Updated 26 May, 2013, 11:10 am IST

Challenge: Make The Cheapest Gaming PC Yet!

15 Jul, 2010 | by Anand Tuliani

Gaming is not an expensive hobby, if you choose the hardware wisely.

There is no doubt about the fact that gaming PCs are expensive, but the term ‘expensive’ is quite relative. A gaming rig for Rs 50,000 is obviously cheaper than the one costing Rs 80,000 or Rs 1,50,000 and so on. The obvious difference is that the more moolah you pump in, the higher you go with the settings the anti-aliasing and such, while gaming. Not to mention the better gaming experience with larger monitors, better graphics cards, speakers and so on.

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There’s a sample hardware configuration of a mainstream gaming PC following the next couple of paragraphs, but before that, let’s get to the point of this article. Apart from the mainstream rig, we’ve listed a couple of entry-level gaming PCs. Now, these PCs will have entry-level hardware and the end product ought to be cheaper, say about Rs 30,000. The two PC configurations we’ve listed are about Rs 30,000 and Rs 39,000.

The challenge is to come up with a good entry-level gaming rig under Rs 25,000 (or lesser). The comments section is open for suggestions, so if you can come up with a better PC configuration in a lower price, send in your entries.

The top three configurations will be put up in Part 2 of this challenge, and from those three configurations, we’ll decided which ‘one’ offers the best gaming experience and the best value for money. In the meantime, let’s take a look at the gaming rigs!

Thermaltake Matrix VD2000BNS

Mainstream gaming

Motherboard: MSI 890GXM-G65 (AMD 890GX) – Rs 7,400
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, 2.8 GHz – Rs 10,500
RAM: 2x 2 GB Strontium DDR3-1333 MHz – Rs 4,800
Hard disk: Western Digital Caviar Green - 1 TB – Rs 3,300
Graphics card: Powercolor Radeon HD 5750 - 1 GB DDR5 – Rs 7,900
Optical drive: LG GH22 SATA 22x DVD-writer – Rs 1,100
Monitor: Benq V2200 Eco - 22-inch TFT (LED) – Rs 12,500
Keyboard: Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 – Rs 950
Mouse: Razer Salmosa – Rs 700
Speakers: Logitech Z4 – 4,300
Sound card: Asus Xonar DX 7.1-channel – 5,000
PC Case: Thermaltake Matrix VD2000BNS – Rs 2,800
Power supply unit: Cooler Master GX550 – Rs 4,700
Operating system: Windows 7 Home Premium – Rs 6,300

TOTAL Rs 72,250

Powercolor Radeon HD 5750

Now, this gaming PC is a loaded one—well, relatively speaking—and it has all that you need, to enjoy games at higher resolutions and with higher settings. However, with the budget we’re looking at, this PC completely defeats the purpose. No matter how hard you try and replace the hardware components or deduct some from the list, you won’t be able to change the hardware without compromising on the performance. This is why there are entry-level gaming rigs, where you can play games, but at lower resolutions and with all low settings.

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