Article I Saw : "£350 Skyrim PC"

Jhaemes

Jhaemes

Jhaemes

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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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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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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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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? ;)
 
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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