Build a Gaming PC for $400 with AMD’s Trinity CPU/GPU

The popularity, lifespan, and ahead-of-their-time technology used by the last generation of consoles has meant that most modern AAA games run on consoles as well as PCs. But while you can expect to pay $300 for a top-of-the line PlayStation 3 console, an entry-level gaming PC costs at least $600, and it only goes up from there. This is partly thanks to expensive discrete graphics cards.

If you check out William Van Winkle’s article on Tom’s Hardware, however, about AMD’s “Second-Generation APUs,” you might be surprised to learn that integrated graphics are making a comeback. That’s because the new “Trinity” APU chips combine a CPU and an almost-half-decent GPU. They can’t play modern games on high detail level at a decent framerate, but they can play them on lower detail levels at 1080p resolution.

A top of the line AMD A10-5800K Trinity costs about $130. Let’s see how cheaply we can price a system around that, and if we can’t build a gaming PC that costs as much as a game console.

Here’s what it’d take:

1. A case that comes with a power supply

For gamers that use power-hungry mammoth graphics cards, a reliable, high-wattage power supply is a must. The AMD chip we’re using has a power draw of fewer than 200 watts under load, however, according to Antony Leather’s review for Bit-Tech. That accounts for both the CPU and the GPU, and it’s a fraction of what the most extreme graphics cards require.

Let’s budget about $50 for a case with a bundled power supply; maybe something like this Micro-ATX minitower. Its PSU can only power one SATA hard drive, but we only need one for this budget build.

2. A motherboard with room for expansion

This FM2 motherboard (with the right slot for our processor) has four RAM slots and two PCI Express slots. This means that later on we can turn our budget build into a powerhouse, by adding up to two discrete graphics cards and replacing the power supply if needed.

All together, this brings the price to about $250. We can spend the remaining $150 on RAM (at least 4 GB) and a hard disk (at least 500 GB). Especially if we use an existing keyboard and mouse, forego having an optical drive in favor of online game downloads, use a wired Ethernet connection instead of buying an inexpensive Wi-Fi adapter, and …

3. Use Linux instead of Windows

This wouldn’t have been an option just a few years ago. But with dozens of games already on Steam for Linux, including some of Valve’s greatest hits like Team Fortress 2, you may not feel like you’re missing out. Plus, you won’t have to worry about malware protection.

Hardware support is sometimes tricky on Linux, but Phoronix benchmarks show that the AMD A10-5800K is supported by AMD’s drivers. If you don’t like spending time with the penguins, an OEM Windows license adds only $99 to our build.

The upshot

Our $400 gaming PC costs about as much as the PlayStation 4’s launch price is rumored to be. And while its graphics won’t be as powerful, it’ll also have many more titles available, even if you install Linux. If you’re a Windows PC gamer, an extra $100 lets you bring your existing library of Windows-only games, and opens up thousands of titles the PlayStation may never get.

Just don’t forget to install a virus scanner.