Php10,000 PC Build Guide 2016

Not everyone can afford a high-end PC. For some people, a nominal upgrade could be the best affordable option. Here we have 2 build guides — one for AMD and another for Intel. Both builds are expected to give you decent gaming performance but don’t expect maxing out settings out of the box.

With the builds that we provided, we made an estimate that you can play casual games such as Dota 2 and CS:GO on atleast 720p on low/medium settings. Getting a dedicated/discrete graphics card, however, should solve this problem.

Build 1 (Intel):

TOTAL PRICE: PHP9,740USD 166INR 14,070EUR 158CNY 1,209

In our first build, we utilize an Intel Pentium G4400 accompanied with 4GB of ram, and a 1TB WD hard drive. Despite the lack of a dedicated GPU, the Pentium G4400’s integrated graphics card is sufficient enough to play Dota 2 and CS:GO on mixed low/medium settings at 720p alone. This is a good spot to start upgrading in the future.

The downside of this build is that despite the high clock-speed (3.3GHz) of the Pentium G4400, the processor doesn’t feature hyper-threading. Hyper-threading is a feature of Intel’s “Core” processors (excluding the majority of i5 desktop processors) on which each core acts as if it was 2. In today’s games, the majority of them (especially AAA games such as Rise of the Tomb Raider) would require at all 4 cores, due to multi-core processing.

In my opinion, get at least an i3 to get a better overall performance. Intel’s entry level Skylake i3 known as the i3-6100 is very fast with a clock-speed of 3.7GHz, although because of the budget restrictions we can’t fit it here.

Nevertheless, the Intel Pentium G4400 is more than enough in playing Dota 2 and CS:GO on mixed low/medium settings at 720p and is also capable in playing AAA games such as GTA V, Shadow of Mordor and such. If you want to bump up gaming performance, just a get dedicated graphics card (preferably at least a GTX950), and expect this to be a more than capable enough entry-level gaming PC. You might’ve noticed that we only used a single 4gb ram, that’s because I prefer you to upgrade long term. Buying a 2×2 RAM, while despite having better performance, is useless long term. With a 4GB single stick, you can just buy another 4GB to make it 8GB.

Below we have provided game benchmarks of the Intel Pentium G4400 with and without a dedicated graphics card.

G4400 game benchmarks (videos):

Build 2 (AMD):

TOTAL PRICE: PHP10,340USD 176INR 14,937EUR 168CNY 1,283

Compared to the Intel build that we provided, this one is technically “older” given that we used the AMD Kaveri A8-7600 which was released back in 2014. Nevertheless the AMD Kaveri A8-7600 is still a beast in gaming without the need of a dedicated graphics card.

The AMD A8-7600 is quad-core processor running at 3.1GHz. Despite not having any hyper-threading at all (since that is Intel’s technology), it is still a good processor since it has 4 cores and has high clock speed (3.1GHz).

Take note however that the APU is more focused on gaming without a dedicated graphics card unlike the Intel build above, it is still better to get a dedicated graphics card.

Getting an AMD graphics card in the future would be the best option as the APU supports dual-graphics configuration, which means when paired with a dedicated AMD graphics card, it utilizes both the graphics cores of the APU and the GPU itself, delivering higher frame-rates as a result. Same as the one above, you might’ve noticed that we only used a single 4gb ram. That’s because I prefer you to upgrade long term. Buying a 2×2 RAM, while despite having better performance, is useless long term. With a 4GB single stick, you can just buy another 4GB to make it 8GB.

Gaming benchmarks of the AMD A8-7600 (videos):

Once again, these two builds have one thing on their mind; to provide a decent gaming performance for casual online games such as Dota 2 and CS:GO in low/medium mixed settings at 720p, while offering a good standpoint for upgrading.

DO NOT EXPECT this to max out any AAA game on Ultra Settings at 4k. A Php10k build can’t provide gaming performance like that. We hope this guide helps you build your own RIG around Php10,000USD 170INR 14,446EUR 162CNY 1,241.