New build, £750; hit me with your brainpower

[L-Jam]

BCF, you knowledgable bunch.

My brother's saved up £700ish to spend on a new gaming PC, and me not being in the 'buying a gaming PC game' for the last three years has left me a little out of whack.

And I know you lot know more. And I know you know I know.

Basically, there's 0 chance of him building it because we can't risk it going wrong in any shape or form (he's been saving up for 4 years, none of us have any knowledge on building comps though we know how to use one when we got one).

So, I've got a list of specs off the top of my head and with a little Googling that I think is achievable - am I wrong? I'm sure you can beat it.

He doesn't need a screen, mouse, keyboard etc - just the tower.

- Intel i5
- 8GB Ram (what speed you need these days?
- 4GB graphics card
- 128GB SSD
- 1TB Hard Drive
- 500w PSU

What do you all think?
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[RhynoCZ]

Fast, ''gaming'' RAM is a myth, spreaded by the marketing people of the manufacturers of such components. The only real benefit of a very fast RAM modules is when you run a APU.

So I'd say it does not matter how fast the RAM is.

As I don't know the prices of HW in the UK, this is where my knowledge ends, I'm afraid.

One thing though, don't buy a cheap PSU, as they tend to burn.
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[Jayy]

You're missing quite a fundamental part there, what mother board?

Most the new boards come with DDR4 RAM slots, so you could get for the RAM.

Speed wise, I don't think it makes much different whether it's 1600mhz or 2200mhz. Only thing I would say is put 16gb in rather than 8.

You've pretty much nailed the other bits though, make sure it's a good PSU, 750w Gold Corsair, Coolermaster, etc etc. Good brands.

4GB GPU is a good size as games push in to that area now.

[notbike]

For 700 quid you can get something very capable.

The most expensive component is (should be) your gfx card. Nvidia GTX980 will smash most games on high settings with decent FPS. Don't get a reference card, get something like an MSI with Twin Frozr aftermarket cooler like this one.

You can semi-cheap out on the rest and have a bulletproof build (except the PSU but a good one's only like £50).

Get a cheap unlocked i5 so you can overclock the bastard for more performance for your money. No point getting a 6600k though.

A Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler will give you a 30 degree idle roughly and you can always slap a 2nd fan on if you want superior cooling, and they're only £20 odd compared to £100 for a closed loop water cooler.

I personally don't think you should go for DDR4 or DDR3L RAM or the compatible 170 chipset motherboards because they're costly compared to DDR3 and the performance difference especially for gaming is negligible. You only do that if you want to build an enthusiast grade PC for the shits and giggles.

On a 700 quid budget get some Kingston DDR3 RAM rated at 1600mhz. You can get quad channel 4x2gb for cheap.

Decent motherboard with OC capability shouldn't be more than £100. ASUS/MSI is my recommendation.

A cheap case.

Go for a samsung SSD if you want an SSD. Don't really have a recommendation for HDDs, I can't remmeber what brand mine is lol.

On the PSU note, 500w is enough for a single card. They become less efficient when you have too much wattage that the PC isn't using. 800W+ are usually used for SLI. Also if you for a branded one like Corsair, a lot of their PSUs are manufactured by Seasonic. You can probably get a Seasonic PSU identical to a Corsair PSU for cheaper.

[chris-red]

The RAM size of graphics cards is a redundant way of speccing them. Games haven't said 'requires a xxxmb graphics card for probably about 10 years now.

So much so I couldn't tell you off the top of my head how much RAM the 2 graphics cards I currently have that were about £300 each have.
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[CaNsA]

£760 quid
Not bad TBH
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ocuk-tech-labs-skylake-z170-midi-tower-gaming-pc-configurator-fs-007-tl.html

[andys675]

bigger SSD, for a new build I'd get a 500gb SSD for windows steam and origin, and a 1TB hard drive for storing films and pictures

PSU needs to be decent, just got myself a corsair CX600M
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[orac]

currently thinking a new build myself.
I would go for at least 750 for the PSU and at least 16gb of ram (I have 8gb for 10 years iirc)

also do you need a case or are you recycling the old one? also cooling, bone stock, overclocking or not?

is it only going to be gaming, or does it have other uses. I use mine for gaming and photo editing so will be looking at maybe using ram disk for things like photo shop which also drinks up ram.
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"with nothing left to lose, there is everything to gain. It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog"

[GetawayDj]

This is my current build, already had the case, keyboard & mouse etc when I bought everything

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/T6zK99

Could save quite a bit of money just by getting a 960 GPU instead of a 970
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CBF 125 (sold), XJ 600 Diversion (sold), RF900
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[L-Jam]

Is it worth getting a 970 over a 960 then in terms of longevity? I'm assuming nvidea are the dog's bollocks again then? (Last time I bought a budget-ish card was when the 1gb 6870 was popular ) He tends to play games at 1980x1080 on one screen, maybe two, stuff like BF4, Skyrim, Fallout 4.

So, this is what I've gathered so far..

8/16GB DDR3 Ram because the motherboards are less expensive, performance difference is negligible for gaming & standard computer use
£100ish motherboard by Asus/MSI/Gigabyte (haven't got a clue about these really atm, need to do more reading though I don't know what I'm looking at much)
i5 but no need for a 'k' because overclocking voids warranty and processor isn't really a bottleneck these days for decent gaming, normal comp use and light processing tasks i.e. simple pic editing
any decent CPU cooler
256gb SSD
1GB Hard Drive
500w branded PSU
need to do more research on graphics cards to find the sweet spot between price and bang for buck?
any case
CD drive


... any shop suggestions? Overclockers looks a bit pricer, Dino PC looks really pricey (where I got mine from last time) ---->

DINOPC Build

CPU: - Intel Core i5 6500
CPU Cooler - Cooler Master Hyper 103
RAM: - 16GB Crucial 2133mhz DDR4 (2x8GB)
Graphics card: - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB
Motherboard:- Gigabyte Z170-HD3P
Operating System: - Windows 10 Home (64-bit)
Hard Drive: - Samsung 250GB 850 Evo SSD
Secondary Hard Drive: - Seagate 1TB (Hybrid 8GB SSD)
Optical Drive - 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA
Case: - Corsair Carbide Spec-01
PSU:- 550W Corsair VS
Internet: - Wireless 802.11N 300Mbps MIMO PCI-E card
Sound Card: - Onboard 7.1 Audio
Warranty:- 3 Year SureCare Warranty £963.08
____________________
Journalist, student, egotist.
Click here if you're a young biker, wondering what to do after a moped/125!
Skp 50 --> GS 500 --> CBR600F with custom HRC paint jobby --> GSX-R 750 K7, beautiful!

[CaNsA]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

[GetawayDj]

I only went for the 970 because I had a little bit more spare cash than I thought and thought sod it, I'll have it. It was also on offer at the time and came with 2 free games, and a free years subscription. Plus the place I bought it from (Aria) is only about 10 minutes away from me.

That pcpartpickers website will show you the best price for things but still shop around, I got lucky with some offers on the stuff I got with Aria and Amazon, and I think dabs too.
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Renault Kangoo x2 (sold), Ford Transit x 2

[Im-a-Ridah]

For gaming it's all down to the graphics card really. In terms of CPU definitely have a look at an FX6300 or FX6350 which should be good enough unless you have an extremely high end card. The CPU just needs to be fast enough that it wont bottleneck the card. An AMD FX6300 is probably £50 to £70 cheaper than an i5, money that would probably deliver more bang put into a GPU.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTNCEBZr_YU