Budget PC

j0s

j0s

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Hi all

My relatives want me to build them a budget gaming PC.

Looking at £1500 spend but that has to include the monitor and mouse, keyboard.

Any help appreciated

Thanks
 
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If graphics card prices were where they should be, that would be actually plenty.
Good 2560x1440 gaming monitors don't cost that much.
 
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Hi all

My relatives want me to build them a budget gaming PC.

Looking at £1500 spend but that has to include the monitor and mouse, keyboard.

Any help appreciated

Thanks

Hi,

I would try to stretch the budget and get these (keep in mind that the graphics cards market is terrible right now and the graphics cards are heavily overpriced, hence the increased overall cost):

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,738.81 (includes shipping: £0.00)
 
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The core of the build from 4K8KW10 is just about spot on and it will serve your relatives well for the next decade. I would recommend almost the exact same parts, you can save a fair bit by going for a budget 1TB PCIe 3 nvme drive or go for 5600x but thats about it.

If you want to get it into your budget then do not buy the 6600XT but rather install Telegram and join the FE partalert so that you get a notification when Founders Edition cards come into stock and then try and get a 3060ti FE for £360. They are by far the best value cards and everybody is trying to buy them so you have only a couple of minutes to snap one up when they come into stock.
 
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A 6600XT with a 4K monitor ? I hope they like gaming at 30-40 fps.

A 5600X would be better. Then you can maybe get a decent gpu.

The B550 Tomahawk is £50 cheaper.

No need for an expensive gen 4 ssd when a gen 3 will be more than good enough.

That case is just awful.

I am sure they are going to enjoy gaming with a £5 mouse and £6 keyboard.
 
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Kind of funny that £1500 is considered 'budget' these days but there you go!

My go at a build:
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,492.81 (includes shipping: £0.00)

Assuming they need WiFi and speakers. Mouse & keyboard are out of stock here, but available elsewhere. Different people like different mouse / keyboard designs so might want something different but I picked that mouse as I got one recently and am happy with it, keyboard looks like a decent 'entry level' 'gaming' keyboard.

Re the crucial ssd : yes, like the sn550 it's had components swapped since reviews etc but as far as I can tell it should still be plenty fast enough, and is a pretty good price atm.

Gone for a 1080p monitor which should still just about look OK at 27 inches I think, while being easier to drive for the gpu than a 1440p monitor (and cheaper). A 1440p monitor like this would be a good upgrade in visual quality for another £120 though: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/lg-2...le-widescreen-led-gaming-monit-mo-155-lg.html


Assumed they may want some RGB hence the case (usefully the rgb on those fans can be controlled separately via a remote without having install cancerous proprietary rgb software, which is a good thing in my books). If not then this might be a good option: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/silv...ower-case-white-tempered-glass-ca-44q-sv.html
add a couple of fans : https://www.overclockers.co.uk/arctic-f14-pwm-fan-140mm-fg-04c-ar.html
Would come to a similar price.

Obviously the gpu is a terrible price, so if you / your relative could get a Founders Edition 3060 Ti / 3070 / 3070 Ti that would be preferable (best way to get hold of one if you have the time is to install Telegram on your phone and sign up to the 'FE PartAlert' channel to get notifications when they come in stock).

Also if it's going to be a whole new setup then make sure they plug it all in to a surge protected extension cord. And make sure they back up their files every now and then if they use it for anything other than gaming. And as others have said just be aware that you will be your relative's first port of call for tech support for the next 5 years if you build them a pc - maybe you're fine with that, but could be annoying if not...
 
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Have a look in here for B grade deals! Monitors, peripherals, etc
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/community/latest-news-deals-special-offers.115/

My 2c, 10400f + 6600xt, any NVME that may be on sale. 7yr warranty Seasonic PSU.

Why spend 1.5k at a time when costs are high, just because a budget says loads, but person doesn't actually need it. They'd be more impressed if you came back with change,than if you waxed budget and it underperformed down the road.
 
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That monitor supports setting the resolution to 1920x1080 (when needed), as well .
Which doesn't do any real good for fast paced games, because monitor is capped to outdated 60Hz.
Remember LCDs aren't like CRTs, which had refresh rate rise at lower input resolution.
 
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Which doesn't do any real good for fast paced games, because monitor is capped to outdated 60Hz.
Remember LCDs aren't like CRTs, which had refresh rate rise at lower input resolution.

That graphics card can't output more than 60 FPS, anyways. Even at the old 1920x1080.

128-bit memory interface with only 8 PCIe lanes.
 
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Consider saying no - unless you want to be blamed if something goes wrong with it.
I agree with this so much.

“you built it and you set it up, it’s not working any more. Fix it”

hated that.

I built my mom a basic Intel system that has been rock solid for 5 years now and it’s so nice that it hasn’t gone wrong.
 
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That graphics card can't output more than 60 FPS, anyways. Even at the old 1920x1080.

128-bit memory interface with only 8 PCIe lanes.
What makes you say that? Plenty of reviews show it pushing much more than 60fps at 1080p depending on the game. There's no automatic bottleneck at 60 FPS because of the memory bus.

Eg see this review, where the average FPS across a number of games at 1080p was over 130: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-6600-xt-pulse-oc/27.html
 
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That graphics card can't output more than 60 FPS, anyways. Even at the old 1920x1080.

128-bit memory interface with only 8 PCIe lanes.
BS!

6600 XT is easily capable to far exceeding 60 fps in average requirements games and especially online multiplayer games would be typically light.
Even 2560x1440 wouldn't be big challenge in average game.
Ther are improvements in efficiency of memory bandwidth usage and GPU's internal cache also helps.
And 8 lanes of PCIe v4 gives same bandwidth as 16x PCIe v3.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-6600-xt-pci-express-scaling/25.html
https://www.techspot.com/review/2305-amd-radeon-rx-6600-xt/
 
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This is only one new game though. There are a lot of existing games and will be a lot more games released in the future where the 6600xt will achieve far more than 60fps at 1080p (and even at higher resolutions in some games). The 6600xt might not be the best value or most impressive card of the past 10 years, but it's still pretty capable.

This is only one game but maybe the first out of many to follow.
Also, that result at TPU is with a very good setup, most home-made systems won't even achieve that framerate.

And when you add the heavy multi-player scenes, and the card will fall down to its knees.

So, you got a meh from me.
 
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This is only one game but maybe the first out of many to follow.
Also, that result at TPU is with a very good setup, most home-made systems won't even achieve that framerate.

And when you add the heavy multi-player scenes, and the card will fall down to its knees.

So, you got a meh from me.
'may be the first of many to follow' - that's quite different to claiming that the card can't exceed 60fps. I'm sure there will be lots of AAA games in the future that will be very gpu heavy, but there are plenty of games that will run quite happily at high FPS and not all games released in the future will be as taxing on the gpu as bf2042.

Re their test setup, look at their review of the 5600x then - gets better framerates than the 6600xt in pretty much all of the games they benchmarked in both reviews, showing it won't be a bottleneck. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-5-5600x/16.html
Yeah they used 3200mhz c14 memory but that performs pretty similarly to 3600mhz C16 memory which is common enough.

Differences in framerate between their review system for the 6600 xt and a 5600x 3600mhzC16 system won't be that massive. Framerates in most games will be far higher than 60fps.
 
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