PC PC GAMES

On March 19, BlackThunder talked about a cheap gaming rig from NewEgg for around $300. Well my friends, I had purchased that same exact rig that very day. And let me tell you, it’s nothing to sling boogers at. This machine is fast, runs cool and with the proper video card, it will run some pretty high details in your games.

The default system comes as an AMD Athlon II X2 245 Processor at 2.90GHz. The mainboard is an ASUS M4A785-M that is fully expandable from a Sempron to a Phenom II CPU. The chipset is the 785G accompanied by the ATI Radeon 4200 GPU. It comes with a Cooler Master case with a 460 watt power supply. The 4GB of 6400C5C Corsair RAM (mainboard will take up to 16GB) allows plenty of snuff to run Windows 7 64-bit and games sufficiently. The Rosewill CPU cooler seems very efficient and isn’t even hot to the touch. Top this bad-boy off with a 750GB HDD and a DVD-RW and you got yerself one a’ them-there nifty doo-hickeys they’s call a com-poo-ter! I seen one of those city slickers using one once.

All joking aside, this system is great. It was easy to assemble and only took about 30 minutes.

Once I got it up and running, I immediately ran 3D Mark 6 and Ungine on the system to stress the GPU/CPU. Boy, does the onboard Radeon 4200 suck squirrel nuts! If you think for a second that the onboard video is tip-top, then prepare to run for the hills. Run somewhere, because you take this sucker to any LAN parties and you’re gonna get laughed right out of somebody’s mother’s basement. The onboard vid will never do. I originally purchased a Radeon 4650 from Best Buy because I thought the power supply was only 400 watts. I later realized that it is a 460 watt (DUH!). So another trip back to Best Buy was in order to return the 4650 in exchange for the better HD 5770. I told Best Buy the card “sucked squirrel nuts” as I mentioned above and I wanted a better card. I could have just told them it didn’t work, but I needed the challenge to see how they would handle this return. The service manager laughed and almost had his Pepsi come out his nose when I said “squirrel nuts”. That was my highlight of the evening.

So the 5770 is in the rig, I’m pumping out 30 to 58 FPS on my benchmarks from DX9, 10 and 11. I could only get 30 fps tops with the 4650. The 4200 was lucky to get 12 or less fps. The 3D Mark tests on the CPU were pretty tough on it, but I take those tests with a grain of salt. I’ve never seen any CPU test well on 3D Mark CPU testing. My overall 3D Mark rating at high detail for DX11 was 9010 and was comparable to a lot of other gaming rigs when I submitted my results online. I was getting 7924 with the Radeon 4650. So there is a big difference in video cards.

If you want to ask me what I overclocked my hardware to, go ahead. I’ll tell you there is no way this chicken little is doing any such thing. I’m pretty happy with the existing set-up and don’t feel the need to be all Tim Allen and supe it up using Binford tools for more power. The only thing I ever felt comfortable overclocking was a Nvidia 8400GS card because it sucked so bad. Believe me when I say that it didn’t help any. This is my first ATI card I have ever bought and I am now convinced that Nvidia’s engineers drink the same toilet water they urinate in. You know that saying – “Never eat where you sh–!” I have had enough of Nvidia. I am now playing for the red team. Staying off the green like a Tiger Woods.

So all in all, this system was a great deal. $309.00 for the complete DIY system and another $160.00 for the video card. Now I can finally start kicking some ass on Crysis or Gears of War. Come and get me you bastards!!

GAME OVER, MAN! GAME OVER!