Budget gaming advice

rwdan · 15 Sep 2017 at 14:21

Hi,

This is my first post, so first of all hello to everyone, thanks for having me

I am looking at putting together a budget gaming computer for my boy for xmas, my budget is around £400.

I have had an offer of an i7 4790 with Motherboard, 8gb Ram, SSD, PSU and case for £260 and was thinking of sticking a GTX 1050ti in there making it around 400 ish.

My other thought is to build a pentium g4560 machine from scratch with the same card which I think would work out at a similar price but with more potential for future upgrades, right?

Or my third option... An even cheaper used machine with the same or better card.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

orbitalwalsh · 15 Sep 2017 at 14:35

rwdan said:
Hi,

This is my first post, so first of all hello to everyone, thanks for having me

I am looking at putting together a budget gaming computer for my boy for xmas, my budget is around £400.

I have had an offer of an i7 4970 with Motherboard, 8gb Ram, SSD, PSU and case for £260 and was thinking of sticking a GTX 1050ti in there making it around 400 ish.

My other thought is to build a pentium g4560 machine from scratch with the same card which I think would work out at a similar price but with more potential for future upgrades, right?

Or my third option... An even cheaper used machine with the same or better card.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

id grab the 4970 personally and chuck in a 1050Ti till hes a bit older and then bump up the graphics . My 1st gen i7 lasted my 6 years just fine, ok from 3rd gen and above there was a performance gain but not as much from going at the i7 your looking at to a 7700k .
If you can stick in another 8GB of ram now or later that would be worth it

mistersprinkles · 17 Sep 2017 at 01:02

4790 is still a good CPU and certainly better than a pentium. If it has been used gently then no reason not to get it. And it has to have been used gently since it isn't a K chip, unless it was BCLK overclocked.

Make sure the PSU is of good quality. If it isn't, replace it.

Something else you might want to do reasonably soon (hopefully RAM prices will come back to what they were a year or two ago) is get it up to 16GB of RAM. DDR3 won't be around forever as only AMD's FM2 stuff really uses it these days. Once that's phased out for AM4 APUs DDR3 supplies will start to dry up like DDR2 did years ago.

When I got my 16GB of DDR3 2400 in mid 2016 it cost me a measly $75 Canadian which is like 48 pound. Prices for RAM right now are a joke. I wouldn't want to buy RAM at the moment. It has more than doubled.

bobbarley · 17 Sep 2017 at 16:01

rwdan said:
I have had an offer of an i7 4790 with Motherboard, 8gb Ram, SSD, PSU and case for £260 and was thinking of sticking a GTX 1050ti in there making it around 400 ish.

That would be a nice machine

rwdan · 18 Sep 2017 at 11:04

Thanks for the advice guys, I picked up the i7 for 250 in the end.

Everything looks OK, the SSD is a kingston and the PSU is a 600W Corsair. The motherboard and case look a bit cheap but I'm sure they're fine.

I found a good deal on a used GTX 970 (only £90) so went for that instead of the 1050ti, I'm sure it'll be adequate for his needs.

Regarding the RAM upgrade, it has some "team" ddr3 1600 in there, would I be best to buy a matching stick of the same brand? Or am I better selling the RAM and buying a better branded matched pair?

Thanks again for the input, really appreciate it.

mickyflinn · 18 Sep 2017 at 11:14

If you can match the ram it would be ideal and hopefully cheaper than getting a diffrent brand an selling , Teamgroup memory is as good as any other brand imo.

rwdan · 18 Sep 2017 at 11:16

mickyflinn said:
If you can match the ram it would be ideal and hopefully cheaper than getting a diffrent brand an selling , Teamgroup memory is as good as any other brand imo.

Great! Thanks

bobbarley · 18 Sep 2017 at 17:57

Good luck!

mistersprinkles · 18 Sep 2017 at 18:02

1600 is slow. Get yourself some 3000 2x8GB.

rwdan · 19 Sep 2017 at 15:13

mistersprinkles said:
1600 is slow. Get yourself some 3000 2x8GB.

Looks a bit pricey... I'm assuming this was a joke

Just out of interest, does it really make a huge difference in performance?

orbitalwalsh · 19 Sep 2017 at 15:30

rwdan said:
Looks a bit pricey... I'm assuming this was a joke

Just out of interest, does it really make a huge difference in performance?

not taking 3000 hz though =/

also depends on CL - with ryzen build have to accept what ever works and that speed is still key over timings

rwdan · 27 Sep 2017 at 15:57

Thanks orbital, very interesting.

I went ahead and picked up another 8GB, same brand, part number, speed & timings but this stick is only single sided (the original is double) and the pcb is a different colour, will it be ok?

orbitalwalsh · 27 Sep 2017 at 16:11

rwdan said:
Thanks orbital, very interesting.

I went ahead and picked up another 8GB, same brand, part number, speed & timings but this stick is only single sided (the original is double) and the pcb is a different colour, will it be ok?

should be - shouldnt hurt to much - not like ryzen at launch which was very funny

Danny75 · 27 Sep 2017 at 17:10

The motherboard may not have been a "Z" anyway. RAM will not run faster than 1600MHz on non-Z socket 1150 boards. CPU-Z or Speccy will tell you what motherboard it is, if you can't tell from looking at the board itself.

rwdan · 27 Sep 2017 at 17:46

orbitalwalsh said:
should be - shouldnt hurt to much - not like ryzen at launch which was very funny

Thanks.

Danny75 said:
The motherboard may not have been a "Z" anyway. RAM will not run faster than 1600MHz on non-Z socket 1150 boards. CPU-Z or Speccy will tell you what motherboard it is, if you can't tell from looking at the board itself.

Yes, you're right. It's not a "Z", I looked up the model and the maximum is 1600MHZ on this board. Just as well really

ExoMale · 27 Sep 2017 at 18:42

dont know how old your son is, but as a person whos 32 and never had an i7 i wouldnt even question it i had the money, id buy it so long it worked, so your son has a very nice gaming system.