Budget, decent gaming build for complete noob

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Hi all, I realise this question probably gets asked once every five minutes or so, but I'm a complete noob to PC gaming, and am really unsure where to start. For my first build, I won't be playing anything particularly crushing, so I've around £500 to spend (with a little leway), and might upgrade in the future if I need to. Looking to build, so if anyone could point me in the right direction, that'd be amazing.

Many thanks :)
 
Afternoon,

What kind of games will you be playing and im guessing 1080p... You could maybe save money and get Ryzen 2400G with APU depending on the games.. At least having the APU your saving money on the GPU side of things and in the future your still able to add a GPU to the build without changing CPU... However there will be others that could probably do you a good build for around £500 with a dedicated GPU
 
Hey. Game wise, I'm not 100% sure yet, but nothing at high settings or very recent, so really I'm just looking for something that can perform well on games from a few years ago or so (sorry if that's a little vague :S). And thanks for the suggestion :)
 
Hi,

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £730.43 (includes shipping: £12.60)


Anyways my two pence,

The rx570 at this point in time, offers one of the best if not the best value for money bang for buck wise.

The power supply also is good value for money, so yea anyways a amd ryzen 2600 will be powerful enough and is a popular pick here on this forum and elsewhere.

The motherboard... well i am no expert on motherboards i must admit but it should be good.

A mechanical 1tb hdd for large storage of file and a ssd drive for the operating system, some may recommend a different ssd but yea.

Over £700 but it will do games on high/ultra at 1080p easy.

Also the am4 motherboard platform will be supported by amd until 2020 and as you say you want a future proof system so i recommend am4 platform because amd will support it until 2020 so you can always upgrade the processor.

But you may need to flash the bios which is likely anyways to support a new released amd processor.

Dan.​
 
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Hi all, I realise this question probably gets asked once every five minutes or so, but I'm a complete noob to PC gaming, and am really unsure where to start. For my first build, I won't be playing anything particularly crushing, so I've around £500 to spend (with a little leway), and might upgrade in the future if I need to. Looking to build, so if anyone could point me in the right direction, that'd be amazing.

The component most often upgraded in PC gaming is the graphics card, so you need to think about a PSU that can handle them. Unfortunately preparing for upgrading can add a bit more cost in some areas. As another example you could pair a cheap motherboard and cheap CPU to begin with, but then better CPUs will struggle in that cheap motherboard.

Anyway, to make things simpler - 450W PSU will run "good" cards, 550W "very good" cards, 650W "enthusiast" cards. What does that translate to with current AMD graphics options? It means 450W will run RX 570s and some RX 580s, but will struggle with some RX 580 and 590 models that can spike up to 300W and for which you'd want 550W PSU to account for everything else that uses power plus a little headroom. With Vega 56 and Vega 64 you'd need 550w or 650W depending on whether you undervolt them or not. My advice - get a 550W at least. That will cover plenty of excellent graphics options even if not the very top card (that tends to cost a bomb anyway).

A motherboard like the B450 Aorus Elite in Dan's spec above would be a decent choice. Not too expensive but not dirt cheap and useless for Ryzen 8-core CPUs. And absolutely fine for that 2600 6-core which you probably won't need to upgrade for years until it's time for a whole new system.

And here I'll add something counter-intuitive. You may have heard that when putting together a build you should spend a lot on the graphics card if it's for gaming. There can be exceptions. Since you are a self-confessed PC noob, I would assure you that you would have fun with an inexpensive graphics card to begin with. And if second-hand then obviously you don't have to spend as much to obtain something very capable. I've been running with a 1GB GTX 750 and still having fun on Fortnite and GTA V, even after getting used to a faster GTX 970 4GB that died, while waiting to see what new graphics cards would bring. And there are much better options than a GTX 750 anyway even with your limited budget.

