Hi guys, I have a friend who wants to build a gaming pc and has a budget of about £400. I tried to spec him something but im not too sure of what to advise him. He mainly plays simulation games like cities skylines, sim city, fm and he doesnt need peripherals or a monitor. Can anyone spec something for that budget +/-£50. Thanks.
£400 Budget gaming pc possible?
- Thread starter hakank68
- Start date
Soldato
I would think that could be done.
Just to clarify:
Case
PSU
Mobo
CPU
RAM
GPU
HDD
Anything else?
Just to clarify:
Case
PSU
Mobo
CPU
RAM
GPU
HDD
Anything else?
Soldato
I tried to base it around a new Ryzen system, However it seemed to go over budget by a bit to much... INTEL works out cheaper and the CPU is a great performer, You could always look at the clearance section on OCUK and get some good deals to save a bit of cash,
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £465.11
(includes shipping: £12.30)
- 1 x Toshiba P300 1TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache High Performance Hard Drive (HDWD110UZSVA)= £39.95
- 1 x Zotac GeForce GTX 1050Ti Mini 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £139.99
- 1 x Kolink Victory ATX Midi Tower Gaming Case - Black= £24.95
- 1 x Intel Pentium G4560 3.50GHz (Kaby Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £64.99
- 1 x Asus H110-Plus Intel H110 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £59.99
- 1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD48G2400= £79.99
- 1 x XFX XT Series 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply= £42.95
Total: £465.11
(includes shipping: £12.30)
Soldato
You won’t do it unless you go old FM2(+) which wouldn’t be worth while, not to the level of the games required.
You are best off to buy a used system that has an FX 6300 or FX 8350 if it must be amd or a 1155 socket i5 3***K or an 1150 socket i5 K if not the middle man of an i3 of some kind, the graphics cards in these systems Will vary from low end to mid end to highish end so look and choose wisely.
Though this could be a suitable contender to get you going, never played GTA5 on pc, but I have had an i3 that this pentium performs like and did well in demanding games, there isn’t enough budget for a graphics card new, but you will be able to find capable cards even older ones on the used market, but if you need windows then either need to buy a used system or find it cheap somewhere.
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £353.96
(includes shipping: £11.10)
You are best off to buy a used system that has an FX 6300 or FX 8350 if it must be amd or a 1155 socket i5 3***K or an 1150 socket i5 K if not the middle man of an i3 of some kind, the graphics cards in these systems Will vary from low end to mid end to highish end so look and choose wisely.
Though this could be a suitable contender to get you going, never played GTA5 on pc, but I have had an i3 that this pentium performs like and did well in demanding games, there isn’t enough budget for a graphics card new, but you will be able to find capable cards even older ones on the used market, but if you need windows then either need to buy a used system or find it cheap somewhere.
My basket at Overclockers UK:
- 1 x Intel Pentium G4600 3.60GHz (Kaby Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £83.99
- 1 x Gigabyte GA-B250M-DS3H Intel B250 (Socket 1151) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard= £69.95
- 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C13 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK8GX4M2A2133= £82.99
- 1 x Seagate BarraCuda 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST1000DM010 Previously ST1000DM003)= £38.99
- 1 x XFX XT Series 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply= £42.95
- 1 x Zalman T4 Micro-ATX Case USB 3.0 - Black= £23.99
Total: £353.96
(includes shipping: £11.10)
Soldato
I tried to base it around a new Ryzen system, However it seemed to go over budget by a bit to much... INTEL works out cheaper and the CPU is a great performer, You could always look at the clearance section on OCUK and get some good deals to save a bit of cash,
My basket at Overclockers UK:
- 1 x Toshiba P300 1TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache High Performance Hard Drive (HDWD110UZSVA)= £39.95
- 1 x Zotac GeForce GTX 1050Ti Mini 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £139.99
- 1 x Kolink Victory ATX Midi Tower Gaming Case - Black= £24.95
- 1 x Intel Pentium G4560 3.50GHz (Kaby Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £64.99
- 1 x Asus H110-Plus Intel H110 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £59.99
- 1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD48G2400= £79.99
- 1 x XFX XT Series 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply= £42.95
Total: £465.11
(includes shipping: £12.30)
You quoted an out of stock processor and are you sure he H110 skylake boards will have bios support for kabylake? Last time I looked you needed at least a b250 board.
Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Dec 2015
- Posts
- 18,514
@hakank68
@ExoMale looks solid , you could jump on OCUK deal now for Z270 version at a discount which will bring you to the £400 limit- just means in 2 odd years you can stick an i7 K cheaply off ebay to give the system more life or if your friend gets the Gaming Bug hard!
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £115.49
(includes shipping: £10.50)
^^^ignore the £6 added for shipping
well worth it personally - bit more future proof - also might be easier to sell in future if the gaming bug didnt bite
@ExoMale looks solid , you could jump on OCUK deal now for Z270 version at a discount which will bring you to the £400 limit- just means in 2 odd years you can stick an i7 K cheaply off ebay to give the system more life or if your friend gets the Gaming Bug hard!
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £115.49
(includes shipping: £10.50)
well worth it personally - bit more future proof - also might be easier to sell in future if the gaming bug didnt bite
yes just these
thanks for the specs, I think a total of £353 will be great and will leave some room for an ssd. Would you say the onboard gpu will be able to handle the games? He currently plays a lot of fm on a macbook pro 2015 and apparently its very slow on that.You won’t do it unless you go old FM2(+) which wouldn’t be worth while, not to the level of the games required.
You are best off to buy a used system that has an FX 6300 or FX 8350 if it must be amd or a 1155 socket i5 3***K or an 1150 socket i5 K if not the middle man of an i3 of some kind, the graphics cards in these systems Will vary from low end to mid end to highish end so look and choose wisely.
Though this could be a suitable contender to get you going, never played GTA5 on pc, but I have had an i3 that this pentium performs like and did well in demanding games, there isn’t enough budget for a graphics card new, but you will be able to find capable cards even older ones on the used market, but if you need windows then either need to buy a used system or find it cheap somewhere.
My basket at Overclockers UK:
- 1 x Intel Pentium G4600 3.60GHz (Kaby Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £83.99
- 1 x Gigabyte GA-B250M-DS3H Intel B250 (Socket 1151) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard= £69.95
- 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C13 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK8GX4M2A2133= £82.99
- 1 x Seagate BarraCuda 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST1000DM010 Previously ST1000DM003)= £38.99
- 1 x XFX XT Series 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply= £42.95
- 1 x Zalman T4 Micro-ATX Case USB 3.0 - Black= £23.99
Total: £353.96
(includes shipping: £11.10)
Soldato
Just realised I mentioned GTA5 and you didn’t ha, but For Sim city if you mean 2013 version then think I tried that on intel hd4400 and was okay, but I quoted you skylake/kabylake which has been shown to some extent running GTA5 fairly well, but that sim city isn’t really that demanding, skyline probably isn’t so much either, but you could pick up an old gtx 460-650 for under £50 if you look around, would be more than enough for those simulated games.
Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Dec 2015
- Posts
- 18,514
skylines..... 16GB of ram..... unless you play just the base game, no DLC or mods added - use 14GB standard in my games... why i know have 32GB and havent installed latest patches or DLC 
Soldato
skylines..... 16GB of ram..... unless you play just the base game, no DLC or mods added - use 14GB standard in my games... why i know have 32GB and havent installed latest patches or DLC
Really? That’s a lot of memory usage for that game, surely shouldn’t be that taxing?
Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Dec 2015
- Posts
- 18,514
its all the assets being dropped into the game- as well as some modders using the max amount available to them to create lovely buildings or a poor implemented bus! haha
then you've got all the path ways of the set max number of agents going across the cities- to be honest you can do 16GB just fine with default number of tiles. its when you use mod to unlock all 30 odd tiles over 9/12 that it pushes everything to the max!!!!!