What others games will he be playing? With an OS and monitor the budget will be pushed down to £330 odd. I believe a Richland build will be required for this.
hes play minecraft and dota and terria mainly young lads games
Reaper, given that from the sound of things he doesn't really need a discrete graphics card just yet, maybe he'd like a Haswell for Xmas?
What do you make of this build, that will allow scope to upgrade as his needs change?
YOUR BASKET
1 x
Intel Core i3-4330 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £109.99
1 x
Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £79.99
1 x
**B Grade** IIyama Prolite E2273HDS 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £74.99
1 x
Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £71.99
1 x
Xigmatek Alfar Midi Tower Windowed Case - Black/Orange £49.99
1 x
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 1333MHz Dual-Channel (CMX4GX3M2A1333C8) £39.95
1 x
OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £35.99
1 x
**B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-252-SE) £30
1 x
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £11.39
Total : £517.78 (includes shipping : £11.25).
The chassis looks cool and already brings two 120mm fans. Even one with LED. Most budget cases don't. It also provides decent-ish cable management opportunities and USB 3.0.
The mobo, while budget, is the latest Intel 1150 socket and contains the best chipset (Z87) for Haswell, and can support i5-4's and i7-4's allowing for processor upgrade in future.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4489#sp
The i3-4330 processor is very decent (better than my own lol), and contains the best Intel HD onboard graphics (4600) with which he could play even more graphics-intensive games than he does at present, on low-medium settings. He could get a discrete graphics card later on, when it becomes necessary, for birthday or next Xmas. This vid shows how decent the HD4600 is -
. And this one shows how it handles Minecraft -
.
4GB 1333MHz RAM will be more than enough for his needs right now and the 8-8-8-24 timings are very decent. Can always add another 4GB in future, and both mobo and processor are dual channel memory based.
B-grade 500GB hard drive as he'll probably want an SSD at some point for his OS, so little point in spending too much on a HDD right now?
The power supply is covered by: "3-Year OCZ PowerSwap Warranty, no endless return-for-repair loops", which is great. And 500W, while overkill right now, will provide more options in the future when he would like/need a discrete graphics card.
If you check with OcUK to find out why the Ilyama 22" monitor is B-grade and all checks out, you could be onto a winner, as it's a great price with HDMI (digital video and audio) port to connect to mobo HDMI port, and even has speakers to provide him with sound till he gets some headphones or proper speakers for another birthday/Xmas.
You can knock £20 off the cost and stay under budget if you absolutely have to, by swapping the i3-4330 for an i3-4130 -
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-492-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=567 . The graphics take a little hit (HD4400) but not much.
The case fans would probably run on 12v/full speed, so you could throw in one of these 7v adapter cables if you like, to use in case the fans are too noisy -
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CM-107-BX
And this lighting (again, optional) would really bring that windowed chassis to life and make your brother's day? Available in different colours -
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CM-054-BX
