New PC for sons christmas

Griffff · 13 Nov 2019 at 15:29

Hi. Looking to purchase a new pc for sons christmas present. He primarily wants it to play minecraft at the moment so I understand graphics card is not that important for this. However I know that at some point he will want to play more graphics intensive games so would like to get a top end build on rest of the components (futureproof....lol, as best I can) with a view to purchasing a good graphics card at a later date.

Thanks in advance. Budget is £400.

StarShock · 13 Nov 2019 at 15:35

Hello, is the budget just for the base machine, or do you need a monitor, keyboard and mouse as well?

Griffff · 13 Nov 2019 at 15:40

Just base machine. Box, Power, mobo, processor, ram, ssd, fans, etc. No keyboard, mouse or monitor.

Minibiker · 13 Nov 2019 at 15:55

With the budget being quite low, new parts are quite limited for your build... I've put together a spec with all new parts from OCUK with a Ryzen APU... I'm not sure how intensive Minecraft is to run CPU or GPU wise but can't imagine it will be that high...

A few used parts would get you a more powerful build and better performance than this spec

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x MSI B450M Mortar MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 mATX Motherboard= £92.99
1 x Team Group Vulcan TUF Gaming Alliance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Blac= £68.99
1 x Bitfenix Formula Series 550W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply= £66.95
1 x AMD Ryzen 3 3200G Quad Core 4.0GHz (Socket AM4) APU with RX Vega 8 Graphics - Retail= £89.99
1 x Kingston A400 480GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Hard Drive - (SA400S37/480G)= £52.99
1 x Aerocool V2X Black Edition Midi-Tower - Black= £24.95

Total: £410.06 (includes shipping: £13.20)

varkanoid · 13 Nov 2019 at 16:31

You might be better off looking for a 2nd hand Dell or HP business desktop and then add a GPU. Would probably mean you could get a 1660 super in there depending on the PSU in it and cost of the base unit.

Bounce · 13 Nov 2019 at 16:34

if you could up your budget abit to £500, I'm sure you could grab a second hand RX 580 and it would make the world of difference.

Onboard graphics is really bad, minecraft will be slow and sluggish.

Griffff · 14 Nov 2019 at 08:47

Thanks for advice.

Looking at userbenchmark the onboard graphics should run about 90fps on minecraft so I think as initial build this should be ok.

Any idea where cheapest place to get the OS, windows 10 is?

StarShock · 14 Nov 2019 at 09:11

Griffff said:
Looking at userbenchmark the onboard graphics should run about 90fps on minecraft so I think as initial build this should be ok.

I have a 2200g (the slightly slower, older version of the above CPU) and its perfectly fine for games like minecraft. Can even get away with most more graphically intensive games if you drop the settings all the way down

Griffff said:
Any idea where cheapest place to get the OS, windows 10 is?

cheapest is free right from microsoft
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

you don't have to activate it, the only real down side is a small watermark in the bottom right corner of the screen.

failing that, you can get a grey market windows key from most key resellers for around the £15 mark

snips86x · 14 Nov 2019 at 09:45

It's not pretty and the motherboard would need a BIOS update
- Win 10 keys can be had for a few quid on a popular bay site

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x **B Grade** Sapphire Radeon RX 570 Pulse 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £98.99
1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Grey (TLGD4= £39.95
1 x AMD Ryzen 3 3200G Quad Core 4.0GHz (Socket AM4) APU with RX Vega 8 Graphics - Retail= £89.99
1 x TeamGroup 480GB L5 Lite SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive= £49.99
1 x **B Grade** be quiet! System Power 9 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply= £39.95
1 x Gigabyte B450M-DS3H AMD B450 (Socket AM4) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £68.99
1 x **B Grade** Aerocool CS-102 Micro-ATX Case - Black= £12.95

Total: £412.51 (includes shipping: £11.70)

Minibiker · 14 Nov 2019 at 09:45

Like @StarShock has said, the free OS download is the best route I find, I do it with all my builds then buy a Windows key from certain sites for a lot cheaper