Spec Recommendation - £650 budget.

[Rhoxy]

Looking to build a PC purely for gaming. I do not need keyboard, mouse, OS or monitor. It will be used mostly for Steam games.

£650 budget however it can go a little over.

Thanks

 

[tamzzy]

full amd build:
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280 Gaming 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £199.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £83.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HDTS212EZSTA 9.5mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £65.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £53.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 650 Liquid CPU Cooler £29.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £665.89 (includes shipping : £12.50).



of course there is more than one way to skin a cat and you can go for an intel build too, but you'd be sacrificing some parts for that:

full intel build but ofc its 100 quid overbudget (but would be the one i'd recommend - if you can stretch that far)

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280 Gaming 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £199.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £82.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HDTS212EZSTA 9.5mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £65.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 650 Liquid CPU Cooler £29.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £761.90 (includes shipping : £12.50).





nerfed intel build to fit the budget:

YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £189.95
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £82.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £654.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).



you don't get:
the cooler (so you can't overclock straight away)
slightly worse cooler on the graphics card
lose the ssd

 

[Danny75]

If budget is going to be adhered to, I'd go with an AMD build to get a good balanced rig, like Tamzzy's spec shows. Then in the future if you want more CPU power, you could sell just the motherboard and CPU, and go i5/i7.

 

[dacads]

I would spend £20 more on the GPU and you have in your hands the R9 280X with 2 free games. Compared to tamzzy spec, better looking motherboard with same specs/chipset. Better SSD. RAM matches motherboard colour

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS Radeon R9 280X iPower IceQ X2 Boost 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £229.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £83.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £67.99
1 x ASRock 970 Extreme3 R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Zalman Z3-Plus Midi-Tower - Black £39.95
1 x Raijintek Aidos Direct Contact CPU Cooler £14.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £671.46 (includes shipping : £8.00).



All for only £5 more

 

[tamzzy]

better looking motherboard with same specs/chipset. Better SSD. RAM matches motherboard colour
/snip

except the mobo isn't very good at all
and re: ram colour, you cant see it with a tower heatsink (with a red fan!) lol

 

[dacads]

Said who? At least back up your statements If you're going to spend £75 on mobo might as well get the 990 chipset..

 

[tamzzy]

that board uses a 4+1 power phase and cheap vrms compared to the asus
if price is a concern then i'd say this board instead:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte 970A-UD3P AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £67.99
Total : £76.69 (includes shipping : £7.25).

 

[ExtremeIC3cream]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £239.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £83.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-UD3P AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £67.99
1 x Seagate SSHD 7200RPM 3.5" 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DX001) SSHD Hybrid Drive £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-03 Mid Tower Gaming Case (CC-9011052-WW) £45.95
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 650 Liquid CPU Cooler £29.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £663.86 (includes shipping : £12.50).



Has a 280X which great for gaming for years to come. a 6300 which can be overclocked to a decent speed. To fit the 280X in the build I picked a SSHD over the SSD. The speed from the SSHD will be decent but the overall PC will be much better because of the great Graphics Card.

 

[dacads]

I'd just go with an SSD for £8 more