Desktop Build for ~ £800

BriggysMum

BriggysMum

BriggysMum

Associate
Joined
16 Jul 2013
Posts
36
Hi there,

I have been recommended to this forum by a friend as I am looking to purchase a desktop for the first time in many years and when it comes to computing I am far from a whizz so was seeking advice. Any help would be greatly appreciated to ensure I am getting a decent deal instead of just going by my gut and ending up with a barge.

I last had a desktop around 8 years ago, have been on laptops since that one died on me though have recently been getting more and more into gaming, which is where the laptop shows its limitations. Tried playing Civ V recently and the laptop screamed at me all the way.

With this in mind, I am looking for a desktop on which I can get my game on, so looking at being able to dominate current games and maybe next gen games for the next year or so, and for working from home on occasion. Office is not a necessity as I can get this from other sources if required but ideally I would want something I can plug in, turn on and away I go.

Looking to spend up to a maximum of £800, though if a great deal was to be had for slightly more than that then I would be willing.

As I said before, any help would be greatly appreciated as I dip my toe into the water!
 
Are you wanting to buy a pre-built machine, or are you willing to get your hands slightly dirty and build it yourself? It's a little trickier, but it gives you the opportunity to hand-pick the exact parts you want and usually saves you around 20% of the price.

Do you have any keyboard/monitor/mouse/speakers etc that you'll be using, and do you need them included in the price? I'm going to assume that you need the operating system included.

What games do you want to play, other than Civ V? What other uses will the PC have? This will help us tailor the build more toward what you want.

If you need a monitor, I'd get this
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-085-BQ&groupid=17&catid=949
Plus
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-237-OK&groupid=43&catid=2475&subcat=2486
Modified to have:
Graphics card: HIS HD 7850
Primary HDD: Samsung 840 120GB SSD
Secondary HDD: Seagate 500GB HDD
And Windows 8.

Which brings the build to about £820

You could improve graphics performance by removing the HDD and getting a 7870 instead, although you wouldn't have a lot of space for large programs, films etc.

Alternately you could remove the SSD and have a 1TB Seagate drive as the primary HDD, which would let you have a 7950 GPU (much better). You'd have a lot more gaming performance and plenty of space, but your system would be a little slower for general use - SSDs make the PC feel very "snappy" and programs load fast, but if you aren't bothered about this then you can get extra gaming performance.

And finally doing either of the above HDD/SSD swaps but leaving the graphics as the 7850 would save you some money to bring the PC under the £800 and give you enough to buy a keyboard and mouse if necessary.
 
Last edited:
Audigex said:
Are you wanting to buy a pre-built machine, or are you willing to get your hands slightly dirty and build it yourself? It's a little trickier, but it gives you the opportunity to hand-pick the exact parts you want and usually saves you around 20% of the price.

Do you have any keyboard/monitor/mouse/speakers etc that you'll be using, and do you need them included in the price? I'm going to assume that you need the operating system included.

What games do you want to play, other than Civ V? What other uses will the PC have? This will help us tailor the build more toward what you want.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your prompt response.

To elaborate further on my initial post, which really does not give a great deal of detail as to what I require having read it back, I would respond as follows:

It is probably best to have it pre-built, I'm not saying I couldn't do it, but having not done it before I am always loathed taking the gamble. I tried to format a hard drive the other week and it ended up going horribly wrong so I am now adopting a safety first approach.

How difficult is it to build it yourself?

I have speakers but no longer have monitor/keyboard/mouse so they would be required, whether this is with the unit or I guess I could always get them separately though this would eat into the budget. I'll need the operating system, Windows 7 would be fine, I have Windows 8 on the laptop and would gladly sacrifice it for Windows 7 if there was a cost saving.

I'd be looking at playing any form of game on it, so to include such things as Call of Duty etc, so it'll need to be able to perform well if required with those sorts of games ideally.
 
I've edited my previous post with a couple of suggestions (Edit: removed one of the suggestions, the other was better...). The (now single) suggestion would be fine with CoD and other console-like games, in fact it'll handle most current games at high settings and should deal with future games at reasonable settings for a while. You'll need to update the GPU eventually but you should get a few years out of it.

Building yourself isn't particularly difficult - the hardest part is making sure you have compatible components and don't leave anything out, and making the rig balance. A lot of people in the general hardware section will be happy to help with this, though. Other than that it's just a case of taking your time and doing some research, it can feel a little worrying to be doing it youself, but it's harder to **** up than you'd imagine.