So I'd go second-hand for your first graphics card. On the 'bay, some GTX 970 and RX 580 are selling for £75-100, for example. Even a slower 1050Ti 4GB for £50 (if you can spot a good deal) would be great to start with. OcUK also have B-Grade cards in the %DEALS > Clearance section and you can check those out too but note that in most cases they don't list them with price reduction compared to new, and you have to contact them and ask at what price they are willing to sell a particular B-Grade item.

Solid State Drive (as included in Dan's spec) should be a must for your OS and programs, even if it can't hold many games. They are very affordable now. Add another drive, whether SSD or mechanical, later on.

RAM just go with 16GB RAM, you're going to want it anyway in the long run. But if budget doesn't allow, reduce to 8GB RAM and add more later.

"Paul's Hardware Windows 10" (youtube) has advice for your Windows options.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £554.46 (includes shipping: £12.60)​

Spend £75 on an above mentioned second-hand/B-Grade graphics card, and you have a very nice system for £625 with a well built Phanteks budget case. Or around £575 if you shop around. Hopefully that will be the "little leeway" you mentioned for the £500 budget. Otherwise, it can be £525 with 8GB instead of 16GB RAM.
 
You also need to mention if you need monitor, headset and mouse/keyboard. That'll be more tricky if included in the £500-ish budget.
 
Don’t worry about 1080p, it’s not the end of the world to game less, but I’d say 1366x768 is just as good a resolution or 1920x1050 or whatever it is.


This would be a good starter, try whatever games you have and see how you get on, it’s a 4 core 8 thread processor so your good to go if you added a dedicated graphics card down the line.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £495.62 (includes shipping: £11.70)​
 
I would actually suggest a system that is a perfect compromise between those two.

Bitfenix 550w PSU
Gigabyte Auros B450 board
Crucial MX500 SSD
from Dann75 (£225)

and
Ryzen 2400G
Teamgroup 8G RAM
WD 1TB HDD
from Exomale (£250)

That puts you in at about £475 and you choose the case for about £50. Total approximately £525. With a Windows 10 key for probably £20, all in is £545.

I would personally get a Toshiba P300 2TB HDD instead of the WD 1TB one for an extra £13 but that is your call.

If you also needed to add Keyboard and Mouse, you would be all in for less than £600.
 
But why not get a Ryzen 2600 and second-hand GPU that will blow the performance of the 2400G APU out of the water, for £525, though? Plus windows £545.

I'd understand if it was considerably cheaper not the same as. Additional drive can add later, 8TB if you want. A 500GB SSD will hold about four of the largest games (80-100GB) out there plus Windows and your basic programs. You don't need additional storage right away because you don't fill it all up rightaway, and if you were to you'd already have drives with all that data, to re-use.
 
Oh gee, thank you all so much for your responses. It’s my first time here, so I wasn’t really sure how active it would be, but this is great! I’ll make sure to take the ideas you all mentioned on board when building it.

For reference as well, I’ve built PCs before so I’m alright in that respect, and I have a headset, mouse, keyboard etc already, so that’s a little off the price.

Once again, thank you all for the replies :)
 
i chose the prime board out of budget restrictions, it wont be the best board, but then do you really need the best? some more expensive ones are no better really in some cases, but as the owner of an itx b450 aorus i would recommend an aorus model like dann75 suggested.

while the bitfenix psu suggested might be better, i went with that silverstone as its sfx-L, so it packs all the power you need with a gold rating, while leaving more space in your case depending on the design, i know i wish i had an sfx psu in my chosen tower case, but if you going to spend over budget then the corsair sf450 be the much better sfx choice.


this is stretching out the budget and sort of how dann75 is suggesting in terms of cpu + gpu bar whatever used gpu he wouldve had in mind, like him i went with the single drive option, so unless the 1050 is a 6 pin version then thats 2 cables of the modular psu you wouldnt need to use. also that processor is out of stock, you can get it cheaper elsewhere, so it would then come under £600, but something like above £570.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £618.59 (includes shipping: £11.70)
 
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