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How to build a budget gaming/programming PC under ₹35,000.

This is the first blog post I have ever written in my life so far. Phew. Feels good. My name is Aneesh and I am a software engineer at Dell EMC. I have been "the computer guy" all my life. But ironically I never owned a personal computer in the last 5 years. I bought a used Acer Laptop for about ₹18,000 during college and retired it after graduating. 

Later on, after graduating, I received a dope ass laptop at work, The Lenovo Thinkpad W541. Intel i7 extreme pro, 16GB ram, Nvidia Quadro graphics in 2016? I was hella excited back then. Till a week ago I was using that for work and as a pseudo personal computer. 

One day (last week) I woke up and felt it was time to build my own machine for things such as gaming, programming and to train machine learning models. I am a full stack developer and a hardcore gamer. I own every PlayStation released and boast a modest collection of games.

The library is a couple of years old. 
I wanted a machine to call mine, which I could turn on every day for mails, youtube, Netflix, games, online courses, side projects, etc.
I wanted to start small with a sizable budget of ₹35,000 and see the possibilities.
Long story short. It most certainly is.
I had several things in my mind about the build other than the cost.
  • The CPU should be a smaller form factor
  • The cabinet should have a transparent side
  • Should be able to do some graphic intense tasks like gaming and ML
If on a budget I suggest not to care about all those RGB Lights and bling.

Processor
The obvious choice here was the AMD Ryzen Series of processors and Ryzen 5 3400G to be precise.
Features:
  • 4 Cores at 3700MHz
  • 8 Threads
  • 2MB L2 and 4MB L3 Cache
  • Best Integrated graphics RX Vega 11 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aside from the fact that this is a quad-core processor with a base clock of 3.7GHZ and 8 threads, the number one factor was that this processor has the world's best-integrated graphics processor. Radeon RX Vega 11.

Cost ~₹13,000

MotherBoard
For the motherboard, I chose the MSI A320M PRO MAX.

The A320M chipset boards offer the best value for your money. Its features are
  • AM4 AMD processor slot
  • 2 ram slots
  • 1 graphic card slot (PCIe 16)
  • 1 PCIe Express slot
  • 4 SATA connectors
  • 1 NVMe M.2 Storage slot
There are other A320M based motherboards out there and I chose this for the following main reasons - 
  • Smallest motherboard form factor (Micro ATX)
  • Supports USB 3.2 Gen 1
  • Supports up to 64GB ram

Cost ~₹3,850

RAM
At this point let me tell you that your system always performs marginally if not significantly better if you have 2 ram sticks of the same bus speed connected in Dual Channel. Just a fancy way of saying take the same 2 ram sticks and stick it in there and your PC will be faster.
But........................
I took 1 stick of 16GB ram

Corsair Vengeance 16GB LPX 3200MHZ Desktop RAM

I decided to go for only 1 stick because I felt I would get another 16gb RAM sometime in the future.

Cost ~₹4,400 for 16GB single stick

Storage
I wanted the fastest and best storage out there.
Right now, the best storage you can get is an NVMe M.2 type storage. It stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express and it offers up to 3x more speeds than your regular SSD drives.
It might seem a little pricier than SSD but it's worth it.
I went for the Kingston A2000 NVMe M.2 250GB
Cost ~₹3,600

Cabinet
Oh, man. I was super choosy about this one. If you must know, smaller cabinets have higher prices. On top of that, I wanted a small cabinet with a transparent side.
I found the perfect one. This is a cabinet only for Micro AT sized motherboards.

Antec VSK 10
I am in love with this cabinet

Cost ₹3,000  (this is a steal!)


Power Supply Unit
This is a pretty no-nonsense choice. I was looking for a 450 watt PSU which would be more than enough for the components listed above and then some.
I zeroed in on Antec Atom V450
Cost ₹2,000


Accessories
USB WiFi dongles just don't support the full potential of your broadband connection. So I decided to go for a PCIe express wifi adapter
TP-Link AC12000 Wireless PCIe Card


Cost ~₹1,500

All prices are excluding GST.
I purchased all these at Ankit InfoTech in SP Road, Bangalore.

Total cost including GST - ₹35,200



  • Assembly took about 30 minutes.
  • Windows installation took 5 minutes thanks to NVMe
  • Windows boots in 10 seconds.

  1. Played GTA 5 at 1080p Normal
  2. Played Crysis at 1080p High
I am just getting started but it's going great.

Thanks for reading.

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