Newbie could do with project help, please

ChuuuuuckY · 22 Apr 2011 at 16:34

Hi not sure if this is even the right section to ask for my project help but im sure i will be corrected if i am in the wrong place. I have finally decided to get away from the XBOX Scene and start PC Gaming.

I just managed to get my self a pc from a market stall for £50 with 1gb of ram i believe and 80gb of memory. I have pics for you to see what im on about.

I need help with what next to buy, upgrade etc to be able to play games like cod4, crysis and an other good games. I would like to have a decent pc that runs games on high settings. Money isnt bothering me as its going to be a ongoing project and i can save for things but not too big a price so i can actually play on it sometime soonish.

Things i know i definatley need:

Graphics card
Atleast dual core but would go better
Decent reasonably priced monitor
Sound would be nice lol
Good mouse... eyeing up the logitech mx518
Good keyboard, right now im using onscreen keyboard which i can say has taken forever to type this

Ignore the state of the case, its in progress of spraying

Theres 2 of these.^

Sorry again if this is the wrong section and any help will be appreciated

sk82jack · 22 Apr 2011 at 16:46

Tbh your probably better off saving up and buying it all at once as the prices fluctuate so much. The best your going to get for gaming at the moment is an i5 2500k based build with a P67 motherboard, but Intel are releasing their Z68 boards very soon, which may push P67 board prices down, and AMD are releasing there Bull Dozer range not too far away too which may blow Sandy Bridge out of the water, but we don't know yet.

It all depends on your budget and when you can buy it. This is a good spec for today but as I said, in a couple of weeks there maybe something a lot better out:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Operation Flashpoint Red River Game £169.99

MSI P67A-GD65 Intel P67 (socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £139.98

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £114.98

OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply £46.98

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £43.99
(£36.66) £43.99
(£36.66)

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £35.99

Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £27.98

Sub Total : £483.25
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
FREE SHIPPING (DPD Next Day)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : FREE
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £96.65
Total : £579.90

EDIT: Most on-board sound should be good enough and as for keyboard/mouse/monitor I'll leave that for someone else as I don't really know

But if you used a good T.V with your 360 then you could use that till you get more money

pcAnywhere · 22 Apr 2011 at 18:23

You'll need a new PSU too. 17amps on the 12v rail is not good enough for a gaming rig

kalvindeane · 22 Apr 2011 at 22:04

You might want to buy second hand, it'll save you a lot of money. I've been out of touch with hardware for a while, but I'll take a quick gander at the current prices at OcUK and give you an idea of what you are looking for.

You shouldn't really have bothered with that computer, there's little you can do to upgrade it, certainly not enough to make it run recent games on High settings. Even the case was a bit of a waste, you can buy decent cases for £25-45 these days.

The Mx518 is a good mouse for the money.
The Logitech G11 keyboard is also pretty good (using one right now).
You need a new Power Supply, and a good quality one at that, don't go buying some cheap rubbish. Pretty much all of the PSU's (Power Supplies) sold at ocuk are good quality.
The PSU you want to buy depends on how future proof you want your machine to be. You could buy a 550W or 600W and it'd be plenty, though if you upgraded in a couple of years, it probably won't be enough. I'll assume that you're going to buy a 550W to save some cash. You're looking at £40-50 for a good 500-600W.
You can get a decent graphics card for £100-120 new these days, they'll play pretty much anything at good settings (depending on what resolution you play at).
The monitor that you buy will depend on your budget. £110 would get you a nice 1900x1080 (full HD) monitor, you'll have to say if that's too expensive for you.
A Dual Core CPU would be ok for the time being, but a quad core would be much more future proof, it's worth investing in if you want your computer to last you a while.
It's worth paying for 4GB of RAM (Memory), but 8GB is a bit over the top, if you want, you could buy 4GB now and add another 4GB in the future if you wanted.
When you say you have 80GB Memory, what you actually mean is a 80GB Hard Drive.
You could buy a 250GB Hard Drive for around £25, but it's worth paying a little more, say £40, for a 1000GB Hard Drive. The more GB you have, the more games/pictures/apps/videos/music you can store on your computer.
You should buy a new motherboard, one that fits the CPU that you are buying. Most motherboards have sound built in as standard, so as long as you have a set of speakers, they should work fine.

I'll give you a list of parts to buy, only as a rough guide. Until you give us a number to work with, we don't know how much you are willing to spend on your computer. I know you said you are going to save up for it, and that you want to play it soon if possible, but paying the extra cash will serve you in the long run, so it's up to you.

£169.99 Intel Core i5-2500K CPU.
£147.98 Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 Motherboard.
£046.98 OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply.
£114.98 Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme Graphics Card.
£042.98 Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB Sata-II Hard Drive.
£035.99 Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 Memory.
£023.99 Logitech MX518 Mouse.
£107.99 BenQ G2222HDL 21.5" Widescreen LED Monitor

Total comes to around £700 with shipping, maybe more if you are going to take a while buying these items. I haven't included the G11 keyboard that I mentioned, as OcUK don't have any right now. They used to be £26. I also haven't included a case, because I thought you might like to keep the one you have (I wouldn't myself). I also didn't include the price of a cooler, you can get a decent cooler for around £30.

There are things you can do to bring the price down, the problem is that the less you spend, the slower your machine. You don't want to buy something that will be unable to play games at high settings in 6months, you should get something that will last you.

