Custom CPU - £400 max

seanyyboy92

seanyyboy92

seanyyboy92

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Hi guys I'm looking to build a PC worth £400 (just the tower) max. I love playing games like Total War 2, Civilisation but I can't play them right now because I have a old laptop. Can you guys suggest possible parts for this PC please. Thanks guys
 
Do you need a screen, keyboard and mouse? What about OS? You want a complete replacement for your laptop?
 
Here is what I came up with:
AMD Kaveri 7850K 12 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 8 GPU Compute Cores) - Retail £119.99
Asus A88XM-A AMD A88X Chipset (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £55.99
SuperFlower Golden Green HX 450W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £50.99
Samsung 120GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E120B/EU £49.99
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
Zalman T1 Plus Mini-Tower USB 3.0 - Black £19.99
Sub Total : £284.12
Shipping : £11.25 Ex.VAT
VAT : £59.07
Total : £354.44

Kaveri can produce decent low quality 1080P 30FPS for Total War 2. Read up on it and see what you think. it might very well be all you need. You have the option to add a better GPU that has low power consumption at a latter date if needed.
 
mods1965 said:
Here is what I came up with:
AMD Kaveri 7850K 12 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 8 GPU Compute Cores) - Retail £119.99
Asus A88XM-A AMD A88X Chipset (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £55.99
SuperFlower Golden Green HX 450W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £50.99
Samsung 120GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E120B/EU £49.99
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
Zalman T1 Plus Mini-Tower USB 3.0 - Black £19.99
Sub Total : £284.12
Shipping : £11.25 Ex.VAT
VAT : £59.07
Total : £354.44

Kaveri can produce decent low quality 1080P 30FPS for Total War 2. Read up on it and see what you think. it might very well be all you need. You have the option to add a better GPU that has low power consumption at a latter date if needed.
Click to expand...

please avoid amd. g328
 
Rather then just saying avoid AMD, why not help by providing an alternative spec based on g328 that fits the amount to work with?
 
I don't know much about AMD CPUs, but that Kaveri looks fine, especially considering benchmarks. An alternative would be an Intel i3, probably a 4350 or 4150 to save a bit of cash. Has 4 threads, so that's good. Or stretch the budget and go with an i5-4440. Also need a motherboard, but the motherboard bundles at OCUK start at the i5-4690k, which is way out of budget.
 
 
I think we have the winner here. With a cheaper case, its inside the £400 mark. The reviews show the Pentium K stands up on its own without overclocking and if you are inclined, you have the option to boost it.
 
 
I wouldn't touch a Xigmatek maverick with a bargepole. The maverick S got poor reviews and had awful build quality. You need to spend more on the psu. With psu's cheap and quality are words that don't go together.

You also need a cooler if you are going for any decent overclock.

Ther's a G3258/H81 mobo/Ram/Cooler bundle here on this week only. It's faster ram too and there will be no worrying about whether the G3258 will work with the mobo out of the box. The B85 board may need a bios flash.

If the SSD is the only storage going into this then 120gb isn't enough. It won't take long to fill that up.
 
How about this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 960 EX OC "Black Edition" 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Retail (96NPH8DVD9XX) £155.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £55.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £44.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x Seasonic Eco Series 430W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £37.99
1 x Asrock H81M-HDS Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £37.99
1 x Zalman T2 Plus Mini-Tower USB 3.0 - Black £19.99
Total : £406.54 (includes shipping : £8.00 Ex.VAT).



You get an NVidia graphics card, which provides solid performance at a sensible price point.

You get a well respected PSU manufacturer.

And an Aftermarket heatsink will allow you to overclock this quite sensibly.

Slower storage than others have suggested, but 128GB will fill up in no time, but this should load your games in pretty sensible time.

Also the RAM, Mobo, CPU option (although the ram is 233mhz slower) is over £50 cheaper than the this week only bundle.
 
Last edited:
Correct, the Maverick did get awful reviews. Avoid it.

And yes, I believe at the £120~ price point, AMD GPU's offer better value.
 
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