First PC build - need advice from the experts

[spiki]

My friend wants to get into PC gaming. He plays FPS such as BF6 and COD.

He has been looking at pre-builds but I suggested he would get much more for his money by building it himself.

He has asked me for some advice on what to buy but I have been away PC building for a while and feel it would be best to seek the advice of the experts on this forum.

He has a maximum budget of £650 and needs everything except a monitor.

What is the best bang for buck on the market at the minute?

Many thanks in advance for your advice

 

[Tetras]

What is the best bang for buck on the market at the minute?

We would have recommended DDR4 builds for this budget, e.g. 12400F/14400F or Ryzen 5600/5600X, but the new prices of DDR4 are really bad.

If you can get a used 32GB DDR4 kit for a reasonable price, then that's going to leave room for a better graphics card. I'd have gone with the H610 board OCUK have for ~£55 if that was an option (though no WIFI).

With modest settings the below combination is enough, but expectations need to be realistic for the budget I'm afraid.

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My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-12400F 2.50GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AR-IN) = £98.99
• 1 x Gigabyte B760 GAMING X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BU-GI) = £129.99
• 1 x B Grade Corsair Vengeance 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel (SKU: BG-MEM-CRS-01125) = £59.99
• 1 x Sparkle Intel ARC B580 TITAN OC 12GB GDDR6 Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-SPK-03779) = £199.99
• 1 x Gigabyte Aorus 7300E 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-GIG-06500) = £59.99
• 1 x Kolink Observatory HF Mesh PWM Midi Tower Case - Black (SKU: CAS-KLK-01625) = £42.95
• 1 x MSI MAG A650BN UK PSU 650W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (SKU: POW-MSI-03345) = £47.99

Total: £651.88 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

 

[spiki]

Thanks Tetras. Appreciate your help. I'll share this with him.

 

[dfour]

AM4 build. Normally it would ba a ryzen 5 5600/x but they are now EOL by the seems of it and hard to find for a sensible price. The ryzen 5 5500 is an inferior cpu but could cut the price down.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Crucial P310 1TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 4.0 NVMe Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-03049) = £61.99
• 1 x Sparkle Intel ARC B580 TITAN OC 12GB GDDR6 Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-SPK-03779) = £199.99
• 1 x MSI MAG A650BN UK PSU 650W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (SKU: POW-MSI-03345) = £47.99
• 1 x B Grade Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (SKU: BG-024-TG) = £29.99
• 1 x Thermalright Assassin King 120 SE ARGB CPU Air Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-03268) = £19.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5700X Eight Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3D1-AM) = £139.99
• 1 x Kolink Citadel Mesh Micro-ATX Case - Black (SKU: CA-051-KK) = £39.95
• 1 x Gigabyte B550M DS3H AC R2 (AMD AM4) B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-GIG-06023) = £88.98

Total: £628.87 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

I can recommend the red dragon K551Uk for £26 as a good basic mechanical gaming keyboard.

 

[Craig_d1]

Save some more money would be my recommendation...if you can get up to £800 then below


then get a 7500F from china (about £105 delivered)

B850M sapphire pulse £130 (you can get cheaper, just need to check what aren't the rubbish boards that will throttle the cpu)
32 gb ddr5 ram 6000c30-36 ddr5 realy expensive at mo, look 2nd hand or b grade..i literally bought 32gb 6000c30 veangeance rgb for £77 this week so can be done (as b grade shop)
case/cooler/psu from above £108 works for me
gigabyte auros 7300E 1tb, 7100read/6100 write, 700tbw endurance for £59.99(ocuk)
480 total
this is whereI'd save up a bit as I'd build it around a 9060xt 16gb £330 cheapest at mo for a sapphire pulse, powercolor reaper or a xfx swift (ocuk)...gpu the most expensive part of the build, and the most relevant for gaming...this will give you decent 1440p gaming, has 16gb vram and fsr4 so is as good as it gets for price point (if you want new)

this way you get into AM5 platform which you can upgrade down the line without having to start really replacing stuff (more powerful gpu might require a stronger psu though)...butyI'd rather pay a bit more and get on current tech that be on eol platforms

if you don't mind 2nd hand, for better raster the 7800xt is an option. you loose fsr4 though, theough HU shower a recent beta verion of fsr4 working on the 7800xt, so there is hope it might get release for older cards...for raster that will outperform the 9060xt, but raytracing is woefull, so never turn that on(literally turned indy jones game i had into a scrolling photoframe)...but off can run cyberpunk at 4k more than well enough...hopefully can find one sub £300