Cheapest plausible gaming pc?

[Babyjeffrey]

My nephew wants a gaming PC but is 13 and has only whatever crap( Star Wars figures, nerf guns etc) he can sell to fund it, I doubt he can raise more than £400 in the first instance. There cheap A8 laptops out there, not sure about their gaming power and cooling.

I'm guessing the cost of machine worth having would be something like min: APU £70, MB £50, RAM £50, PSU £50, storage £50, keyboard, mice and speakers £50 and monitor £100 - I've put a lot of thought into this. Plus at least £20 for being optimistic so far.

Plus case and optical drive and upgrade cooler for £70? + mug uncle to build the thing.

Broadly speaking are these numbers about right for a machine that would run recent games at reasonable FPS without it looking a decade out of place?

 

[varkanoid]

£400 will probably just get you a PC with no dedicated graphics card so something like an AMD A10 APU system. Thats without OS though.

You would be better off delving into the 2nd hand market. Plus what about a monitor ?

 

[BinnsY]

If you need all the extras like monitor / keyboard / speakers etc this is pretty tough.

Personally though I think this is quite a good build below. The actual PC is actually alright and should be capable of playing most games with ease, especially as it's only a 1080p monitor.

Personally I'd probably look at seeing if you can find an older 1680*1050 monitor for less money from a competitor as it would save on the build and give that GPU more life span, unfortunately OC don't have anything in this category. I'd then use those savings to get better speakers.

The mouse and keyboard are almost certainly rubbish but they look cool, and that's all that matters when your 13 right?

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 750Ti OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N750Ti-2GD5/OCV1) £99.95
1 x Iiyama ProLite E2278HD 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £84.95
1 x Intel Pentium G3240 3.1GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £52.39
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £44.99
1 x Asus H81M-K Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £39.95
1 x Seagate 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST1000DM003) (1 Year Warranty) £34.99
1 x BeQuiet System Power 7 350W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £27.95
1 x Aerocool V2X Black Edition Midi-Tower - Black £19.99
1 x Mars Gaming MS1 2.0 Soundsystem - Black 10W RMS £17.99
1 x Sumvision Nemesis Kane Pro Gaming Keyboard & Mouse Set £13.99
Total : £437.14 (includes shipping : Ex.VAT).

 

[savagesam117]

That mouse and keyboard isnt actually that bad, i got my step brother one and used it to set up his pc. It does what it's meant to do and looks ridiculous whilst doing it!

 

[SouthEastBlue]

Pick up a mixture of new/second hand parts and you can build something half decent for £400 easy. Was looking at a cheap PC for my son recently, and based on parts I could see new and on Ebay I came up with...

i3 Haswell Processor, H81 motherboard, 8GB DDR3, 120GB SSD, Zalman T2 case, 500w PSU. I think I added it up to something like £240.

Only thing missing was cheap keyboard/mouse, GPU (something like 7950 is £70) and a cheap monitor £100.

I think the only thing above I was planning second hand was the processor, could prob shave a nice chunk off other than that also. Above would play most games and medium/high with decent frames. I wouldn't bother with an APU or anything AMD processor wise.

 

[Watlinguk]

That mouse and keyboard isnt actually that bad, i got my step brother one and used it to set up his pc. It does what it's meant to do and looks ridiculous whilst doing it!

I can also vouch for the keyboard, my friend has it and its actually really good. I think he binned the mouse though

 

[kaku]

Scavenge charity shops or office clearout places for 'old' monitors/keyboard/mouse. Might even be able to grab some workable speakers too.

The more you can set aside for components the better, but it's certainly do-able. Something like a G3258 and a second-hand graphics card should set you up reasonably well.

 

[sastusbulbas]

Well if you shop around you can get some bargains elsewhere.

Corsair VS350w psu for around £25, I got mine in a sale for less.
Fractal Core 1000 usb 2 case £14 new

My kids do OK with old LGA775 hardware, but as I have an unused Z97, I plan on getting them a G3258 set up in an NZXT S340 with RGB lighting.

Pentium G3258 cpu
B grade H81 motherboard from Overclockers?

A 2gb Nvidia 750 will play most games fine on a 1080p monitor. And only require a small PSU as it doe not require power cables from 6 pin connectors.

An example of a small PC suitable for a kids games in my opinion.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-N75TD5-2GI) £85.99
1 x Asus VS228DE 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £85.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £55.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £34.99
1 x BeQuiet System Power 7 350W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £27.95
1 x **B Grade** Asus H81M-K Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £25.00
1 x **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-252-SE) £19.99
1 x Zalman T1 Plus Mini-Tower USB 3.0 - Black £19.99
1 x Sumvision Nemesis Kane Pro Gaming Keyboard & Mouse Set £13.99
Total : £369.89 (includes shipping : Ex.VAT).

 

[Babyjeffrey]

Thanks, so 2x2gb ram and 350W PSU is okay, was think that a bit more was needed.
I'm sure Win 10 can be acquired for free

Broadly speaking a £50 chip and £80 graphics card is fine for cheapie display?

 

[savagesam117]

Thanks, so 2x2gb ram and 350W PSU is okay, was think that a bit more was needed.
I'm sure Win 10 can be acquired for free

Broadly speaking a £50 chip and £80 graphics card is fine for cheapie display?

£80 will get you a second hand 280x which is more than enough for a kid to be gaming with to be honest. And I've got one if them Pentium chips, put it in today and its handling it great.

 

[OspreyO]

I've been using a Q6700, Radeon, 7700, 4GB and a HD in an old Dell with a 300w PSU. For minecraft and WOT its been fine/. I dunno if it would play much more than that.

 

[deano-5]

£80 will get you a second hand 280x which is more than enough for a kid to be gaming with to be honest. And I've got one if them Pentium chips, put it in today and its handling it great.

I got a b grade 280x on here for around that. Its great!

 

[C64]

Gigabyte Z97P-D3 + Intel pentium k G3258 is the only brand new value, if talking second hand can get a very nice little setup for £400.
Added bonus of being able to drop in a 4690k or 4790k years from now when they are cheap.