New System / Bundle

[blacrow]

Hi all,

as per title I am looking for advice on a new system. It is for my young son, who is always 'borrowing' mine

He plays a lot of games on Steam, watches You Tube and will Skype his friends. So I require advice on what the best 'smallish' solid system that can deliver a good punch CPU & graphics wise within a budget of £500-£600. I have viewed a couple of systems but would like a few other opinions from more learned people than myself.

Thanks in advance

 

[Danny75]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

If you're willing to build it yourself and don't need Windows included, and need something fairly small, an ITX like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 Nitro 380 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11242-07-20G) £169.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £152.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x Asus H81I-Plus Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £58.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x SuperFlower FX 450W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - Black £42.95
1 x Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Case - Black £35.99
Total : £598.99 (includes shipping : £11.75 Ex.VAT).




Or a micro-ATX like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 Nitro 380 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11242-07-20G) £169.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £152.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Blue £49.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x SuperFlower FX 450W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - Black £42.95
1 x Asus H81M-PLUS Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £41.99
Total : £595.99 (includes shipping : £11.75 Ex.VAT).




And drop from i5 to i3 if Windows needs including in budget.

Can swap SSD for a cheaper 500GB HDD if build cost needs including too (won't cover all the cost but will shave a good chunk off). There's plenty of games now where you have to wait some time for those with the game on HDD to finish loading, teleporting or what have you. So the better experience is with SSD, especially if playing with friends. If playing mostly single-player it doesn't matter so much except to your son.

Cheaper micro-ATX cases than that one can also be had if they don't need to be that small (the Prodigy isn't really that small anyway).