New to Gaming PC's

[Shank7]

Hi all, I am new to the forum and to PC gaming. I have played xbox all my life.

Anyway I am after a Desktop to play the upcoming Planet Coaster game and any other simulation/ tycoon games that comes out, maybe also a little H1Z1.

I have a budget of £500 - £600 if anyone could help me with the best specs for my money it would help a lot. I dont know if I should build my own or get OC to do it as I've never built one before. This budget is just for the PC itself and not the monitor.

Thanks in advanced

 

[Danny75]

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Aerocool Aero 500 Midi-Tower Case - Black Window= £29.99
• 1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU)= £67.99
• 1 x Microsoft Windows 10 64-Bit DVD - OEM (MS-KW9-00139)= £79.99
• 1 x Intel Core i3-6100 3.70GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £99.95
• 1 x Panram Ninja-V 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C15 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (PUD42400C154G2NJK)= £23.99
• 1 x EVGA Supernova GS 550W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply= £64.99
• 1 x **B Grade** MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £149.99
• 1 x MSI Z170-A Pro Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £82.99

Total: £599.88
(includes shipping: £0.00)
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Build it yourself to get more bang for buck at that price-point. But you can ask OcUK for a quote (Customer Services forum) to have that option to consider.

Windows DVD is £10 cheaper than Windows USB. You have three choices: (a) borrow an internal or external DVD drive to install, (b) use a USB pen drive to download and install Windows onto from the Microsoft site and follow the simple instructions, (c) pay the £10 extra for the Windows USB version or a little more for a DVD drive instead.

There are many ways to spec for this budget - this one is a little biased towards quality and upgradability (i.e. Z170 motherboard with i3 instead of cheaper H110 motherboard with non-K i5, to allow nicer upgrades and overclocking with any i5-K or i7-K upgrades in future. Quality PSU, quality SSD, decent case for upgrades including liquid AIO support). So that's the pros.

The cons are i3 instead of non-K i5 and a B-Grade (opened, possibly used) video card. But the power in that video card for £150 is a steal and even if you spend £200 on a new video card it won't equal that performance. My advice would be to snap it up (unless someone else does first) and if you notice anything quirky about it, return it for replacement/refund within 7-14 days. Alternatively, if you'd prefer a new card with full warranty, then replace with a GTX 960 or R9 380 4GB instead. Note that these are at least three performance levels down from a 290X (290X > 290 > 380X > 380).

So it depends if you are interested in upgrading or just spending one time and forgetting. If the latter, then I'd recommend a cheaper H110 motherboard (but add 16GB RAM straightaway as only two memory slots), cheaper PSU, cheaper case maybe and buy the best i5 you can with what's left.

 

[Shank7]

Thanks for the reply. That is a good graphics card but I was thinking about using an i5 rather than i3. I could cope with a worse card until the end of the year and grab onein the sales.

Also I've been doing a lot of research but what makes a mobo good. And which ones are the beat to get for a good price.

Also I don't need the OS as I already have a cheap source for that.

 

[Danny75]

Thanks for the reply. That is a good graphics card but I was thinking about using an i5 rather than i3. I could cope with a worse card until the end of the year and grab onein the sales.

Also I've been doing a lot of research but what makes a mobo good. And which ones are the beat to get for a good price.

Also I don't need the OS as I already have a cheap source for that.

Nice. In that case get an i5-K + cooler straightaway and like you say make do with a cheaper card for now.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Aerocool Aero 500 Midi-Tower Case - Black Window= £29.99
• 1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU)= £67.99
• 1 x Panram Ninja-V 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C15 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (PUD42400C154G2NJK)= £23.99
• 1 x EVGA Supernova GS 550W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply= £64.99
• 1 x MSI Z170-A Pro Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £82.99
• 1 x Intel Core i5-6600K 3.9GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £199.99
• 1 x Alpenföhn Brocken ECO CPU Cooler - 120 mm= £24.95
• 1 x Sapphire Radeon R7 Nitro 370 Dual-X 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11240-04-20G)= £129.95

Total: £624.84
(includes shipping: £0.00)
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With the 370 4GB you have the flexibility of adding a second one in CrossFire if you find funds a bit short for a more powerful single card later on.

The Brocken ECO cooler is good for the money (plus it fits - max cooler height 155mm for that case). Were you to spend more on a cooler I'd recommend an Antec H600 liquid AIO @ £40. Skylake CPUs don't need all that much cooling compared to previous platforms, so the Brocken ECO should allow a nice overclock.

As for motherboards, you have to look at the chipset first. For your CPU, the "Z" (Z170) is best, as it allows overclocking (without any workarounds and avoiding BIOS updates etc).

Then you look at other features you may need, such as AMD CrossFire capability or Nvidia SLI capability (latter more expensive), number of SATA ports depending on how many drives you plan installing, number of memory slots so you can add more RAM or not, the quality of the audio, etc. Then beyond that, there's also motherboards with more power phases for better overclocking, better MOSFET cooling and so on. But these days overclocking is nearly all CPU dependent. A really expensive motherboard may only get you like 100MHz more out of the same CPU.

For £10 extra there's the:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £92.99

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With what's meant to be better audio and a 4 year warranty (if you register). I've had the chance to play with one of these and feel it's really good for the money, and overclocking (through BIOS - I avoid installing the bundled Windows utilities for overclocking) went very smoothly and without issues.

 

[Shank7]

Thanks for the reply I really appreciate it. Think I'm going to spend all week watching videos on how to put it all together, and then I'll buy it all on the weekend.

I'll let you know how it goes and more importantly how it performs

 

[Danny75]

Thanks for the reply I really appreciate it. Think I'm going to spend all week watching videos on how to put it all together, and then I'll buy it all on the weekend.

I'll let you know how it goes and more importantly how it performs

Sounds good. Paul's Hardware vids are good for showing building, imo. He's nice and calm and also shows any mistakes he makes along the way, which helps you avoid them.

CPU performance will be very good. GPU not so much (ideally for 1080p high settings/60 FPS in most games you want a better card these days). But I think you're going about things the right way - good base to build on/add a better GPU later/more RAM if needed/more storage.