Hi my name is Arran and I’m here to tell you about a gaming system that we built to be affordable and able to play all of the games that you want to play. The overall price of the system comes out to $576. This is of course without tax and shipping because that will change wherever you are. But overall the system is reasonably priced and would be a better investment than buying a gaming console. We decided to go with an AMD build on this one because they are very competitive with their prices and figured we could show you what you’re actually able to do with more affordable hardware. 
Ok so for the processor were using the AMD A6 3670K. This processor has a graphics processor built in so when you run it with either the AMD Radeon HD 6670, 6570, or 6450 it runs in basically crossfire. They call it dual GPU mode because both the CPU and graphics card are working together on generating the picture. So we liked that idea and went ahead and got a Radeon 6670. Not a bad card for only 60 bucks online and with the capability of running with the processor to generate the graphics makes it a great deal. Now this graphics card has an 860 MHz core clock with 1 gig of GDDR5 Memory at 4800 MHz and also has 480 shader processors and 8 raster operators. The card is also pci 2.0 compliant and for display port we got one dual link DVI, one HDMI, and one display port. Allowing you to hook up whatever kind of monitor you have in your house. This card also comes with a Dirt 3 coupon inside and that is one of the games we benchmark with. Very fun racing game, you kind of need to buy a wired Xbox 360 for windows controller to really have fun while playing it or you can just go all out and get a racing wheel but those can get pricey.
But all in all this is a good graphics card for the price. As for the motherboard we are using the Biostar TA75A+. This motherboard supports AMD Vision socket FM1 for Fusion APUs. The chipset on the board is the AMD A75 and has integrated graphics through the CPU. The board has UEFI bios with 32 Mb of flash ROM. On the board we have 2 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, 2 PCI-E x1 2.0 slots, and 2 PCI slots. Also has 6 SATA ports for all your drives. The motherboard also supports 10 USB 2.0 ports 4 USB 3.0 ports, 1 PS/2 port, 1 HDMI, 1 DVI, 1 VGA, 1 Mini Display port, 1 RJ-45 Lan Connector, 6 Analogue audio jacks, 1 Digital port, and 1 CIR Header.
The motherboard features tools to allow you to over clock your system. This is a very good motherboard using the ATX Form factor and allowing you to upgrade using your same motherboard. It’s always good to leave a little room for upgrade because for the most part everyone ends up wanting to make their system even better at some point and time.
Now for the Power supply unit we decided to use a Thermaltake tr2 430 watt. Not a whole lot of wattage but it supplies enough to meet the systems requirements, now if you wanted to upgrade you would have to take the power supply into consideration of course but for this system a power supply that goes for around 40 dollars sounds great to me.
Now let’s talk about the memory. In our system we are using two four gigabyte sticks of Kingston hyper x at 1600 mhz. Very good memory and also affordable. I found it online for only 35.00 definitely a good investment. Now let’s take a look at one of the more expensive items due to issues going on in the hard drive industry right now. The hard drive. We put in a western digital 1TB Green Drive. Hard drive prices were going down for a little while and now they have gone right back up. The drive is currently going for around 103 dollars a little expensive yes but once you start installing a lot of these newer games and each one of them takes up about 13 or 14 gigabytes of space for the install you will know why you need at least a terabyte in order to keep some free space on your computer so it can be defragmented and run optimally. Another good thing about these green drives is they take less power to operate so it gives you a lower electricity bill and it’s less on your power supply. Now also the other drive were using is a Samsung super write master plus DVD Drive. That goes for about 20 dollars. Not a bad price for a DVD drive.
And last but not least let’s take a look at what were going to put it all in. the case we are using is a Thermaltake V9 BLACX Edition with docking station. Very nice looking case. For the price of the case Thermaltake really gives you a lot. The case looks great and has a lot of features. On the side of the case there is a glass window and holes for airflow and on the top there is a big fan to blow air out of the case as the heat rises.
Also in the front there is a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 port and a mic in and audio out. For your headphones and mic. And there are 2 hard drive bays on the top as well. There unfortunately not hot swappable but they do work and having a drive bay on the top can really help out if you just need to reformat or grab a couple things off a drive that you have laying around. Also it’s great for having everything backed up on separate hard drives and stored somewhere else. Just having that ability helps out a lot.
Ok so now we have taken a look at what it is built with now let’s check out the performance we got testing it out with our benchmarking soft ware utilities. Now let’s start off with some game testing with battlefield 3 I had the settings on medium and got 31 Frames per second. That’s not that bad and I have played battlefield 3 on all the different setting on many different systems and medium does not look that bad. It looks better than it does on any console I have ever seen. On Alien vs. Predator it got 26 Frames per second, on batman it got 30 frames per second on Unigine it got 14.1 Frames per second.
Now with 3D Mark 11 its P Score is 1742 and on 3D Mark Vantage its P score is 7391. So it doesn’t put up the big numbers like high end systems and you can’t run battlefield 3 on ultra or have a super high resolution monitor but for an entry level system this computer will play all the games you want to play. Also with the parts in this system, leaves a lot of room for later upgrades. The motherboard is definitely capable of handling a lot more and can over clock, it’s more of a high end motherboard.
So let’s take a look at the parts and the overall cost of the system:
- AMD A6 3670K Processor -$119.00
- Biostar TA75A+ Motherboard -$100.00
- Sapphire 6670 -$60.00
- Thermaltake TR2 430W PSU -$40.00
- 8 Gigs Kingston Hyper X 1600MHz -$35.00
- Thermaltake V9 BLACX Edition with docking station -$100.00
- Samsung Super Write Master Plus DVD Drive -$19.00
- 1TB Western Digital Green HDD -$103.00
- $576 minus tax and shipping
So the total comes out to be $576 minus taxes and shipping. So you’re looking at around 600 dollars for a good gaming system with a lot of room for upgrade and a lot of extra features that make it really worth your money. Also when you’re looking at this you can mix and match different parts. You can find a computer case out there for around 30 to 50 dollars and you can get a motherboard for a little bit less but the features on both the motherboard and the case make it really worth your money. Also with the docking stations on top of the case for easy and quick access to data stored on a backup drive and a USB 3.0 port right there in the front of the case for quick transfers this computer really performs for the money.
So any console gamers out there that are willing to give computer gaming a chance and got around 600 to spend should try out this build or one like it. Because with games like Skyrim, Battlefield 3 and Dirt 3, all the texture mods and just the graphics in general are better on a PC. And if you don’t like mouse and keyboard you can always buy games for windows controller and it’s just like a Xbox controller and it works with most of the new game releases that are out there. You can check out any of my reviews, and in them I always talk about compatibility. Well I hope you found this review helpful in building your own AMD gaming system that doesn’t break the bank!
