run diablo 3 on medium. We dont want them lagging us up"

I figured I could go low-mid range, just make sure it has a somewhat alive discrete GPU, and two or three relatively quick cores.

I do all my shopping from NCIX because I can pick up locally

Anything you might have done differently?


AMD Athlon II X3 450 Triple Core Processor AM3 3.2GHZ 1.5MB L2 Cache 95W Retail Box - $81 - for only $10 more than cheap dual cores, I thought 3.2 ghz in triplicate would be solid enough for this system.

Powercolor Radeon HD 6770 850MHZ 1GB 4.8GHZ GDDR5 DVI HDMI VGA PCI-E - $117 - also has a $20 MIR. Just over $100 after MIR, I'd found a video of the Diablo 3 Beta running on this card with a phenom quad core @ 3.0 ghz, and figured it was a safe pick, at least I knew what I was getting into. It seems jumping to something like a 6850 or a 5830 or similar was a rather substantial price jump.

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64BIT SP1 DVD OEM - $120. Yep.

Western Digital WD Caviar Blue 250GB SATA 6GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache 3.5IN Internal Hard Drive OEM - $80 - I can't believe I spent $80 (of someone elses money) on such a small drive. But I decided it was worth $40-50 of cost savings on a 128 gb SSD, and smaller SSDs were just prohibitively small (I don't think 32 gb will cut it)

Samsung SH-222AL 22X DVD Writer SATA Lightscribe OEM - $25 - Surprisingly cheapest SATA drive right now. I just missed sales it seems, and didn't want to go PATA

Apex SK-393-C Mid Tower ATX Case Black 4X5.25 1X3.5 5X3.5INT 4 X Front USB 2 X Front *IR-$5* - $25. Its a mid tower that's $25. Not much else to say.

Corsair Builder Series CMPSU-430CXV2 430W ATX Power Supply Active PFC 120MM Fan *3 Year Warranty* - $53 - which is not to say I'm going to put a crap PSU in there.

ASUS M5A78L-M LX mATX AM3+ DDR3 AMD 760G 1PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 1PCI SATA2 VGA GBLAN Motherboard - $59 - Pretty much the cheapest AM3+ board i could find, never know when someone wants to throw an FX chip in their budget system afterall. Not particularly impressed by the chipset, but it's cheap, it works, and I've always had good experience with Asus boards (therefore spending the extra dollar over an MSI board with the same features and chipset)

Corsair XMS CMX4GX3M1A1333C9 4GB 1X4GB DDR3-1333 CL9-9-9-24 DIMM Memory Module - $21. - I love me some cheap RAM. This was discounted a bit, and I'm fine with pretty much any RAM option in most scenarios - I mean the system in my sig uses Mushkin's value ram (I forget the name of it).

They already have a keyboard, mouse, and widescreen LCD (which I have yet to confirm the resolution on but there's no way it's more than 1680x1050) - I think I could have gone cheaper in a few places, but corners cut were not huge losses.

[derFunkenstein]

That system would do SC2 on Ultra (without AA, anyhow), so I have no doubt it'd play Diablo III on Medium.

[highlandr]

The way ram prices are right now I'd go with 8 gigs. No point in saving $20 on a $500+ system.

[derFunkenstein]

The way ram prices are right now I'd go with 8 gigs. No point in saving $20 on a $500+ system.

Ya, +1. I missed that before.

[JustAnEngineer]

I'm afraid that I can't help reduce your costs. I can suggest some things that would increase your spending.

AMD Athlon II X3 450 Triple Core Processor AM3 3.2GHZ 1.5MB L2 Cache 95W Retail Box - $81
ASUS M5A78L-M LX mATX AM3+ DDR3 AMD 760G 1PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 1PCI SATA2 VGA GBLAN Motherboard - $59

How much would it cost to get into LGA1155 instead of socket AM3?

CA$75 Asus P8H61-M LE/CSM
It's only got 2 DIMM slots, no USB3 and no SATA3, but it is a micro-ATX LGA1155 motherboard with Asus' EFI BIOS.

CA$96½ Pentium Dual Core G850 - 2.9 GHz
For your particular game, the Athlon II X3 may provide a better experience.

Powercolor Radeon HD 6770 850MHZ 1GB 4.8GHZ GDDR5 DVI HDMI VGA PCI-E - $117 - also has a $20 MIR. Just over $100 after MIR.

CA$150 -20MIR Radeon HD6850 1GB
Radeon HD6850 is capable of handling most current games with reasonable settings. This is the minimum graphics card that I'd suggest for a system that will be used for general gaming. You can get more performance with a Radeon HD6870 for $20 more.

Western Digital WD Caviar Blue 250GB SATA 6GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache 3.5IN Internal Hard Drive OEM - $80

That drive is up to CA$90 now. I'd spend another $8 to get twice the capacity.
CA$98 500GB Caviar Blue

[Chrispy_]

The D3 beta ran beautifully with high settings on my laptop which is far less powerful than the system you've listed.