Building a budget Gaming PC in Sri Lanka

Building a budget gaming PC here in Sri Lanka is not so straight forward. This is because advice found on the internet on building "gaming rigs" can't be directly applied here, because of the price differences and non-availability of the components. So if you need to build a balanced gaming PC under a tight budget, you need to do some serious searching.

Here's the system configuration I managed to put together after searching around some shops at Unity Plaza.

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 8,500/= (PC Partner)
M/B: Asrock G31m-S 4,500 /= (Barclays)
2GB DDR2 Kingston 800MHz 5,500 /= (PC Partner)
GeForce 9600GT 11,500 /= (Barclays)

This is assuming you already have a basic computer with a HDD and a monitor. If not you'll have to spend some on the following as well.

HDD 500GB 7,000/=
Casing with power supply 3,000/=
Acer 18.5" WideScreen LCD 15,000 /= (almost everywhere)

You can customize these components according to your requirement, but there are a few important points to keep in mind:

* A gaming PC needs to be balanced. i.e. its components should match one another. Having a high end Q6600 quad core processor with a low GeForce 5200 won't game well; Neither will a powerful Radeon HD 4850 coupled with a low 2.0GHz single core processor. You will be wasting the power of the graphics card or the processor.

* E5300 runs at 2.6GHz but can easily be overclocked to 3.0GHz. I've seen gaming centers (cyber cafes) use this in their PCs. The next higher processor would be the core2duo e7500 running at 2.9GHz, which also is a good overclocker, but costs Rs. 14,500/=. For the GeForce 9600 GT, the overclocked E5300 would be quite sufficient, but if you don't mind the extra Rs. 6,000, it's better to go for the E7500. Going for other similar processors such as E5200, E7400, etc. are pointless in my opinion.
The mostly recommended budget gaming processors such as the AMD Athlon II X3, are unfortunately not available in SL.
Core i5 is available in SL now, but is very expensive. The processor+m/b will cost you close to Rs. 40,000/=!

* Asrock m/bs are a good choice because of their tool set for overclocking; and their price.

* You need a minimum of 2GB. 1GB is simply insufficient these days. DDR3 is already here, but we wouldn't really need them yet; Besides they are expensive.

* GeForce 9600 GT is the best graphics card you can find for less than Rs. 12,000/= here in SL. GeForce 9800 GT is better but costs around Rs. 16,000/=. The newer 240 GT comes close to the 9600GT but not worth it's Rs 14,000+. The 250GT is way too pricey. For the E5300 processor I picked, 9600GT seems to be the perfect fit.

* Finally if you need to buy a new monitor, it's absolutely pointless to buy a CRT monitor or a 15" LCD. Just reach out for that few extra bucks and go for a 19" LCD. You will be thankful.

Let me know if you have found better prices / components / configurations.

Happy gaming!