is this any good?

tyler9

tyler9

tyler9

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24 Nov 2012
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5
i am looking to buy a gaming pc for my son. i have been looking and found this i have a budget of around £600. what i want to know is can i get better for the money or is this a decent machine for the money and will it perform with the current games?

AMD FX6200
Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 Motherboard
1 TB Serial ATA Hard Drive
16 GB DDR3 1600 PC12800 Memory
Nvidia GTX 660 TI 2 GB PCI-E Graphics Card With HDMI
750 Watt Power supply
DVDWR

this is £580 is it worth it?
all help appreciated
thanks in advance

ty
 
You can get much better for your money.... but as said above, are you going to build it yourself?

A few comments to point you in the right direction anyhow:

First off, do you already have a monitor? What make/model is it?

That processor isn't great. Try to get an older phenom II AMD processor as it is better at games (you want a quad core). Obviously you'll need a matching motherboard to support that processor.

The graphics card isn't great for a machine that is costing you £600. It's not abysmal but it could certainly be better.

You don't need 16GB of RAM. That said, it's so cheap at the moment that there's no harm in getting it unless you could use that extra money to make something else (e.g. the graphics card) better.

"750 watt PSU" makes me worried that it is just a generic no-brand PSU. You would be better served by buying a 550 watt PSU of a good brand (e.g. corsair or another of the big names). The wattage rating is not the best way to measure the quality of a PSU and does not always reflect it's ability to cope with high-end PC components such as graphics cards and CPUs.

1TB Hard drive is also a little vague. If it's a 5200rpm drive it will make your shiny new system feel dog-slow to use. You would be better served by buying a small SSD for the operating system and then a larger drive for games/etc. To be honest, unless you think your son will need a huge drive for downloading lots of films and music (cough cough) then 1TB is overkill anyhow. Get a 60GB SSD and a whatever size HDD you can afford to go with. Make sure that it is 7200rpm.

edit: Just to add, but building for yourself really isn't that hard as long as you spend a bit of time researching before you make any purchases. I can understand if it's too daunting/time-consuming though.
 
Last edited:
Lemin said:
Better prebuilds...

Titan 8300i Exodus" Intel Core i7 2700K 3.50GHz DDR3 Quad Core Gaming PC
This Week Only Offer
was £480.01 inc VAT
£420.01 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-322-OE&groupid=43&catid=2385&subcat=

or bit better...


Titan 8700i Pulse" Intel Core i5 3570K 3.40GHz @ 4.40GHz DDR3 Ivybridge Gaming PC
This Week Only Offer
was £577.51 inc VAT
£536.41 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-247-OE&groupid=43&catid=2385&subcat=
Click to expand...

Once you stick an OS and graphics card in that second one it becomes over-budget. Also, with the default available options the first one will have a worse graphics card than the spec the OP has posted. In this case it would be worth ringing OcUK and asking them if they can put a different graphics card in there for you.
 
thanks guys for your help. so what would be a decent setup for this money? what would you buy? which GPU? dedicated/on chip? i know im not going to get anything special for the budget i just want something that will do a half decent job with a view to improving as i go along. the primary function will be gaming. my son will be using his LCD tv with this to begin with.

thanks again
ty
 
What resolution is the LCD TV? 720p, 1080p, 1080i? If it's 720p or lower then you'll be able to max out more games as lower resolution requires a less powerful graphics card (but also doesn't look as 'nice' obviously). Do you also need a keyboard/mouse?

Also, as we said above, are you planning to build this yourself (purchase components separately and put them together physically yourself) or to buy it pre-built?

As to your other question - always go for a dedicated graphics card. On-chip cards these days can be quite capable for very light and low-end gaming but if the system is primarily for gaming you definitely want a dedicated card so you can run games with all the eye-candy turned on.

Can you stretch on your budget at all? If you can and you want to go the pre-built route I would consider Lemin's suggestion of a pre-built PC from here. Go with the additional options in this picture and then ring the sales line on that page and ask them to give you a better graphics card option. I would consider this card but others may give you better advice on this.

You could build a better machine yourself but it would require more work and a bit of learning :)
 
i was thinking the prebuilt route as when ive priced the components to build myself there hasnt been much difference. the screen is 720 but will eventually upgrade. so if i go with the suggested i7 system and SSD which graphics card would be a good choice if i up the budget by another 150-200?
 
yeah, i think so, the prebuilt route as when ive priced the components to build myself there hasnt been much difference. the screen is 720 but will eventually upgrade,thank for your sharing.
3.gif
 
tyler9 said:
i was thinking the prebuilt route as when ive priced the components to build myself there hasnt been much difference. the screen is 720 but will eventually upgrade. so if i go with the suggested i7 system and SSD which graphics card would be a good choice if i up the budget by another 150-200?
Click to expand...

I posted a link to a graphics card in my last post :)

roadgamethes said:
yeah, i think so, the prebuilt route as when ive priced the components to build myself there hasnt been much difference. the screen is 720 but will eventually upgrade,thank for your sharing.
3.gif
Click to expand...

eh?
 
thanks frenchtart you have been very helpful despite me sounding thick! i have just come across this on here what are your views with the card you suggested?

Case: Corsair 300R Carbide Mid Tower - Case
- Power Supply: PC & Power Cooling 600W PSU
- CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz @ 4.40GHz Sandybridge CPU
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
- Cooler: Prolimatech Panther CPU Cooler
- RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
- Hard Drive: 500GB HDD
- Graphics Card: Choice of DX11 Compatible Graphics Cards ***OcUK Recommends a minimum of either an AMD 7850 or a Nvidia 660 to play Battlefield optimally at HD resolutions***
- Sound: Realtek 7.1 Channel Sound (On-Board)
- Optical Drive: OcUK 24x DVD+/-RW SATA Drive

thanks again it is appreciated

ty
 
thanks lemin i think im gona go with it. im reading a lot of good reviews some bad but you always get hard to please people :/ you could go nuts with this stuff cash wise and mentally the more i look the stronger my headache gets and the thinner my wallet but yeah it seems a decent choice (to me!)

thanks again
ty
 
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