Buying first gaming PC

Oh well, browser crashed when I was typing and lost all my text...

Going to keep it short this time.
I would personally avoid anything with H110 in the name - low end featureless motherboard that doesn't allow overclocking and lacks any upgradeability for the system. If you really want skylake setup - you need at least Z170.

The only questions you have to ask yourself are:

1. What do I want to do with this PC? What type of games do I usually play?
2. How much do I REALLY care about extra eyecandy? If not sure - go visit a friend with high end PC and ask him to show you how a new game (has to be game with high requirements, older games or games with low requirements are irrelevant here as they will play fine on low end PC) on maxed out ultra settings and then on medium/high settings - see the difference for yourself and ask yourself if it's something that you care about (see PS4 graphics for example - LOW END GPU/CPU there compared to £900 PC, do they look good to you?). Looking at the games you like it doesn't look to me like graphics is a big factor for you - both league, sc2 and even the coming overwatch are far from best looking games and the first two are extremely dated and can be played maxed out even on APU.
3. Do I REALLY need the extra power?
4. How much do I REALLY want to spend? Can I afford the extra for the sake of having it?
***5. Think about what you want out of it **NOW** and don't plan for what you might need in 3, 4 or 5 years time - the PC tech changes too quick.

***Which reminds me of all those people who spent £££hundreds on Raptor Raid0 HDD setups and few months later when the SSDs came out to the mass market these became obsolete practically overnight and everyone chucked their stuff to the bin and bought SSD instead.

Similar story happened when the first quad core CPUs came to the market, everyone excited about 'future proofing' their PC for years to come, bought one of those shiny's for £350 so they can enjoy their PC for years but not a single game and almost no software (apart from very few specific video editing programs) could even use the CPU as they only supported 2 cores max. By the time that majority of games started utilizing 4 cores to any acceptable level almost 2 years later, those shiny 'future proofed' CPUs everyone bought were already too slow and old and when the revolutionary nehalems came out, everyone ditched them for new tech half price cheaper CPUs that were 50% faster.

I'm not saying that you should never spend money and I've built both cheapest budget PCs for £300 as well as high end ones for £2000 and anything inbetween but I'd never tell anyone to spend more than they really need.

Think about it as buying a bicycle or a car - you might be able that £3000 road bike or £200 000 sports car and sure, it is fun to have it when you can get on that race track and put the pedal to the metal but if all you'll use it for is your daily commute in London on roads when you can't really go quicker than 30mph - DO YOU REALLY NEED IT?

I'm sure many will disagree with me but just something to think about before buying. In the end if you're not sure what you really want, you can do what I always do and toss the coin or roll the dice ;-).
 
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £793.90
(includes shipping: £0.00)
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That's the price for skylake setup - you can probably ring up ocUK and ask if they can do it with 8gb ram and drop the price by £30. You can also get a bit cheaper GPU and save another £30-40.

That makes total of £730 to £800 depending on those choices.

Do not compromise on motherboard, case, PSU or SSD.
If you need more storage, get cheap 2nd hand HDD. It doesn't matter as it will only be used to store movies/photos/whatever else you fancy.

Any other cuts will just make it a bad setup.
 
PhoenixUK said:
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £793.90
(includes shipping: £0.00)
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That's the price for skylake setup - you can probably ring up ocUK and ask if they can do it with 8gb ram and drop the price by £30. You can also get a bit cheaper GPU and save another £30-40.

That makes total of £730 to £800 depending on those choices.

Do not compromise on motherboard, case, PSU or SSD.
If you need more storage, get cheap 2nd hand HDD. It doesn't matter as it will only be used to store movies/photos/whatever else you fancy.

Any other cuts will just make it a bad setup.
Click to expand...

I like the look of that build. However, in your previous post you raised some excellent points. Based on the following games: Overwatch, CS:GO, league of legends and Smite. Could you build a cheaper gaming PC. I don't really want to spend above and beyond. I just want it to run those games well and be able to do all the other normal stuff computers are for me that's watching movies, YouTube and watching twitch. For my partner that's adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, watching movies and listening to music. Something that could do all that well plus play the games mentioned well would be perfect. Nothing fancy just something well built.

