£400 Budget Gaming PC Advice

Soldato
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My bro-in-law is after a "gaming" PC for my nephews (10 and 7) who play things like beamNg drive, Roblox etc but will no doubt soon get into more demanding games

I have been out the loop with components for some time so was after some advise on a budget (~£400) build - base unit only, they have mouse, keyboard, monitor etc.

They have been linked to a local PC shop build for their budget but some of the components seem a bit dated, but may still be fine:

OyFeS4h.png

Any advise on this or an alternative build would be great :)

Thanks in advance
 
Associate
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Yeah. I would avoid any am3 stuff. The am3 cpus were never great and are all quite old at this point. A ryzen 3 1200 or pentium g4560 would be way better. Or even a second hand i5 if they're up for dealing with second hand stuff
 
Soldato
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Avoid the old AM3 gear it's not great at all.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £351.74
(includes shipping: £12.30)





By no means the only solution, and there is plenty of scope to change parts. I've not wasted money on fancy cases, and a silly over priced PSU, just stuff that will get the job done, and give the best performane for the money, you could probably fit an SSD in for the budget.
 
Soldato
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That's great, thank you !

Suppose also need an OS - guess W10 is the standard now ?

Windows 10 is free to install and use if you dont mind a watermark and not being able to change wallpaper. You can get cheap keys online to activate as well.

It's quite limited budget but I'd be tempted to get cheap am4 ryzen build. It would only be around £30-60 more depending on whst you pick and you'll get the advantage of new platform which will get all driver updates, compatibility and have easy upgrade paths for the next few years whilst going down the pentium route locks you into a dead socket.
 
Soldato
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He has a point about the Ryzen build, an R3 1200 is only £98.99, and if you go for a low end A320 board (non-OC) they are about £50 still, so increase in cost of only £35. Then again, it depends when you would want to upgrade the system, as the bottle neck will be the graphics card long before the actual CPU become an issue, so you could spend only £20 more and get the GTX 1050 graphics card, which will be a much bigger improvement, and need replacing a lot later than a RX550. Even though it is a dead end socket, there are some many 1151 CPU's out there, given that when you want to upgrade, you could probably grab a 6700K/7700K for less than £100, as the prices on those will tumble in the next 18-24 months.

Plenty of options, almost too many. :)

EDIT: Completely different approach, but as I suggested in another thread on a very small budget you can grab a Dell Optiplex 3010 Mini tower on an auction site for around £150-170, that includes a full Windows 10/7 licence. The spec tends to be i5 3470, 8GB RAM, HDD 500GB-2TB, DVD-RW, and most of the refurb sellers tend to offer 3-12 months warranty.

Grab a Geforce GTX 1050 Ti, and you are good to go for a good couple of years, and you'll have spent about £280-300.
 
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Associate
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EDIT: Completely different approach, but as I suggested in another thread on a very small budget you can grab a Dell Optiplex 3010 Mini tower on an auction site for around £150-170, that includes a full Windows 10/7 licence. The spec tends to be i5 3470, 8GB RAM, HDD 500GB-2TB, DVD-RW, and most of the refurb sellers tend to offer 3-12 months warranty.

Grab a Geforce GTX 1050 Ti, and you are good to go for a good couple of years, and you'll have spent about £280-300.

That's not that bad an idea, as long as the PSU can handle it.
 
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