edutech4schools Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 I was going to get an Xbox One then a PS4 than I went back to Xbox but have decided to move away from consoles and build my own gaming rig. I really have no clue where to start. I have around £600 ish, so hope that will be enough to get me something that is on par or better than the next gen consoles. I might have some more money in a while so it does need to be an upgradable system. If anyone can recommend me a site with some pre built machines that would be handy or offer some general advice about the type of processor or graphics card I should get. Also are some motherboards more upgradable than others and are some aimed at gaming? cheers
rich_tech Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 (edited) PC Gamer magazine is worth a look, it carries adverts from a couple of companies selling a range of gaming desktops/laptops and Custom PC is also worth a look. I am looking forward here and if we move home soon, I won't have much room for a Man Cave / gaming rig like I have in our bedroom at the moment, so I think I will be looking for one of these for my gaming needs as well, started a free trial on iOS to get some magazines the other day. Edit: a quick trawl of the magazine on my lunch, these are the advertisers in it for gaming machines below if your after a pre-built/laptop, I can't vouch for having purchased anything from them though. Overclockers UK - Computer components, hardware & gaming PC CYBERPOWERPC – Performance Custom Gaming PC and Gaming Notebook Gaming System Series Custom Built Gaming PC Sunderland Falcon Computers Custom PCs, Gaming PC Computers, Cheap PC Computers, Buy Computer London from DinoPC Chillblast - UK's Most Awarded Custom Gaming PC Builder PCSPECIALIST - Custom PCs, Custom Computers, Custom PC, Desktop PC, Custom Built Computers, Gaming PC Wired2Fire Custom Gaming PCs Edited January 5, 2015 by rich_tech 1
Sunnyknight Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 *plays..... donkey kong theme* Sunny to the rescue! Intel or Amd. Seems AMD with that budget. £400 more and it's intel based. Boards? Asus or Giga. Never an issue with them (in my experience anyway, bar a hickup.... once.... but it's really not an issue). Ram? Corsair / Kingston or Team Avexir is my preference. GFX? Nvidia, but if you're tight on budget, AMD.... (boooo) PSU? Corsair / NZXT. Case? Pick one that's open and has the possibility for watercooling. HafX and Bitfenix cases are common, though i prefer NZXT. SSD? HDD? Pick. SSD - Kingston / Samsung. HDD - Your toes. Cooling? CPU fan based? Venom Voodoo. Peripherals, you choose to your suitability Bump it to £1100 and you'll be in my safe hands. 1
ataylor Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 Would you be willing to build the machine your self?
3s-gtech Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 Do you need that budget to include a screen? If not: Windows 8.1 64- Bit DVD OEM - Ebuyer 8GB 2400MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL11 DIMM (Kit of 2) XMP HyperX Savage - Ebuyer Intel Core i3 4130 3.40GHz Socket 1150 3MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor - Ebuyer MSI Z97-G43 Socket 1150 VGA DVI HDMI 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard - Ebuyer Gigabyte GTX 750 Ti 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5inch SSD - Ebuyer Corsair Carbide Series 200R ATX Case Black w/ USB 3.0 - Ebuyer Coolermaster Elite Power 500W Fully Wired Efficient Power Supply - Ebuyer = £598.18 1
ataylor Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 If you can stretch your budget I would swap out that GPU for a 970 Gigabyte GTX970 WindForce 3 OC 4GB Nvidia (Maxwell) PCI Express Graphics Card * Scan Exclusive * - GV-N970WF3OC-4GD - Scan.co.uk And possible get an I5 (I have one of these overclocked to 4.3GHz with relative ease) Intel Core i5 3570K Quad Core IvyBridge Processor Retail with Heat Sink Fan - BX80637I53570K - Scan.co.uk You might need a better PSU though 1
ataylor Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 Them samsung SSD's are nice though. currently have x2 250gb running in raid 0.
edutech4schools Posted January 5, 2015 Author Posted January 5, 2015 Do you need that budget to include a screen? If not: No. I have a good screen already.
abillybob Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 (edited) Hey Man, Good choice, now you have decided to join the master race here's a bunch of components that I think will suit your needs as a computer gamer. Intel Core I3 4160 @ 3.6Ghz, This will be as much as you'll ever need for AAA title gaming and it's under £100 - Intel Core i3 4160 3.60GHz Socket 1150 3MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor - Ebuyer ASUS H81 Plus Motherboard - Asus H81-PLUS socket 1150 8-Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard - Ebuyer Corsair DDR3 8GB Vengence RAM - Corsair 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz Vengeance Memory - Ebuyer Case? Pick whatever you prefer that's a decent price and will fit ATX motherboards. Though if I where you I quite like this one for quality and the looks a Zalman Z11 Zalman Z11 Plus High Performance Mid Tower Case - Ebuyer Corsair CSM 750Watt PSU - Corsair CSM 750W Semi Modular 80+ Gold Power Supply - Ebuyer Intel 530 240GB SSD - Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5inch SATA 6GBs SSD - Ebuyer For Graphics card go with the MSI R9 280, MSI's components have always been very stable and reliable for me although I always go Nvidia route anyway, but seen as though your budget won't allow you to buy a decent enough nvidia card I'd go with this beauty - MSI R9 280 GAMING 3GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI Dual Mini DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer All in all this rig will cost you £597.55 so once you've ordered it all go grab yourself a beer afterward, get excited and play the waiting game. Hope this helps I should add you can save money for example by going down the AMD route, a route that PERSONALLY I have only ever had problems with, I'd much rather spend a few extra bucks and go Intel, also never skimp on PSU's however tempting a cheap PSU won't last, can damage components and may not actually out put the correct Voltage/Wattage as I found out a while back and lastly don't get a naughty copy of Windows however tempting. Put some money aside for Windows 8 and don't listen to people when they say "Gaming on Windows 8 is awful" this is not the case and I'm sure a lot of people would agree, the naughty copies normally include dodgy software etc and I just wouldn't trust it in a nice new rig. Also know I have tried to pick quality and reliability over brute performance that's because when a system has rubbish components in and your consistently wondering why X won't work or it keeps crashing and your having to take stuff back it ruins the whole experience I can almost guarantee that with the components selected here your system will run stable and perform properly. Edited January 5, 2015 by abillybob 1
edutech4schools Posted January 5, 2015 Author Posted January 5, 2015 Thanks for the flood of info so far. Lets start with processors. Which of these is better as they are both about the same money. Intel Core i5 3570K Quad Core IvyBridge Processor Retail with Heat Sink Fan - BX80637I53570K - Scan.co.uk or this which is recommended on pc gamer Intel Core i5 i5-4690K CPU (Quad Core 3.5GHz Processor, 6MB Cache, Intel HD 4600 Graphics, Socket H3 LGA-1150): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
3s-gtech Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 (edited) All in all this rig will cost you £597.55 so once you've ordered it all go grab yourself a beer afterward, get excited and play the waiting game. Hope this helps Remember that for most dedicated gaming rigs you'll still need to budget for a copy of Windows There is SteamOS of course, but it's not up there yet. Thanks for the flood of info so far. Lets start with processors. Which of these is better as they are both about the same money. Intel Core i5 3570K Quad Core IvyBridge Processor Retail with Heat Sink Fan - BX80637I53570K - Scan.co.uk or this which is recommended on pc gamer Intel Core i5 i5-4690K CPU (Quad Core 3.5GHz Processor, 6MB Cache, Intel HD 4600 Graphics, Socket H3 LGA-1150): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories The 3570k will be no use here - older socket (LGA1155) so if you want upgradeable, forget it. If budget permits, get the 4690K and a beefier graphics card too. Edited January 5, 2015 by 3s-gtech