If you were going to build a PC based on these requirements what would you build?
 
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If you just want the cheapest 1080p gaming build that's not going to be awful in a year or two, here's my suggestion (you'll have to build it yourself but trust me, you can do it)

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £738.02
(includes shipping: £13.20)
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Or you can save another £60 by not going with the SSD, you'll have the same performance, but load times will be slower. So it's up to you, if you want to save £60 and have the patience to wait an extra 10-30 seconds on loading screens then;

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £675.03
(includes shipping: £13.20)
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OR if you really wanted to save money, then there's the AMD rig, which will be slower, and you may have to run at slightly lower settings, but it's here as an option. (No SSD in this list) Now before everyone jumps on the OMG an AMD build you NOOB bandwagon, I ran an older AMD 965BE quad core with a graphics card much worse than this (HD7850) and it was ok for 1080p gaming. This will run 1080p games, BUT, I highly recommend the Intel i5 build for the extra £60, it's much newer technology, much better single threaded performance and comes with the newer DDR4 ram.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £613.99
(includes shipping: £13.20)
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Final edit, here's some prebuilt options if you really wanted to go down that route and not build it yourself. Baring in mind that you will get some lower quality parts and you'll still likely have to put the cpu cooler on yourself when it arrives, so you'll have to get down and dirty anyway but it'll mostly be built for you and have warranty.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
  • 1 x OcUK Tech Labs Skylake Z170 Midi Tower Gaming PC Configurator = £808.87
    • Case:Aerocool Cyclops Advance Midi Tower Gaming Case - Red
    • Motherboard:Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
    • Processor:Intel Core i5-6600K 3.9GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail
    • Memory:Team Group Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (TPKD48GM2400HC16DC0
    • CPU Cooler:Alpenfohn Ben Nevis CPU Cooler - 120mm
    • M.2 Solid State Drive **For Operating System If Selected**:Unwanted
    • Solid State Drive 1:Unwanted
    • Solid State Drive 2:Unwanted
    • Mechanical Hard Drive 1:Seagate 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST1000DM003)
    • Mechanical Hard Drive 2:Unwanted
    • Optical Drive **Please Check Chassis Support**:Unwanted
    • Graphics Card:Sapphire Radeon R9 380 Dual-X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11242-02-20G)
    • Power Supply:Super Flower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black
    • Sound Card:Unwanted
    • Networking:Unwanted
    • Case Lighting:Unwanted
    • Operating System:Microsoft Windows 10 64-Bit DVD - OEM (MS-KW9-00139)
    • Security Software:Unwanted
    • Keyboard:Unwanted
    • Mouse:Unwanted
    • Monitor:Unwanted
    • Gaming Headset:Unwanted
    • Speakers:Unwanted
    • Gaming Chair:Unwanted

Total: £822.97
(includes shipping: £14.10)
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My basket at Overclockers UK:
  • 1 x OcUK Kinetic Z1 - Intel Z170 Configurable Skylake DDR4 Gaming PC = £687.84
    • Case:Kolink Aviator Midi Tower Gaming Case - Black
    • Processor:Intel Core i5-6400 2.70GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail
    • CPU Cooler:Raijintek Aidos Direct Contact CPU Cooler - Black
    • Memory:Team Group Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (TPKD48GM2400HC16DC0
    • Graphics Card:XFX Radeon R9 380 "DD Dual Fan" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (R9-380P-4DF5)
    • Primary Solid State Drive / Hard Drive:Seagate 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST1000DM003)
    • Storage Mechanical Hard Drive:Unwanted
    • Optical Drive:Unwanted
    • WIFI:Unwanted
    • Operating System:Microsoft Windows 10 64-Bit DVD - OEM (MS-KW9-00139)
    • Security Software:Unwanted
    • Build Time:Standard Build Systems - Dispatched within 7 working days
    • Warranty:OcUK Standard System Warranty - 3 Year (24 Month C&R + 12 Month Labour)

