Spec for niece around £300

[Holliday]

As the title says, Sister is planning to get a PC for my niece for Xmas and is looking to spend around £300 (without monitor or OS). The only gaming she'll do is Minecraft so as long as it can run that then she'll be happy.

Don't think she's wanting to buy second hand, and I told her not to get the prebuilt ones from Argos etc.

I realise it's a limited budget but spec me up!

 

[ExRayTed]

No optical drive but tone can be added for a few £s

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Raijintek Arcadia Mid Tower USB 3.0 Case - Black= £24.95
• 1 x AMD Kaveri A8-7670K 10 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 6 GPU Compute Cores) - Retai= £89.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01)= £29.99
• 1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache HDD - OEM (DT01ACA100)= £35.99
• 1 x SuperFlower FX 350W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - Black= £34.99
• 1 x Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-HD2 AMD A68 Chipset (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard= £39.95
• 1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/= £38.99

Total: £307.15
(includes shipping: £12.30)
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[sastusbulbas]

Just throwing other options in there.

In my own experience with kids and Minecraft, most dual core CPU's over 3GHz will be fine, but if they run any mods I am not sure how that affects things, I know my older lad was not having a great time with 4gb of memory and an old 1gb GPU in an old system some time back when the game was very populated. I am not a huge Minecraft player like he is though.

As such I would expect a slightly better stand alone GPU to cover any bling etc and spec a little more in the GPU department, with 2gb of memory helping open up full render etc especially with any minecraft skins in future.

A white case with a window may look better, especially if you add an RGB lighting system in future, a second HDD is another one to ponder. It can be added any time, or is an SSD and HDD needed or would just an HDD do?

The above quoted AMD system also looks simpler though, with no GPU.

Another option would be a MiniITX system if it resides in her room?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Bitfenix Nova Midi Tower Case - White Window= £26.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01)= £29.99
• 1 x XFX TS 430W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply - Black ** 5 YEAR WARRANTY OCUK EXCLUSIVE **= £30.95
• 1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail= £55.99
• 1 x **B Grade** MSI H81M-P33 Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX (MB-246-MS)= £25.00
• 1 x MSI Radeon R7 360 Gaming 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £85.99
• 1 x Crucial BX200 240GB SSD SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive (CT240BX200SSD1)= £59.99

Total: £327.20
(includes shipping: £12.30)
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My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Gigabyte F2A88XN-WIFI AMD A88X (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard= £82.99
• 1 x Silverstone SST-SG05BB-Lite Sugo USB 3.0 - Black= £31.99
• 1 x Silverstone Strider SST-ST30SF SFX Series - 300 Watt '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply= £41.99
• 1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/= £38.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01)= £29.99
• 1 x AMD Kaveri A8-7670K 10 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 6 GPU Compute Cores) - Retai= £89.99

Total: £327.64
(includes shipping: £11.70)
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[FixupSellon]

that was a fails bbcode copy and paste attempt lol

 

[ndaar]

I think people have already got the options covered.

For the money I would go either an AMD APU as suggested or an intel pentium (could go skylake for future upgrade path) with cheap GPU.

You can play around with the other bits till you hit the price point you are happy. Both setups would run minecraft well.

 

[Holliday]

Cheers for the suggestions guys, I'll see what the sister says.

Much appreciated.