Spec Me a Build..

PhoenixRising

PhoenixRising

PhoenixRising

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Joined
2 May 2016
Posts
52
Location
UK
Looking at building my son a pc for gaming as he wants to try something new away from his Ps4 and xbox, i have up to £1000 but that is to include a monitor also, just to make things more complicated he wants a black and white theme with the tower being mainly white..

Many thanks in advance...
 
Does he need an OS as well?

I've based this on not needing one, but also left some wriggle-room in case he does.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £943.53 (includes shipping: £14.70)
​

The case is black and white, but there's also some red on the motherboard. I don't know how important this is. There are some options with similar price that are black and grey, which be less noticable.

Now - the wriggle-room: if he doesn't need an OS (you don't mention this), then I would look at an aftermarket cooler. This one is good value, and comes with a black fan to fit the colour scheme!

If he does need an OS, you may need to make do with the stock cooler for a while and trade down some components.

But overall this should be a decent black'n'white gaming rig, I think...

EDIT: Just to clarify - you don't NEED an aftermarket cooler for the i5-8400. It comes with a stock cooler and that should be okay, but it might be hot and noisy. I don't know how bothered your lad will be about that. If it's not an issue, you could either have a cheaper build or invest the £55 or so elsewhere - perhaps in getting a better monitor or a better motherboard (or one with no red on it! :) )
 
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Hi

How does this look ?

A few things to note:

Both the psu and board are currently out of stock.

Also the B350 chipset doesn't support the R5 2600 out of the box. It would need the correct bios version. You can either ask the retailer if it is flashed with the latest bios, or request a boot kit from AMD. The other option would be to look for an R5 1600 which will work fine.

If you want to cut down the cost you could always go with 8GB Ram and a 4 core/8 thread cpu such as the R5 1400. Also out of stock though at the moment.

The GTX 1060 comes with a free mouse. One of these - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...l-gaming-mouse-90yh00q1-baua00-sp-012-as.html

Do you need speakers ? Keyboard ? Windows ?



My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,020.43 (includes shipping: £12.60)​
​
 
Hi,
I have chosen the AMD bundle as it offers excellent value for money and comes with a free SSD which IMO is required for any build these days, 16gb RAM and a fast processor with a respectable stock cooler.
The power supply is a great performer and is backed by a 10 year warrenty.
I have chosen the AMD RX580 so that you can take advantage of Freesync monitors, the rx580 will perform roughly the same as a Nvidia 1060.
The monitor (currently out of stock) has Freesync which will help with smooth game play in the most demanding titles. Its also an IPS panel which will make colours much more vibrant and personally i think they look nicer than TN panels.
An extra 1TB HDD for games and storage, as mentioned a SSD comes free with the core bundle which you would use for OS and applications.
The case is a budget case but it looks nice and looks to have reasonable airflow. ohh and its white :). I have added an extra fan to to increase airflow, place this at the front to suck in fresh air.
The keyboard, mouse and headset bundle are cheap and cheerful, i cant imagine them to be great but they will do for starting out.

This is probably the least colour themed build here as i have focused more on performance and smooth game play. If you sacrifice performance and focus on looks then you may end up with a PC that looks good but is terrible to play games on.

This build assumes you don't need Windows 10, if you do need it there are way of getting it at a very low price, google it.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,018.12 (includes shipping: £15.30)



Ohh and you can get free delivery on your order if you have 100 forum posts :)​
 
Thank you everyone for your time and input, all the builds look very good and now i will just need to sit down with my son over the weekend and let him decide what he likes though at 12 years old it will only be visually, also im sorry i should have pointed out that i already have windows 10 and that although he does need a keyboard and mouse they don't necessarily need to be included as his birthday is coming up hench the build and one of his relatives could buy him them.. Many thanks again for your help.
 
PhoenixRising said:
Thank you everyone for your time and input, all the builds look very good and now i will just need to sit down with my son over the weekend and let him decide what he likes though at 12 years old it will only be visually, also im sorry i should have pointed out that i already have windows 10 and that although he does need a keyboard and mouse they don't necessarily need to be included as his birthday is coming up hench the build and one of his relatives could buy him them.. Many thanks again for your help.
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Sounds good :)

He can mix and match to some extent (RAM, graphics card and case most easily) if he fancies something from each for the look he's going for. Might be prudent to check in for compatibility, but yeah, I know how much looks count with that age group. My eldest is obsessed with skins in every game he plays. Basically spends all his pocket on looking good in online games... :/
 
strumpusplunket said:
Sounds good :)

He can mix and match to some extent (RAM, graphics card and case most easily) if he fancies something from each for the look he's going for. Might be prudent to check in for compatibility, but yeah, I know how much looks count with that age group. My eldest is obsessed with skins in every game he plays. Basically spends all his pocket on looking good in online games... :/
Click to expand...

I know exactly what you mean Strumpus, both my sons drive me crazy with wanting to get skins or loot boxes but they could be into worse think i guess, as for the mix and matching i have a feeling that he will see parts in every build that he will like above other parts once i have a list i can set about seeing if they are compatible..
 
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