If you can get the monitor/keyboard/mouse outside the budget than that Titan 8000i with the HD7950, Samsung 120GB SSD, Seagate 1TB drive and Windows 8 comes in at £810 and would be a strong machine for the price.
 
Thank you once more.

I will likely proceed with your recommendation, though I may seek to shave off some of the memory in terms of the Seagate 1TB drive as I have external hard drives totaling around 4TB so the computer itself could be kept fairly clean other than the games and game files. Would this hamper the game performance if I cut it to say 500gb? It won't make much of a cost difference in fairness so I could quite happily keep it as 1TB.

What does Windows 8 pro give you over the normal Windows 8?
 
Windows 8 Pro gives nothing you'll really need: most of it is system administrator tools for use on a network. For most people it makes no difference whatsoever.

As for storage, you'd probably be better off cutting the HDD then. Basically I'd take a look at what you want to do: The real question is about games and programs, as you're able to offload all your documents/media to external drives.

How many games do you want to play? Assume about 5GB per game and see if it fits.
I generally assume at least 30GB for Windows and potential bloat for updates.
Add another 5GB for Office and general utilities/programs etc.

Then work out what else you need:
If you want Adobe Suite, add another 10GB

Then count up the number of current and old games you have. Add about 2GB for each old game, 5GB for each current game. If the total is more than about 60GB (with Adobe) or 70GB (without it) then you need to look at a 250GB SSD. If it's less, you can probably get away with a 120GB SSD.

If it's more, but you're willing to un-install games and re-install them when you want them, you can still use a 120GB SSD. Or you can go with the 500GB HDD alongside the SSD which is less money than the 250GB SSD, but will mean that any games on the HDD will be slower.

It can be a bit tricky, but remember that you can always add a HDD or SSD later if your needs change. I suspect that you'll be fine with a 120GB SSD.
 
Thanks again, very useful information!

One final query, concerning the processor, I have heard a lot of talk about Intel i5 and i7 being the way forward, I presume the Titan you linked is i3? Does this make any difference or would I be paying a small fortune if I went i5 or i7?
 
It is i3: there are i5 systems but they cost more overall. In an ideal world you'd get an i5 as the best match for the level of CPU you're going for, but for the games you want the i3 should do the job (at least for a while). i5's are the best mid-range CPUs (i7's are nice but overkill for most uses), giving a good balance of price/power: at your price point, however, it's difficult to fit in an i5 and 7850 level GPU.

Basically the i3 you'd get is a £100 3.4GHz Dual Core, as opposed to the i5's which are Quad Core. The i5 would cost an extra £50 for a 3330 (3.0GHz Quad Core) or £70 for a 3570 (3.4GHz Quad Core). Your i3 would be better for some uses than the i5 3330 because each of your i3 cores would be faster than each of the i5 cores: for other applications the 3330 would be faster. The 3570 would always be as fast or faster.

I would have though that if you give them OcUK a call (or post in the support forum) they would be willing to swap the CPU for an i5. They may even be able to do it for less than the £50/70 difference (as they're making a profit on the whole unit, rather than individual components) but they may not.

If you're happy/able to re-jig your hard drives or add the extra budget to get the i5, it would be a very good decision. With £800 to play with it's tough to get a balance, and an i3 with a decent graphics card will generally perform better with current/past games than an i5 with a worse graphics card.

Although to go back to the earlier discussion, you can probably just about fit it in if you build the machine yourself, as the parts are usually cheaper than a pre-built. For example, here's a thread with a £630 machine including an i5 and 7850. No SSD, but you'd be able to add that with the £130 difference and still have enough change to upgrade the GPU slightly.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18527659
 
Last edited:
Alternately get this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-308-OE&groupid=43&catid=2475&subcat=2486
Which also has the HD7950 (a step up from the original spec)

And ask OcUK to add an SSD for another £100ish, with the same end result but requiring less negotiation over the OEM vs Retail price of the CPU as you'd just do a straight addition of the SSD. You could even just buy the SSD yourself separately and install Windows on it, taking about half an hour.
 
Thank you yet again.

I am tempted to purchase all the parts and try and build it myself, but I worry that I'll **** it up and be throwing a lot of money down the drain.

I think I will need to consider it and then see what to do though I can guarantee that I will be going for one or the other, either the pre-built at extra cost or the parts to build it.

Thank you for all your assistance, you have been fantastic.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom