Best PC build for £500?

Joelks

Joelks

Joelks

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Hi,

I’ve managed to convince my buddy to get into PC gaming #win and said I’d help in finding the best build for him.

his main uses of the PC will obviously be gaming but he wants to use it for college work too. Ideally like it to run games such as Warzone, Cold War, GTA V and other of similar type.

His budget is £500 for the desktop alone, so not including monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.

any help and advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
 
GPU will likely be the hard part to obtain plus you can't currently access the Members Market where you may at least have a chance of buying a GPU at a reasonable price.

Worst case would be to build a system and not have a GPU. I sold a RX5600 to a kid recently because he was stuck in that situation.

AMD are releasing the 5600G/5700G with integrated graphics later this year and I believe the 5600G would be good enough for 1080p gaming. Not sure how hard it will be to buy though.
 
bimbleuk said:
GPU will likely be the hard part to obtain plus you can't currently access the Members Market where you may at least have a chance of buying a GPU at a reasonable price.

Worst case would be to build a system and not have a GPU. I sold a RX5600 to a kid recently because he was stuck in that situation.

AMD are releasing the 5600G/5700G with integrated graphics later this year and I believe the 5600G would be good enough for 1080p gaming. Not sure how hard it will be to buy though.
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I have a Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.50 GHz in my old PC currently sat gathering dust. Would that be suitable?

Edit: My bad, read that too quick. I read CPU not GPU lol
 
With a budget of £500 you'd be better off getting a ps5/series X as you won't get much PC for that and just to match the consoles in graphics / performance you would need to spend atleast £1200.
 
Joelks said:
I have a Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.50 GHz in my old PC currently sat gathering dust. Would that be suitable?

Edit: My bad, read that too quick. I read CPU not GPU lol
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use the 500 quid for gpu plus whatever that system might need replacing otherwise a laptop.
 
I don't think £500 is enough to buy a decent system using all new components without having to severely compromise, even with onboard graphics. Especially if you're expecting to play AAA titles on it.

Are you also including things like a mouse, keyboard and monitor in this £500?
 
Joxeon said:
With a budget of £500 you'd be better off getting a ps5/series X as you won't get much PC for that and just to match the consoles in graphics / performance you would need to spend atleast £1200.
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Have to agree with this. Sadly with the GPU market the way it is, it's hard to recommend a gaming pc (for the title's your friend is looking to play) around £500 unless you go second hand.
 
Best bet to get into PC gaming on a budget, is to buy an i5 / i7 second hand business PC and slap a 1tb SSD and a 1050ti in it. Will be capable of playing most games at 1080p. It won't have the bling factor, but would be your best bang for buck.
 
aimless said:
Go on eBay, buy a 2nd hand used business Dell. Go on Gumtree buy a used gtx980. Should be around £300 all in.
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He already has a solid base with that old i7!!

Joelks said:
I have a Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.50 GHz in my old PC currently sat gathering dust. Would that be suitable?
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That's perfect for the base-build! I put together a HTPC with my old 3770K (it was going into a small case, so dropped back to stock clocks), even with a GTX1050Ti my son says it trashes his XBox One S at 1080P (that entire upgrade cost me £100 12 months ago, probably ~£120-£150 now :( ).

Let's see the rest of the spec on your 3770K, can probably aim a little higher than a 1050Ti (GTX1060 or RX580 for ~£200-£250) for but much beyond that would probably be diminishing returns due to the CPU AND you'll be running into obscene scalper prices if you aim for the sweet spot with that CPU (probably a GTX1070 or GTX1650).
 
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aimless said:
Go on eBay, buy a 2nd hand used business Dell. Go on Gumtree buy a used gtx980. Should be around £300 all in.
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Exactly this, a kid local to me did this a few months ago, cheap used business PC gets an entry level foundation you can build on. Just make sure it's not got a tiny proprietary case, tiny PSU etc
 
You know i Would actually buy a gtx 980 second hand they are very cheap especially in this market you can get them for like £150 -200 or even get gtx 970 I have it works amazing in all those games at 1080p atleast
 
clv101 said:
Exactly this, a kid local to me did this a few months ago, cheap used business PC gets an entry level foundation you can build on. Just make sure it's not got a tiny proprietary case, tiny PSU etc
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He's said he already has a spare i7-3770K he can give to his friend: an ex gaming PC as a base would be far better that anything that's coming out of an office! Office will probably be flogging off i5-6500's at best (i.e. 5yr maintenance period / warranty is up), but most that I've seen are i5 2500's and i5 3570's!

An i7 3770K at stock clocks will match an i5-6500 in most games and have the benefit of 8 threads (still 4 cores, but with hyperthreading) for the odd occasion he needs more than 4 cores.

GTX980 is a great card, but pretty sure they spike ~200W or thereabouts, so you'd be very lucky to find a generic office PC with that spec PSU (450W+), but probably fine with that i7 3770K ex gaming PC (my current PSU is from my old 3770!).

For anybody else reading this thread and considering the ex-office PC approach and an older flagship GPU - it's a fantastic way to get a gaming PC on a budget, but consider aiming for a "workstation" class office PC like one of the Dell Precisions or HP Z-series... or even better an ex-office PC that will allow you to put in a standard SFX or ATX power supply! You need to know what you're looking for, but safe to assume that anything from HP / Dell will be custom hardware and practically impossible to upgrade. Another alternative is something like a GTX1060 - almost identical performance to a GTX980 and about 40% lower avg power requirements and fewer spikes (should be fine with a 300W PSU) or if you're on a really tight budget and really constrained on the PSU, a GTX1050Ti is a large step down, but it will run on relaly low spec PSU's and is still capable for some 1080P gaming.
 
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Sunpreet said:
You know i Would actually buy a gtx 980 second hand they are very cheap especially in this market you can get them for like £150 -200 or even get gtx 970 I have it works amazing in all those games at 1080p atleast
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I got lucky and found a 980 for £120 on Gumtree. Surprising good card, Old skool rig is still going. Just waiting for the gpu prices to come down
 
Preytheon said:
He's said he already has a spare i7-3770K he can give to his friend: an ex gaming PC as a base would be far better that anything that's coming out of an office! Office will probably be flogging off i5-6500's at best (i.e. 5yr maintenance period / warranty is up), but most that I've seen are i5 2500's and i5 3570's!

An i7 3770K at stock clocks will match an i5-6500 in most games and have the benefit of 8 threads (still 4 cores, but with hyperthreading) for the odd occasion he needs more than 4 cores.

GTX980 is a great card, but pretty sure they spike ~200W or thereabouts, so you'd be very lucky to find a generic office PC with that spec PSU (450W+), but probably fine with that i7 3770K ex gaming PC (my current PSU is from my old 3770!).

For anybody else reading this thread and considering the ex-office PC approach and an older flagship GPU - it's a fantastic way to get a gaming PC on a budget, but consider aiming for a "workstation" class office PC like one of the Dell Precisions or HP Z-series... or even better an ex-office PC that will allow you to put in a standard SFX or ATX power supply! You need to know what you're looking for, but safe to assume that anything from HP / Dell will be custom hardware and practically impossible to upgrade. Another alternative is something like a GTX1060 - almost identical performance to a GTX980 and about 40% lower avg power requirements and fewer spikes (should be fine with a 300W PSU) or if you're on a really tight budget and really constrained on the PSU, a GTX1050Ti is a large step down, but it will run on relaly low spec PSU's and is still capable for some 1080P gaming.
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Fully agree with you, the psu with the office pcs are usually on the low side but 2nd hand psus are cheap. 650w non modular corsair would cost you around £35
 
He said he had a 3770K spare. Didn't mention if he had an entire spare system to go with it.

I used a HP EliteDesk G1 for many years with a 4770k and a 1050ti. Worked fine for me.
 
Bug One said:
He said he had a 3770K spare. Didn't mention if he had an entire spare system to go with it.
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He mentioned that it is "in a PC" and also the overclock, which implies it is still on a motherboard (where that is configured) as well as the original memory at least... sounds like the full rig.

Joelks said:
I have a Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.50 GHz in my old PC currently sat gathering dust. Would that be suitable?
Click to expand...
 
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