Dedicated FAForever Rig / Intel 2015

[ZXF]

I keep coming back to this question, and I think a lot of folks could refer to this thread. If I could build a dedicated FAForever rig, what is the best value for the money? Prices in USD:

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MB:  $100 - MSI Z97 PC Mate
CPU: $ 70 - Pentium G3258 (reported stable OC at 4.3GHz on stock cooling)
GPU: $ 90 - AMD HD 7770 1GB
RAM: $ 85 - G.SKILL 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2400


Note well! The G3258 has only 2 cores. This is great for FA, but very poor for highly-parallel tasks. FA led the way to 3+ cores, but offered little benefit over 2. Today's game engines are shifting their threading models to take advantage of 4 or more. That said, the MSI Z97 leaves lots of room for growth, in that it will support Intel's next generation Broadwell, perhaps at predicted price cuts later in 2015.

Another note. You'll need faster than DDR3 1333 to overclock the CPU, but DDR3 2400 is overkill. Currently, the price point for 2400 is good, so I listed it. If the price point changes, step back a few MHz.

In USA, the components list for $345 USD as of December, 2014. Continue to discuss tradeoffs below, and I'll incorporate what I can.

[ZLO_RD]

16 GB DDR3??? ( i feel like my PC is from past century)
i am absolutely not good at this and not know much about PCs and hardware, but i think you never need so much.
Am i right?

[ZXF]

Updated to 1x8GB DDR3 2400.

[da_monstr]

16 GB DDR3??? ( i feel like my PC is from past century)
i am absolutely not good at this and not know much about PCs and hardware, but i think you never need so much.
Am i right?

Depends on your use, really. For Supcom only, you don't need much, 4 GB would be plenty. However, Google Chrome uses all that you can throw at it. Or working with large video or photo editing projects.

The Pentium is a great choice for Supcom, but you must consider that every (AAA) game will probably require 4 cores pretty soon.
The GT730 is not worth buying, you're better off buying a 750 Ti, if you want Nvidia, or a Radeon 270 or 280 for AMD. In general, AMD is currently really cheap in the mid-tier.

[Crotalus]

SSD disk but I guess that's standard nowdays.

[madformuse]

16 GB DDR3??? ( i feel like my PC is from past century)
i am absolutely not good at this and not know much about PCs and hardware, but i think you never need so much.
Am i right?

Seriously ZLO, I'd buy you a computer if I had any money. Imagine how good you could be

[E8400-CV]

The suggested rig is only good if you overclock that G3258. If you don't, you spend too much on the CPU and mainboard and you would have been better off with a B85 board and putting the savings from that into a beefier-at-stock CPU, like a slightly faster Pentium or Core i3 with same clock or higher.

For certain tasks you also leave some performance by not having dual channel memory.

You're also missing a PSU

The question is also how much performance in newer games you want to sacrifice for the last marginal increase in performance in FAF. There is of course a certain lower limit; like the AMD FX-6300 simply doesn't cut it.

But anything > 1900 pts on this list:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
pretty much guarantees that you aren't the slowest in a setons game.

[BRNKoINSANITY]

You need to forget about low end graphics cards.... interesting watch on the subject -

[E8400-CV]

The only system I ever build with a low end graphics card was for someone who needed > 10 GB RAM at a time when 4GB DIMMs were ridiculous expensive. Ended up with an i7 920, 6x2GB and 9400GT. If socket 1366 wasn't needed for it's six DIMM slots, it would have ended with onboard video.

[ZXF]

Updating GT 730 (gddr5) to the HD 7770, which costs %20 more, but gives ~2.2x the performance in real world benchmarks.

Also noting the explicit purpose of the CPU, and that OC is expected for this machine.