Total: £701.94
(includes shipping: £14.10)
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My basket at Overclockers UK:
  • 1 x "Titan Katana" Intel Core i5 4690K @ 4.2GHz Overclocked Quad Core Gaming PC = £753.90
    • Case:NZXT Phantom 410 Enthusiast Midi Tower Case - Black/White
    • CPU:Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail
    • Memory:Team Group Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01)
    • Primary Solid State Drive / Hard Drive:Seagate 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST1000DM003)
    • Secondary Solid State Drive / Hard Drive:Unwanted
    • Storage Mechanical Hard Drive:Unwanted
    • Graphics Card:Asus Radeon R9 380 DirectCU II Strix OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
    • Optical Drive:Unwanted
    • Sound Card:Unwanted
    • WIFI:Unwanted
    • Lighting:Unwanted
    • Operating System:Unwanted
    • Security Software:Unwanted
    • Build Time:Standard Build Systems - Dispatched within 7 working days
    • Warranty:OcUK Standard System Warranty - 3 Year (24 Month C&R + 12 Month Labour)

Total: £768.00
(includes shipping: £14.10)
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I wouldn't ever want to use a PC without SSD in it. It's equivalent of having to play on a 10yr old 15" TFT monitor with 800x600 res - you can do it if you have to but you don't really want to, it doesn't feel right. Your partner will be amazed at the performace increase in Photoshop as well while it's loading everything from SSD.

That Intel Bundle is a really good value (you're only paying about £60 over AMD equivalent which is worth it) with the rest of components in my previous build so it's great bang for buck with a lot of good tech and upgradeability in it (comes with overclock profile as well so saves you the hassle of doing that). As said, if you give ocUK a ring I'm sure they can drop the ram to 8gb for £30 discount.

If I had to go AMD route I'd go with 7870k and not buy GPU - this will play the games you're currently playing perfectly fine and work well as photoshop PC as well. Overwatch should run on low/med settings as well, maybe 720p but you can always add cheaper GPU to it later if you like the game and feel the need - as mentioned, new GPUs are coming out around the same time so you'll get much better deal in 6months than you would now on a GPU. I think you need 250 posts and 6months forum membership to get access to members market which is currently flooded with bargain GPUs and will be even more once new tech comes out.

The 380 4gb is currently on sale and at current price of £150 I'd think twice about dropping it to a 370 or 950 for only £30 of saving. Depending on when you buy, other deals might be available hence I said that spec might differ slightly and prices can shift up to £50 either way depending on whether you'll get any deals or not.

So in short, the skylake setup with a 380 or 370 GPU and 8gb of RAM (although photoshop/video/photo editing or rendering software likes extra RAM so might be worth staying with 16gb) would come at around £790 (380, 16GB ram) and around £730 (370, 8gb ram).

The AMD rig with no GPU and similar case/psu/cooling etc (although it could use slightly cheaper cooler, motherboard, psu and case as it doesn't have to be OCed so much - extra saving of around £30-£100 without sacrificing much) would come to about £500-£570.
This will play SC2 and League easily and probably will be much quicker at photoshop than anything else your partner is using (I suppose it's old dual/quad core Mac of some sort?).
Overwatch might only run on low/medium settings but we won't know until it comes out, right now there is only one benchmark so it's hard to say and the game isn't optimized yet. It's easy to add GPU if you decide you need one - definitely easier than go through hassle of selling and upgrading one you already have. Perhaps a cheap £50 r7 240/250 will be enough to run overwatch on mid+ combined with kaveri as dual graphics - who knows at this points - the game isn't out for another 6 months at least.
Unfortunately it looks like all the decent cheaper motherboards are out of stock at ocUK (again this will depend on when you order).

If you were to go for maximum budget - the Kaveri is plenty quick compared to what you have now on stock settings and if you were to skip the aftermarket cooler, get cheaper case and PSU as well as motherboard - you could go as low as £450. Again, this will play your games fine and be a cheap and cheerful speedy little machine but upgrade options might be limited (not much OC headroom and you might not be able to fit 2GPUs or extra things like soundcards or more SSDs in PCIE slots in the future if you wanted to).


