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Build Advice Budget Gaming PC for £400?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by janineo, 4 Oct 2013.

  1. janineo

    janineo What's a Dremel?

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    Hi,

    A friend has asked for advice about buying a gaming PC for his son.
    The budget is £400, but doesn't include a monitor/mouse/keyboard.

    Games played are football and racing games, so FIFA is on the list. He's not allowed to play GTA as too young, though his dad has indicated he might want to play it. He likes Minecraft too.

    He'll be using his HD tv as the monitor, and will want to watch films too. He has expressed an interest in learning game design, so would like to learn to create basic applications, and perhaps more advanced games when he is older.

    I would build him a system, but he lives 100 miles away in Birmingham so it's not really practical.
    Can anyone suggest reputable stores to buy a system from, and what should he be looking for in a system?

    AMD or Intel?
    Onboard or discrete graphics?
    RAM amount?
    HDD size?
    PSU size?
    Win 7 or 8?

    Many thanks,
    Janine
     
  2. Harlequin

    Harlequin Modder

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  3. Darkwisdom

    Darkwisdom Level 99 Retro Nerd

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    Terrible motherboard; cheap and unreliable psu, cheap hard drive and a cheap case. Doesn't include an OS either. It doesn't actually save you anything compared to Scan for example. Good for people that don't have enough information to build a rig themselves. Unfortunately for £400, you're not going to be able to buy a system with lots of graphics oomph.
     
  4. Harlequin

    Harlequin Modder

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    psu is a branded corsair 500w ,case is a cheap £40 from ebuyer , motherboard whilst also `cheap` is also £60


    how else would you like to spend way over £400 on a pc?


    priced up the same parts from scan , and it came to £449 + shpping.
     
  5. janineo

    janineo What's a Dremel?

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    What can you get for £400?
    If there is a good upgrade route to improve it in the future, what would be a reasonable graphics capable system spec now?
     
  6. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    For £400 you'll be needing an AMD based system, possibly even just using the onboard APU until your friend can save up money for a better GPU (£150-200). Unfortunately, I'm not totally up to date with AMD's offerings, but here's a rough build:

    [​IMG]

    You should be able to get your Scan account set up for free shipping, so take that £9 odd off the total.

    EDIT: Swap the RAM for this, £1 more, but faster and AMD's APUs like RAM speed.
     
  7. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    SO disappointed that this would ever get a recommendation here.

    [​IMG]
    build by Penderyn, on Flickr

    6 core CPU FX 6300 which seems to be performing reasonably well in new games.
    Radeon 7850 which will be fine for 1080p
    4GB of Corsair RAM
    EVGA 500W PSU
    SSHD - 500GB of strorage and a great speed boost for things like booting into windows.
     
  8. loftie

    loftie Multimodder

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    You sure you linked the right thing?

    Also, I assume the £400 limit includes the OS? Curiously, what's wrong with the MB in the system Harlequin posted?
     
  9. Harlequin

    Harlequin Modder

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    no , for the £465 there was no OS (he had win7 home anyway) and yes it was a branded PSU not a no name generic thing
     
  10. modd1uk

    modd1uk Multimodder

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  11. janineo

    janineo What's a Dremel?

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    Thanks for the help guys, I have passed on the info to my collegue.

    He's going to have a look and has said he will probably have a go at building it himself.
    I've said I'll be happy to double check his specs for him before he buys anything :)

    Cheers
     

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