Need a new (gaming) PC, £5-600

Deathninja

Deathninja

Deathninja

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Joined
10 Feb 2009
Posts
29
Long story short, DSA laptop died again and even with a full tear down I couldn't completely save it.

Want to go back to a desktop, and seeing as I have an opportunity to start fresh I'm looking at building something more geared for games, ideally nearer the £500 mark. No peripherals, just the box and guts.

Mostly play ARK/Space Engineers/FSX/Empyrion so recommended specs are 2.5 - 2.8 quad core, 8gb ram and 2gb video memory.

Had a bunch of trouble with nVidia cards in the past so would prefer ATi, not averse to AMD over Intel if there's a cost benefit and I've no idea if I really need an SSD.

I really don't have the opportunity to follow specs and components (part time student, part time worker, full time carer) but I can put a pc together well enough.

Oh, ideally want a smaller case too, with an optical drive.

Any advice?

Cheers.
 
I'd go for something a bit like this.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £608.11
(includes shipping: £13.20)
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Don't think you can get some decent Intel for £300 (i.e. a i5, with mobo and memory), but you can try.
 
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Deathninja said:
Thanks, that looks pretty good, though I've just seen Win10 is an extra £100 :/
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It depends. If you have windows 7 or 8, it's a free upgrade.

Do you think it's worth stretching to the 16Gb ram?
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Nope. Not with your budget in mind.

And that GPU is OOS but I saw this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...ss-graphics-card-gv-n960oc-4gd-gx-171-gi.html for a tenner more. Supposedly it's 4Gb, so am I missing some subtlety here as surely it'd be better?
Click to expand...

If it says 4GB, it's 4GB. :)

More VRAM is recommended (2GB is pretty low by today's standards). Gigabyte is a good brand, they make quiet cards, so yeah.

I was looking at the Radeon 380, but it's still recommend a 960 4GB. Don't worry yourself about NVidia versus AMD, stability, drivers, ect... Both are kinda on par nowadays.

SSDs are nice and all, but when your budget is stretch to the limit already, it's something you can keep for later. 250GB maybe, £70. You can get a 128GB for £40, and that will hold Windows comfortably, as well as a couple of games.

As for optical drive, the cheap LG should do fine, if you really want one. Windows10 comes on a bootable USB nowadays (or you can make one).

The PSU will allow further upgrades down the line. I wouldn't cheapen on that too much (550W is the ballpark for something sensible).

You'll be well over £600 at that rate. Maybe you need a couple of downgrades (CPU looks the likely candidate).

Looks like you can get some decent Intel stuff as well, for a little bit more. I would definitely go with that i5 over an AMD 8 core. So it's worth considering. You'll have to build it and tune it yourself (no big deal imo).

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £650.08
(includes shipping: £13.20)
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(Sorry if this is a necro, work's been mental and I ahd a breakdown last week, gogo MHI >_> ...

Got the setup Olivier recommended, albeit with the 4Gb GPU. All came through OK, but the case just screams cheap and nasty, and the cooler actually creates a noticeable bulge in the case.

Stable for the most part, but I'm noticing in Space Engineers the whole thing freezes after 30-60 minutes requiring a button reset, and the case around the cooler is painfully hot to the touch.

Cooler isn't the one listed in the deal I bought (whole process of ordering was a nightmare tbh...), OCUK sent out an Alpenfohn Brocken 2, are these too big for a midi case, or is the Nova just a particularly tight fit?

Figured I would be having to upgrade the case relatively soon, but not in the space of a few weeks...
 
if its to big for the case i wouldn't use the cooler especially as its getting to hot but the sounds of things and may cause the freezes. i'd put the stock cooler back on for now and run everything at stock to see if that stops the crashing.
 
Using Speedfan:

At rest: GPU 25/ Temp2 40 (that one seemed to correlate most with CPU activity

In SE: GPU 75/ Temp2 70

Repeating with an open case:

Rest: GPU 24/ Temp2 43

SE: GPU 65/ Temp2 50

Layout like so:



Cooler set to pull air in, even if the case was large enough I couldn't rotate 90 as the fan would block the RAM.

Ideally I'd prefer to change out the case rather than the cooler. are there any midis that are slightly wider/taller? A full tower seems like overkill to me.
 
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I did have a 902 many moons back until it caught fire, I do like the extra width you get on the Antecs but the fan controls being at the rear annoy the hell out of me. Cooler Master are in my good books too, will have to look around and ask OCUK about max cooler heights.

Figured I'd need to drop around a ton on a case eventually anyway, and a decent slim (so water) cooler would be about the same anyway.
 
What CPU cooler is that? It isn't the Ereboss mentioned in the spec above.

Just re-read..it's a Brocken. Which is 165mm tall. And the case takes coolers up to 160mm.

Should've checked first :)

Live and learn..
 
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Temps probably aren't helped by your cable management either. But try emailing them and explaining the situation.

You got fans pulling air into the case?
 
Got one in the middle third of the front as an intake (wasn't sure if it was better than one over the HDD getting turbulent)

Not a lot of options with the cabling; case has nothing going on in terms of feedholes on the other side, and there's a lot of redundant molex coming off the PSU.

Did used to have a snazzy 700W modular one, but went up in flames.
 
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