abillybob Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 (edited) Thanks for the flood of info so far. Lets start with processors. Which of these is better as they are both about the same money. Intel Core i5 3570K Quad Core IvyBridge Processor Retail with Heat Sink Fan - BX80637I53570K - Scan.co.uk or this which is recommended on pc gamer Intel Core i5 i5-4690K CPU (Quad Core 3.5GHz Processor, 6MB Cache, Intel HD 4600 Graphics, Socket H3 LGA-1150): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories Go with the 4690k as that is 1150 socket which is Haswell and is more up to date. Though if it's just a gaming rig I think anything over an i3 is overkill. My brother runs a pentium dual core and still performs extremely well on AAA titles, GPU is more important so spend your money on that. Damn it sniped by @3s-gtech I got a friend who is a student to lend me his student email and bought Windows 8.1 Pro from Microsoft at around £40 which is less than a days wage. So normally I forget to include it in the budget. Sorry Edited January 5, 2015 by abillybob
Sunnyknight Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 (edited) Let's do this. i7 3930k - £110 - 130 ebay. Brand new. 6 core Extreme @ 3.20. No need to OC. Asus Sabertooth 2011 - £200 Brand new. Corsair Dominator 16gb 2011mhz - £200 brand new. Nvidia 780 ti - £320 NZXT 850w PSU - £110 NZXT Phantom USB 3 full tower case - £120 Samsung Evo Pro 256gb - £100? or less. Venom Voodoo cooling - £40. £1200. Upgrade to your hearts content from there on, though with a 6 core beast, 16gb of high tuned ram, and a near top of the range GFX, you won't be put down. EDIT: Back to work. AMD version inc. Edited January 5, 2015 by Sunnyknight 1
edutech4schools Posted January 5, 2015 Author Posted January 5, 2015 Should really be working but anyways. Probably getting the I5 4690k processor. Next I will see which graphics cards have been recommend in the posts above and do some googleing.
Sunnyknight Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 I5? I5?! Psh. You said a gaming rig. Not a wooden carpet.
LincolnE Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 If I was building a rig myself these days, I'd go for a simple intel pentium g3258 for the CPU. Good overclocking potential for the price (£50) and CPU isn't really a bottleneck these days for games so the extra money can go onto the graphics card.
Sunnyknight Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 He also said £600. He also said he'd have more to spend soon...
abillybob Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 I5? I5?! Psh. You said a gaming rig. Not a wooden carpet. Haha To be honest as I've said before my brother has an Intel Pentium G620 still and it's been running Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4 just fine though he does have a decent GPU. If your just using a rig for gaming you don't need an all singing-all dancing, CPU but you need a good GPU. They don't need support for Hyper-Threading etc... Now if he's using it for programming, video editing etc, I could understand the need for a beefier processor.
ataylor Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmarks - High End Video Cards The 970 is one of the best cards out there when you are comparing performance/cost. I'm currently running a 770, wish I had waited till the 970 was released.
3s-gtech Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 I might have some more money in a while so it does need to be an upgradable system. Aside from omitting a GPU (which you can't do on a 39** CPU, so would need a cheap fill-in) it wouldn't fit in the current budget, to upgrade later. The 780Ti is also an odd choice now, against the 970 which costs less and can overclock well beyond it.
siuko Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 The biggest question as always with these sorts of threads... What exactly is it you are planning on playing? Many PC games have very varied requirements. Ive found that if I normally spend around £600-700 I can get a fairly nice gaming rig - but it wont play fantastic with super modern games (especially newer mmo's) I always check out Value Gaming PCs, Cheap Gaming Computers & Cheap Gaming - 3XS (click PC's rather than bundles) to see what they spec - and then adjust to suit my preferences.
ataylor Posted January 5, 2015 Posted January 5, 2015 The only game that has caped my I5 3570k CPU is Starcitizen, but that is because it is in pre-alpha. Runs fine after I overclocked it though
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