£350 Gaming PC

HPTL7

HPTL7

HPTL7

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Friend is looking to buy a budget £350 gaming pc. He does not need os, keyboard, mouse, monitor, no hardrive.
 
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Easily done as a starter build that will play most games.
500 or 600w 80+ psu usually £40 to £49 for instance the coolermaster b600 currently goes for £42
8GB (2 lots of 4gb) 1333mhz value corsair RAM £30 to £35
HD 7770 1gb GDDR5 £87
coolermaster K380 chassis £38 (only has one fan but space for 4 which means you can go for silent running by installing your own, better quieter fans as and when money permits
Coolermaster 212 evo cooler £20 to £25

z77 mobo £60

and cpu I3 £70 link below

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-071-IN&groupid=595&catid=686

There you go will do the job and is less than £350

Or if you prefer amd you can often pick up an fx4100 which has huge overclocking potential for £40 to £50

and could get asrock 990fx extreme3 mobo for £80. It has xfast utilities which I like but it must be pointed out asrocks customer services are a joke. This mobo is great for overclocking and can also add another card when money permits and upgrade cpu as well.

Many will have a problem with the ram but it does the job and is cheap. Ram is the easiest thing in the world to upgrade to in the future.

In fact my selections are all upgradeable but in the meantime you will be able to play all games at a good level, which is what a cheap gaming computer should do.

The likes of warcraft can be played in ultra easily with the above specs. Your fps will drop in 25 man raids ofc but you can always reduce settings when in those scenarios.

I haven't listed hard drives because they are so so cheap at the moment it is nearly impossible not to find a bargain or two.

Just make sure you get 7200rpm and not 5200. Strangely they are around the same price.

Also I would go for two lots of smaller than one bigger, for instance a 160gb for o's and 320 for games. But hey, you pays ya money you takes ya choice.

You should be able to get both for less than £40 in total. If this goes above the £350 (it wont by much), in fact I picked up a 320gb and 160gb just last week which cost £28 in total, but if it does and £350 is the max spend you can get a 970fx mobo for £56
That will bring you back to budget.

The only main difference is that the 990's pcie slots will give the same performance to two gpu's whereas the 970 is times 4 on the second one.

If you will only ever put one graphics card in then go for the 970 and you will be way under budget.
 
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snips86x said:
Trinity has an integrated graphics processor which is capable of running BF3 on Med/high settings.

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-6600K 3.90GHz (Socket FM2) APU Richland Quad Core Processor (AD660KWOHLBOX) £99.95
1 x GeIL EVO Veloce Hot-Rod Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEV38GB2133C11DC) £65.99
1 x Gigabyte F2A85XM-D3H AMD A85X Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 micro ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (S (HD-257-SE) £45
1 x **B Grade** NZXT Source 210 Elite Midi Tower Case - Black £39.98
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £39.95
Total : £365.46 (includes shipping : £10.50).

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I know he doesn't need one but I was just curious why you opted for a solitary 1tb hard drive.
Getting extra performance from anywhere possible is a must with low cost builds. It would perform better having two harddrives, one just for the operating system and one for everything else.

If its just for gaming, and that's what he asked for, then a small 160gb or so hard drive for operating system is all he needs, then add 320 to 500gb for the games. Performance will be better and although it comes in total to less than 1tb, he will never ever use 1tb
 
I would just go with what the guys have reccomended. He wont be able to get a real 'gaming' PC for that money. The hard drive situation, wont make much difference either way unless you start using raid or ssd's which wont fit into the budget.
 
As a further note if you opted for the Asrock 970fx extreme3 mobo, the money you save would enable you to buy the ram suggested by snips86x.

That is the route I would probably go down. It will still come in at less than £350.

I could have took you over budget of course but you said £350, so I am adverse to going to £360, £370 etc.

I understand what it is like to have a maximum spend. Generally though, especially in building gaming pc's, there is no such thing as they are a luxury and many on here including myself will spend that and more on GPU's alone.

The ps4 is currently available pre order for £350. The question your friend should ask is whether either of the builds mentioned will perform better than that or not.

If he wants to use the pc for other stuff then fine, but if it is just for gaming then although both builds will give good performance, I think the ps4 will be better.

I haven't got one or tried one so I cant say for definite. The reviews however show it to be a handy piece of kit.
 
There is no doubt you will be able to play some older games quite well on an AMD APU set up. Just don't be prepared to be playing latest titles on high settings.

It really is just a matter of scale your expectations to what you can afford. A APU set up will play some good older games quite well, and still look & perform well. Also, the older games are cheaper, so all in all it could be quite a inexpensive experience altogether.
 
I think that if you overclock the fx4100 to 4.4 or 4.5ghz with a hd 7770 you should be able to play the likes of skyrim on high settings.

The 7770 GDDR5's like sapphire models (I know its swearing ha ha) actually perform alright. Not great but alright. Its more of a movie watching card IMO but the game play isn't to shabby.

As with all things, even the most expensive cards, some are more suited to some games than others. Many of the top cards have things which most games wont even use and probably wont for a couple of years.

It would be insane to think he is going to hook up a cheap gaming build with a multi monitor set up so that also means you don't need an all singing and dancing one.

The other thing to point out is that he hasn't probably got one of the latest TV's or monitors out there either because £350 wouldn't be his maximum spend if he had. He would have more money.

It is possible he is running it on a 1024 times 768 (I haven't got a times key on keyboard, what a gip) so his high and ultra settings are going to be different to yours and mine.

I think it will do the job admirably.

However, I go back to my earlier point and yours too, the PS4 would be better. Maybe that is why he has gave the £350 max?
 
 
chris182008 said:
Little over budget but should play games pretty well.

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showd (GX-100-GI) £109.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £49.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020046-UK) £39.95
1 x Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £38.99
1 x Antec VSK3000 Micro ATX Case £24.95
Total : £366.46 (includes shipping : £10.50).

Click to expand...

No cooler?

Out of curiosity as well, does the mobo you suggested take 1600mhz RAM? memory is a bit fuzzy but I thought it was old school and therefore even 1333 has to be oc'd.

How are they on overclocking?
 
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The CPU comes with a cooler which should do for the time being. Your right with the RAM I've changed it below but gigabytes website isn't working properly in chrome for me so I can't check for sure its compatible. Overclocking wise I haven't had any personal experience with the board and its not going to be amazing being on the 700 chipset but you should be able to overclock a little. I think the stock cooler will hold you back more than the motherboard.

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showd (GX-100-GI) £109.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Corsair Value 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMV8GX3M2A1333C9) £53.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020046-UK) £39.95
1 x Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £38.99
1 x Antec VSK3000 Micro ATX Case £24.95
Total : £370.45 (includes shipping : £10.50).

 
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