Can someone help me get a budget gaming pc for £650

Ethan Corbin

Ethan Corbin

Ethan Corbin

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13 Sep 2020
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Hello i am looking for a gaming pc that will run all the new games in some what good quality my budget is £650 at most I just want something that would be reliable and good in quality

thanksb
 
Quartz said:
You may be better off with one of the new consoles.
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Absolutely, you'll get much more for your money with a PS5 or the new Xbox, it's not a great time to build a budget gaming PC imo. £650 really isn't a lot of money, especially if a monitor and peripherals are needed.

That said it does depend on the games you play as mentioned by @orbitalwalsh.
 
Here's a build with a monitor included:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £650.84 (includes shipping: £0.00)​
​

I'm not 100% on that monitor but OCUK's selection is pretty limited at the moment, I've seen equivalent VA and IPS screens for the same sort of price in the past.

The CPU isn't currently in stock either so you'd need to check the ETA with OCUK.

You might get more going second hand to be honest.

For reference, both the upcoming PS5 and Xbox consoles have CPU's similar to the 3700X which is a 8c16t CPU compared to the 4c8t 3100 I've listed above. They'll also have GPU's that perform around the 2080 range, which is a hell of a lot faster than the 1650S.

The new consoles will be around the £400-600 mark depending on the version you buy, so unless you specifically want to play games that are only available on the PC I'd say you're better off with one of the new consoles when they launch later this year.
 
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orbitalwalsh said:
Not all games are on console . City skylines etc etc
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And even when they are they can suck in comparison, due to interface/controller (although kicking back with a beer on the settee playing F1, when the rest of the house is asleep, can be very relaxing).

City Skylines has an Xbox edition now as has Surviving Mars and other games you wouldn't think would get adopted (turned up on my kid's Game Pass - surprising). Still no contest between keyboard and joypad - @tamzzy would probably think it sacrilege.
 
City management/RTS style games are always vastly superior on PC, as are games like CSGO actually.

Since you intend to play CSGO I imagine the monitor I specced will actually be pretty decent, the build should be able to nail 144fps without any drops.

Edit: Switched out the original 1650S to a better one at the same price in the above build.
 
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tamzzy said:
what's the point in playing CSL without mods? lol
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Agreed - that's a bigger problem than the s****y user interface.

I tried Prison Architect on the Xbox, which is a great game on PC (again with mods) - but the control interface is absolute trash. After trying a few similar games in the same genre, I can almost understand why kids, who were brought up on consoles, think that PC games are predominantly pants. It's amazing how the controller takes so much substance away from a game through lack of intuitive control.

That said, new gen consoles coupled a sensibly priced keyboard/mice addon would be a decent cheap alternative to a gaming mITX system for the lounge (ignoring game mods).
 
tamzzy said:
of course.
CSL on console does not support mods...what's the point in playing CSL without mods? lol
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Surely you also need to load up on RAM at that point too though?

I've dabbled in Cities Skylines but from looking at the hardcore fans they're blitzing past 16GB.

@Plec Prison Architect is pretty good but I struggle with the game in some ways. That said, I absolutely adore Rimworld which has a very similar look visually. Absolutely outstanding game that I highly recommend if you've not played it and enjoy sim style games. Can't imagine playing any of it with a game pad though, would be infuriating.
 
Gray2233 said:
Surely you also need to load up on RAM at that point too though?
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That's the whole reason he splurged on 32Gb - to keep his populace from dragging their feet :D (They still lost their libido and couldn't hit 1mil - bad God @tamzzy)

Gray2233 said:
That said, I absolutely adore Rimworld which has a very similar look visually. Absolutely outstanding game
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I have killed so many hours playing that game with mods (although, vanilla still holds its own). My young son introduced it to me a couple of years ago and at first i couldn't understand the appeal - but then he took the trouble to do a small play through and before i knew it i began to lose the odd evening...

Fantastic game - but very hard to explain the appeal to those that have never played it or only given it a token chance.

Gray2233 said:
Can't imagine playing any of it with a game pad though, would be infuriating.
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Totally - would be a completely different experience - very cumbersome and slow.
 
Plec said:
Fantastic game - but very hard to explain the appeal to those that have never played it or only given it a token chance.
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Your son must be one smart chap to get into Rimworld at a young age, I struggled with it at first and honestly the only game I've found more complex to get into was Dwarf Fortress. They're both the sorts of things you (or at least I) need to spend some time getting to know before things click, but once they do it's potentially thousands of hours of fun.
 
Gray2233 said:
Your son must be one smart chap
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He is - coding has usurped games for the most part now. I introduced him to Visual Studio and he's not looked back...

Gray2233 said:
honestly the only game I've found more complex to get into was Dwarf Fortress. They're both the sorts of things you (or at least I) need to spend some time getting to know before things click, but once they do it's potentially thousands of hours of fun.
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Erm... son?

He too is a big fan of ASCII games - especially the amorphous character mess that is Dwarf Fortress (and other Rogue like/colony management games). He's got a real passion for this genre - i haven't been able to devout any time to it, so to me it looks like someone's headbutted their keyboard for 10 minutes and then tried to hide the fact by pretending they were playing a game.

One of his favourite past times is pointing at the screen and asking me to work out what it is i'm looking at...

"What does that 'r' represent Dad?"

"Well, it's lower case so possibly a small animal, perhaps a rabbit?"

I'm sure he's trying to indoctrinate me!

I built him a Ryzen based PC for that coupled with a 1440p DELL IPS screen.
 
Plec said:
He is - coding has usurped games for the most part now. I introduced him to Visual Studio and he's not looked back...


Erm... son?
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Where is the 2080ti you promised me dad!? :D

It's been years since I coded anything but VB was my start back in the day, I had a bit of a fetish for ASM though I wont lie. There's just something fun about how simple it is yet potentially complex, if you're not into programming you could learn very basic but applicable ASM and teach it to your son if you wanted as a great bit of fun. The biggest kick I got from ASM was being able to code it via C++ and compile batch code, this might be redundant today but it tickled me pink way back when!

I had a secondary thing for scripting which loaded into IRC(X) based applications and funny business.

..The IRC related stuff might not be what you want for your son, in fact I'd recommend against it! :cool:
 
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