Saying that, if you bought a cheaper monitor, for say £60-80, it would be at a lower resolution than the one I mentioned above. Lower resolution means less quality, but it also means that your machine will run faster. Buying things second hand will save money, in fact, a lot. My i7 gaming computer that I built 6months ago is pretty fast, it cost me around £1000. But now, it'd only be worth £500 second hand, maybe even less.

kalvindeane · 22 Apr 2011 at 22:07

I just noticed your other thread. Will post in there after reading it.

trisp · 22 Apr 2011 at 22:59

ChuuuuuckY said:
80gb of memory.

I think you need some more rams !!

Tbh if your doing it in stages you should come up how much u want to spend in total and when you will have those funds available to you (plan ahead).

I would upgrade your psu first as this will enable you to upgrade anything in your pc and not limit you and a hardrive as i dont know if u have one or not.

I would oc your pc if possible to increase its performance and install windows 7.

Then i would buy a graphics card so atleast you can start playing games in decent quality.

Then i would upgrade your ram processor and mother bored cpu cooler all in one go.

Good luck

Tediore · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:44

kalvindeane said:
You might want to buy second hand, it'll save you a lot of money. I've been out of touch with hardware for a while, but I'll take a quick gander at the current prices at OcUK and give you an idea of what you are looking for.

You shouldn't really have bothered with that computer, there's little you can do to upgrade it, certainly not enough to make it run recent games on High settings. Even the case was a bit of a waste, you can buy decent cases for £25-45 these days.

The Mx518 is a good mouse for the money.

The Logitech G11 keyboard is also pretty good (using one right now).

You need a new Power Supply, and a good quality one at that, don't go buying some cheap rubbish. Pretty much all of the PSU's (Power Supplies) sold at ocuk are good quality.

The PSU you want to buy depends on how future proof you want your machine to be. You could buy a 550W or 600W and it'd be plenty, though if you upgraded in a couple of years, it probably won't be enough. I'll assume that you're going to buy a 550W to save some cash. You're looking at £40-50 for a good 500-600W.

You can get a decent graphics card for £100-120 new these days, they'll play pretty much anything at good settings (depending on what resolution you play at).

The monitor that you buy will depend on your budget. £110 would get you a nice 1900x1080 (full HD) monitor, you'll have to say if that's too expensive for you.

A Dual Core CPU would be ok for the time being, but a quad core would be much more future proof, it's worth investing in if you want your computer to last you a while.

It's worth paying for 4GB of RAM (Memory), but 8GB is a bit over the top, if you want, you could buy 4GB now and add another 4GB in the future if you wanted.

When you say you have 80GB Memory, what you actually mean is a 80GB Hard Drive.

You could buy a 250GB Hard Drive for around £25, but it's worth paying a little more, say £40, for a 1000GB Hard Drive. The more GB you have, the more games/pictures/apps/videos/music you can store on your computer.

You should buy a new motherboard, one that fits the CPU that you are buying. Most motherboards have sound built in as standard, so as long as you have a set of speakers, they should work fine.

I'll give you a list of parts to buy, only as a rough guide. Until you give us a number to work with, we don't know how much you are willing to spend on your computer. I know you said you are going to save up for it, and that you want to play it soon if possible, but paying the extra cash will serve you in the long run, so it's up to you.

£169.99 Intel Core i5-2500K CPU.
£147.98 Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 Motherboard.
£046.98 OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply.
£114.98 Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme Graphics Card.
£042.98 Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB Sata-II Hard Drive.
£035.99 Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 Memory.
£023.99 Logitech MX518 Mouse.
£107.99 BenQ G2222HDL 21.5" Widescreen LED Monitor

Total comes to around £700 with shipping, maybe more if you are going to take a while buying these items. I haven't included the G11 keyboard that I mentioned, as OcUK don't have any right now. They used to be £26. I also haven't included a case, because I thought you might like to keep the one you have (I wouldn't myself). I also didn't include the price of a cooler, you can get a decent cooler for around £30.

There are things you can do to bring the price down, the problem is that the less you spend, the slower your machine. You don't want to buy something that will be unable to play games at high settings in 6months, you should get something that will last you.

Saying that, if you bought a cheaper monitor, for say £60-80, it would be at a lower resolution than the one I mentioned above. Lower resolution means less quality, but it also means that your machine will run faster. Buying things second hand will save money, in fact, a lot. My i7 gaming computer that I built 6months ago is pretty fast, it cost me around £1000. But now, it'd only be worth £500 second hand, maybe even less.

I'd go for something like this build. The processor and motherboard are expensive, but will last you a long time so you'll only need to upgrade the graphics card when you feel like you need a bit more grunt in the future.

As already said, buying used will allow you to get things up and running sooner. The BenQ monitor should be fine with the 5850 unless you're hoping to max Crysis and Metro 2033. Both games still look superb on normal graphics settings though, and the 5850 is more than capable of playing 90% of games on high at full HD resolution.

For your sound, you could just use a set of headphones for the time being. I was using a £9.99 pair of Sony headphones for a few months, and they were great.

I think a keyboard and mouse is a personal choice, but I've heard very good things about the MX518. If you have a local Currys, pop in and see if they have any SteelSeries Ikari mice. I found one for £30, which came up as £20 at the till. Bargain.

at the rams