Looking for a new gaming PC, £1200 budget at the most.

Associate
Joined
6 May 2014
Posts
38
Hey guys,

As the title says, i'm looking for a new pc with a HEAVY focus on gaming. I've got some sort of idea as to what I want but i'm stumped as to graphics cards and which i should buy, i'm open to any and all suggestions!

Here's what I had in mind:

AMD FX 8350 Black Edition
Corsair H100i Extreme Water Cooler
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5
4GB of RAM (I figure I can upgrade this when I have the ££'s)
Crucial 120GB M500 SSD
A 2TB HDD
750W Corsair CS PSU (For upgrades in the future)
Fractal Design ARC Midi R2
OS: Windows 8.1

I was thinking of going for an R9 290, but I hear it runs REALLY hot and i'm unsure! So yeah, if you guys could offer your opinions i'd be really happy.

I don't need a monitor, got a crappy old 15'' one that'll do for a while and i plan on picking up a dirt cheap keyboard and mouse combo.

Thanks for any suggestions, guys!
 
Soldato
Joined
25 Feb 2010
Posts
3,219
Location
England
Welcome to the forum.

Spending 1200 quid is Intel money.

Get a monitor it will be a waste to use such a machine on a 15inch puke resolution screen.

Someone will be along soon to spec you a capable machine.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
6 May 2014
Posts
38
Yeah, but i'd prefer it to be £100 cheaper if at all possible and include Win 8.1. £1,200 is as much as i can literally stretch my budget to without surviving off of beans for the next few weeks :)
 
Soldato
Joined
3 Sep 2012
Posts
11,339
Location
P town
As above I would go with a new full hd monitor if not now then at least sometime soon or the rest of your system will be going to waste.

R9 290 depends which one you go with the Sapphire offerings have good coolers that keep temperatures around 50C, impressive for such a powerful card!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11227-03-40G) £329.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Asus VE247H 24" Widescreen LED Multimedia Monitor - Black £119.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST3000DM001) HDD £79.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 650W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £79.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £76.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £67.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler £49.99
1 x Zalman ZM-M400 1600 DPI Optical Gaming Mouse £9.98
1 x OcUK USB Keyboard - Black £4.99
Total : £1,135.88 (includes shipping : £12.50).




I think the case you want to be going for is the R4 unless the old R2 has any benefits? Unfortunately not sold at OCUK anymore but I've left you with some spare cash to go and buy this.

Note that the HDD is 3TB as only £10 more than 2TB! Also I have included a keyboard & mouse.
 
Last edited:
Associate
OP
Joined
6 May 2014
Posts
38
Ah, really? If there's a refresh, I may as well just wait just a few more weeks. I'm pretty new to PC's, been a console gamer all my life but I really want to make the switch. I mean, there's only so much abuse you can take from 12 year old's over XBL/PSN before you call it quits.

I noticed OCuk has a pre-built section that you can customise, I didn't know this was a thing! It's pretty appealing to me as i've never built a PC and i'm lazy... How much more expensive would it be to just have them build a similar rig as the one above?

Also, why is it Intel > AMD? It's just something i've never grasped...

Thanks for taking the time to throw together some specs, guys!
 
Associate
Joined
24 Apr 2014
Posts
118
Location
England
Ah, really? If there's a refresh, I may as well just wait just a few more weeks. I'm pretty new to PC's, been a console gamer all my life but I really want to make the switch. I mean, there's only so much abuse you can take from 12 year old's over XBL/PSN before you call it quits.

I noticed OCuk has a pre-built section that you can customise, I didn't know this was a thing! It's pretty appealing to me as i've never built a PC and i'm lazy... How much more expensive would it be to just have them build a similar rig as the one above?

Also, why is it Intel > AMD? It's just something i've never grasped...

Thanks for taking the time to throw together some specs, guys!

Intel i5 gives better performance than any AMD processor.
bench4-580-100.jpg


That's just an example ^
I am using Intel i5-4670k
 
Associate
Joined
17 Jul 2013
Posts
251
I thought this was just for CPU intensive games, obviously I'm wrong.

I think it is mostly dependant on the GPU currently but games are now starting to make use of CPU's hyperthreading etc. Intel have better single core speeds so performance is better overall. I think the OP would be more than happy with AMD for the CPU coming from a console but for a bit more future proofing and overall performance Intel is definitely the way forward.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
6 May 2014
Posts
38
I think it is mostly dependant on the GPU currently but games are now starting to make use of CPU's hyperthreading etc. Intel have better single core speeds so performance is better overall. I think the OP would be more than happy with AMD for the CPU coming from a console but for a bit more future proofing and overall performance Intel is definitely the way forward.

You guys know a hell of a lot more than me, Intel it is then.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
6 May 2014
Posts
38
Okay guys,

With the new z97 boards out, can someone give me an idea of which is the best for my price-point?

Also, is the refresh really worth waiting for? I believe I read that there's no 'k' editions being released until later in the year.

Cheers
 
Back
Top Bottom