The gaming minimum, probably this year's absolute potato PC, a platform that is already sold for pennies and was very popular in its time. Perhaps it is not even worth building unless you buy it very, very cheaply. This is Intel's legendary 1155 platform and its maximum performance processor, the i7 3770, and in today's article, we will test it together with an RX 550. This platform can be considered a PS4 budget build, although in this case, the performance of the RX 550 is definitely not at the PS4 level, but this combo can also run a higher performance card.
The CPU Trick: Xeon 1270 vs. i7 3770
First of all, I want to tell you about a little trick if you decide to build this platform. The most powerful version on this platform is the i7 3770, but its price is often so high that it makes building this platform completely pointless. Therefore, we can consider a more budget-friendly alternative, which is the Xeon 1270. It often has even better performance than the i7 but is much cheaper. This server processor does not have an iGPU, but we won't need it for gaming anyway since we are using an RX 550 4GB graphics card.
Graphics & RAM: Preparing for EA Sports FC 26
This video card is from my old system, and since it has 4GB of memory, thanks to this, it can still run some games. The priority, of course, in this case, is FC 26. We haven't seen the newest FIFA version yet and we don't know if it will handle it, but we can say that this card manages the 26 version at a minimum level, and playing on it is definitely possible. For RAM, we use two DDR3 1600 MHz 16GB sticks.
Gaming Performance: Mortal Kombat X at 1080p
The first game we will test is Mortal Kombat X; on medium graphics and maximum resolution, it will be tested on an LG 42-inch TV at 1080p resolution, and the performance can be seen in the video below. As seen in the footage, the FPS drops to an average of 30-40 during the loading process, but this is not important. The main thing, of course, is the result obtained during actual gameplay, which is a stable 60 FPS. The gameplay is smooth and has no lag whatsoever.
Gaming Performance: EA Sports FC 26 at 720p
As for the second game, it is, of course, EA Games' FC 26, the twenty-sixth part of a favorite game for many. Here, the reality is a bit different. Of course, the graphics are reduced to the minimum, but along with this, it became necessary to lower the resolution to 720p. Otherwise, the game is comfortable and enjoyable; you can see the video below.
Final Thoughts & Upgrade Potential
In summary, I want to tell you that this build is the absolute minimum, the building of which is mostly worth it depending on how cheaply you can find the parts, and often it is possible to find them very cheaply. If you put, for example, a GTX 1660 Super or a more powerful RX card in this build, the performance will be much higher, and you will be able to run more games comfortably. Of course, such cards won't reach their maximum potential at this time, but you will definitely be able to upgrade later. There is already an article on our website about a budget build with an RTX 4060 graphics card; to read it, see here.