Article I Saw : "£350 Skyrim PC"

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3 Dec 2011
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I had some time to kill before an appointment, wandered into a book store and had a quick look at the magazine isle. Long story short, came across an article in a computer magazine about a gaming pc for Skyrim for £350. Mainly wondering what you think of it, I don't need it myself since I built mine in January.

(I've put re-created it using the OcUK basket plug-in, with some changes where the original parts aren't available. It comes out more expensive here, mainly due to the hard drive)

YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £61.99
1 x Gigabyte H61M-S2PV Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £46.99
1 x Intel Pentium G620 2.60GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £46.99
1 x Xigmatek No Rules Power 500w Power Supply £32.99
1 x Corsair Value 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low Voltage Dual-Channel Kit £23.98
1 x OcUK Flamingo FM-12A Midi Tower Case - Black/Blue £21.98
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939/AM2/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366) £17.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.59
Total : £381.95 (includes shipping : £11.25).



Also note, the PSU in the original is a CoolerMaster 450w Bronze. Case doesn't match the original either, cheapest OcUK had (never a good idea). Graphics card worked out cheaper than the original, which is the MSI version. Also note it doesn't include an OS, monitor, keyboard and mouse ; the article deemed these extras.

Total cost of original spec : £367.
Total cost of similar from OcUK : £368.45

Not bad in total. Personally, if I were going that route I'd grab a better case. For what the rig is though, it's a fairly cheap machine.

Edit: Also, in said magazine (Custom PC magazine, forgot to name it) is an advert for the OcUK Ultima 9450i Mosasaur MkII.
 
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Associate
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Yeah, I remeber seeing this and showing it to a friend who's tempted to break into the PC market (mostly for skyrim actually).

More importantly this rig was set to run Skyrim at 1920x1080 at max settings with a minimum frame rate of 38FPS. Pretty good all things considering tbh.
 
Associate
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They really are great value for money these sandybridge pentium processors. The slightly more expensive G640 does better on gaming benchmarks than AMD bar a few of the higher end CPUs; and isnt that far off i3 2100 territory.

How much better is the 2100 than the G640 for everyday use and gaming? The only knowledge i have is from hardware sites.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,review-32368-10.html
 
Associate
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You could even drop down to the Celeron G530. Don't be put off by the name, it's an immense CPU for the money. I don't know how it compares in benchmarks, but there was no noticeable difference between it and the Phenom II X2 565 it replaced. Either in desktop use or games.
 
Associate
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Cane Hill Nut Home
Pentium G840 is only £6 more I know just brought one today :D

It was this article that got me into bringing my upgrade further forward rather than wait for the money to buy the i5 2500K

So I got the G840 as a stop gap measure to enable me to get up and running along with my new board Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) & 8GB of Kingston Hyper 1600 DDR3 that was going cheap in the vat free sale at OC in January for about £30..

Cheap way into the 1155 for me very very pleased..
 
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OP
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From the article : "We haven't factored in the cost of an operating system because you may well have one from an old PC that you want to use"

Happy now? ;)
 
Soldato
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You really don't need to spend that much to get a great gaming experience. My rig (in sig) runs Skyrim with everything maxed. Granted my screen only supports 1366x768 res, but I use 8xAA and it looks awesome.

If I had all the money in the world to spend I don't think I would buy anything that much better than I have now. Don't see the point.
 
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