Need help speccing a PC for a friend

tangledmonkey · 18 Dec 2014 at 17:51

A friend of mine is looking to get a new PC for gaming, as his is just useless now. He's shown me a PC he's found for £250 (a HP of some sort), and he intends to buy a GPU to add to it. I've told him he'd be able to get something nicer for the same sort of money. So guys, what do you think would be the best he'd get for his money (say up to around £300). Excluding any peripherals or OS, so just mobo/cpu/ram/case/psu. Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

tangledmonkey · 18 Dec 2014 at 18:21

Thanks for your reply. Sorry, I didn't mean to include a GPU in that list, my mistake. Original post edited accordingly

tangledmonkey · 18 Dec 2014 at 18:24

He's looking to spend up to around £150 on a GPU in mid Jan. To be honest, since building my own rig about 2 years ago I've not really taken much notice in the advances of hardware. What sort of GPU would be recommended nowadays for that sort of money?

tangledmonkey · 18 Dec 2014 at 18:27

On a side note, why has RAM become so expensive? I paid about £25 for 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair RAM when I built my PC.

tangledmonkey · 18 Dec 2014 at 18:29

Thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated.

He's got a HDD already, not sure if it's SATA, but I've got plenty of HDDs so I can give him one if need be.

Looks like it's going to be an R9 280 then!

tangledmonkey · 19 Dec 2014 at 15:24

Is there an available Intel cpu/mobo available for the same sort of price that would be worth considering? I put together a spec the other night for him with an Intel cpu, but with only 4gb RAM, which came to about £310. What should be considered more important, Intel CPU or 8gb RAM?