So in short you have 3 options:
1. Cheap but speedy Kaveri setup for the price of around £450 - will be tons quicker than what you have and play your current games + most of other higher requirement games on low/mid settings - won't break the bank and can easily be fitted with decent GPU later to play any other games but will lack some further upgradeability/expandability.

2. Still cheap similar Kaveri setup for around £550 - this will offer better case, psu, motherboard and cooling which will allow for easy future upgrades and possibilities as well as OC potential. Looking into a few years time you can even keep the good PSU, case and maybe even cooling while you ditch CPU/mobo for the newest intel or AMD offering. If AMD decides to keep their current socket for the newest incoming CPUs in few years time - your great motherboard is one of the few that is likely to support it.

3. Great value but more of a mid range, stepping into high end Skylake OCed setup at around £730-800 - this should play everything you currently play and for some time to come on on high/max settings without trouble and will be also slightly more powerful in other tasks. This also will have good upgradeability and expansion possibilities in the future.

*I did ditch mechanical HDD on all setup which I believe you won't need for a while, though if you believe that you'll be storing stupid amount of movies or gaming footage on your PC - add extra £15-40 to whichever build.


Out of curiosity, what's the exact iMac model that you have? This will definitely help with the decision as it will tell me what sort of performance differences we're looking at.
 
A 7870k running on just integrated graphics? That struggles to play last gen games at 720p above 30fps? You've GOT to be kidding me.

And I have photoshop CS6 on my machine right now, I've run it from an SSD, and my HDD, do you know what the difference was? I don't.. There was no difference.

Same goes for Illustrator creative cloud.

And as for RAM for it, 4-8gb is the norm, I see ramblings from people saying you need 32gb of ram for digital painting etc, you don't have to listen to me, but i've worked on 600dpi graphic design with 300+ layers on a 4gb system, on a 5400rpm HDD and it was fine.

Dellboy121, i've given you my suggestions, and it would appear that Phoenix will disagree with anything I say. You have my advice and you can do with it as you choose. I'll keep an eye on your thread in case you need any help.

Good luck with your new PC, I hope you enjoy it regardless of what you buy.
 
The integrated GPUs are not as bad anymore - the one I have on 3770k can play HoTS or LoL at steady 60fps on 1200p with some stuff like physics (mostly CPU) on ultra and some details low/mid. The one on 7870k is 2-3x faster, it will play what he needs for now and if he decides that he needs extra GPU or two, these can be easily added in the future.

SSD / more ram helps with big RAW files / heavy editing - obviously if all you do on yours is put a frame, sharpen up and edit your holiday photos taken on a mobile phone camera then you won't notice the difference, for professional work you will.

Using PC without SSD, even for browsing, is plainly annoying. Even my mum doesn't want to use PC without SSD and she's not exactly a demanding user in the first place. Obviously you can disagree as I see that you have 2 or 3 SSDs yourself.

AM3+ build at £600+ isn't probably the best idea - at this price point it's already better to put the extra cash towards that skylake setup, £100ish isn't that much, surely he could squeeze that in considering that it will last a good few years.

It would be good to know which we're upgrading from as well, if it was one of the top i5/i7 models it might be worth going with that skylake.
 
Ok so this is what I've come up with as something more final.


Kingston HyperX Savage Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11SRK2/8)
Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5
Seagate 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST1000DM003)
Microsoft Windows 10 64-Bit DVD - OEM (MS-KW9-00139)
Intel Core i5-4690 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail
MSI Z97 PC Mate Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
EVGA 600W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (100-B1-0600-KR)
MSI GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Red

Now I have literally no idea about a good gaming case so any suggestions would be really helpful. Also if I've missed anything please let me know. Thanks!
 
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Nice setup, however, is there any specific reason for picking CPU from 2 generations ago rather than the newest equivalent of it for the same price (i5 6600) ? I guess the motherboards are a bit cheaper but then again, they're old and lack features. Not worth the £30 saving there and you'll be losing performance too and any kind of upgradeability because it's an old socket.

i3/i5/i7 7xx / 8xx / 9xx - 1st gen nephalem
i3/i5/i7 2xxx - 2nd gen sandybridge
i3/i5/i7 3xxx - 3rd gen ivy bridge
i3/i5/i7 4xxx - 4th gen haswell
i3/i5/i7 5xxx - 5th gen devil's canyon
i3/i5/i7 6xxx - 6th gen, newest, skylake

i3 is dual core with 4 threads
i5 is quad core with 4 threads
i7 is quad core with 8 threads or 6 core with 12.

I have to say I've tried to build something good around Z170 chipset to last a while with 6400/6500/6600 and each time I come up with a conclusion that this bundle is hard to beat:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/8pac...locked-quad-core-gaming-bundle-bu-050-as.html

You get great motherboard, 8gb of good memory, amazing high end air cooler and the CPU is exactly the same CPU as £50 more expensive i5-6600 but comes with lower factory default speed and in this bundle is overclocked AND tested already to run perfectly stable at 4.4ghz. It will come with a BIOS profile and all you'll have to do is put put it on and you're ready to go, no more messing about.

So yes, it is a bit extra cash over your setup but in my opinion it is worth every penny.
Just think about it as a 3+ year investment - over that period you're paying maybe £1.5 extra a month.

As for the case, you could try to squeeze and save another £10-15 on it but this:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phan...i-tower-case-with-window-black-ca-031-pt.html

is hard to beat at that price point, it comes with very good features and is spacious and well designed enough to allow for whatever future upgrades you might want to throw into it.
 
PhoenixUK said:
Nice setup, however, is there any specific reason for picking CPU from 2 generations ago rather than the newest equivalent of it for the same price (i5 6600) ? I guess the motherboards are a bit cheaper but then again, they're old and lack features. Not worth the £30 saving there and you'll be losing performance too and any kind of upgradeability because it's an old socket.

i3/i5/i7 7xx / 8xx / 9xx - 1st gen nephalem
i3/i5/i7 2xxx - 2nd gen sandybridge
i3/i5/i7 3xxx - 3rd gen ivy bridge
i3/i5/i7 4xxx - 4th gen haswell
i3/i5/i7 5xxx - 5th gen devil's canyon
i3/i5/i7 6xxx - 6th gen, newest, skylake

i3 is dual core with 4 threads
i5 is quad core with 4 threads
i7 is quad core with 8 threads or 6 core with 12.

I have to say I've tried to build something good around Z170 chipset to last a while with 6400/6500/6600 and each time I come up with a conclusion that this bundle is hard to beat:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/8pac...locked-quad-core-gaming-bundle-bu-050-as.html

You get great motherboard, 8gb of good memory, amazing high end air cooler and the CPU is exactly the same CPU as £50 more expensive i5-6600 but comes with lower factory default speed and in this bundle is overclocked AND tested already to run perfectly stable at 4.4ghz. It will come with a BIOS profile and all you'll have to do is put put it on and you're ready to go, no more messing about.

So yes, it is a bit extra cash over your setup but in my opinion it is worth every penny.
Just think about it as a 3+ year investment - over that period you're paying maybe £1.5 extra a month.

As for the case, you could try to squeeze and save another £10-15 on it but this:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phan...i-tower-case-with-window-black-ca-031-pt.html

is hard to beat at that price point, it comes with very good features and is spacious and well designed enough to allow for whatever future upgrades you might want to throw into it.
Click to expand...

Ok you've convinced me I'll go with the pack.
 
You might want to pay attention to the copy of windows you'll be ordering - if you get the DVD version and don't have dvd drive or no other way to get a copy onto USB stick then you might be in for a bad surprise!

You can get the USB version for £10 more. Otherwise if you have spare USB, you can download the installation files onto it yourself.
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Also just noticed that the GPU model you picked is quite overpriced:

You could easily save almost £40 by just picking this up, they're virtually the same:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...ss-graphics-card-gv-n960oc-4gd-gx-171-gi.html

or this is £20 cheaper as well and a great card at this price:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/his-...press-graphics-card-h380xqm4cr-gx-109-hs.html
 
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