Gaming PC advice

[caleyjaggi]

I'm looking to get a gaming PC , mainly cos I want to play Elite dangerous and also the kids will use it. I've been advised to try the likes of Scan or Cyberpowersystems rather than the high street but I'm really not sure what sort of spec I need to make sure it's a decent experience.

Would a budget of about a grand get something good? I realise you can spend absolute thousands but is that enough to run most games well?

I read something saying I should be looking at 6 core or higher to future proof it but I'm really struggling with all the options you get on these PC websites mainly because I haven't a feckn clue.

Thanks in advance!

[Homer Thompson]

I'm looking to get a gaming PC , mainly cos I want to play Elite dangerous and also the kids will use it. I've been advised to try the likes of Scan or Cyberpowersystems rather than the high street but I'm really not sure what sort of spec I need to make sure it's a decent experience.

Would a budget of about a grand get something good? I realise you can spend absolute thousands but is that enough to run most games well?

I read something saying I should be looking at 6 core or higher to future proof it but I'm really struggling with all the options you get on these PC websites mainly because I haven't a feckn clue.

Thanks in advance!

A grand should be plenty.

With that kind of budget I would go for an i7 CPU. 16GB of RAM is plenty and not that expensive. I'd also recommend getting and SSD drive to install your OS and basic applications but you'll also want a large HDD to install data and most games on.

Your only other decision then, is NVIDIA or AMD graphics. Personally, Ive always gone with NVIDIA but out of familiarity more than anything else. There are a huge range of GFX cards, so its sometimes useful to pick a price range and then do a bit of reading around on whats available. My general advice on that front it to look out for Ti (NVIDIA) and overclocked - OC - cards. Theyre sometimes not much more expensive but will give you better performance and, therefore, a bit of future proofing too

[Romeo]

I bought my sons gaming PC from www.pcspecialist.co.uk cant fault them for customer service and the PC has been great. They have a system builder on there where you can specify all your own components. For gaming a quad core i5 is a good option and a graphics card with 2gb ddr5 will let you play games maxed out, also 8gb of ram is fine unless your are planning on heavy video editing.

Let us know how you get on.

[Venti]

As Mr X says. £1K is more than enough for a decent gaming set up. (even if building it yourself)

Would recommend NVIDIA for your GFX. Even with an 'older' NVIDIA GeForce I can still run things on ultra.

[Romeo]

Would recommend NVIDIA for your GFX. Even with an 'older' NVIDIA GeForce I can still run things on ultra.

Get one (or 2) of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/623639-evga-gtx-titan-black-6gb-gddr5-dual-dvi-hdmi-displayport-pci-e-graphics-06g-p4-3790-kr?utm_source=google&utm_medium=products&gclid=CjwKEAjw9-CfBRD8lt_w86zJiDUSJAADZA38qyHTX6LLCA5Z_TfBgIoV0TzfEJ3KzqQai7dMJUiQvhoCZwfw_wcB

[Homer Thompson]

As Mr X says. £1K is more than enough for a decent gaming set up. (even if building it yourself)

Would recommend NVIDIA for your GFX. Even with an 'older' NVIDIA GeForce I can still run things on ultra.

Building it yourself should be cheaper, shouldnt it?

Get one (or 2) of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/623639-evga-gtx-titan-black-6gb-gddr5-dual-dvi-hdmi-displayport-pci-e-graphics-06g-p4-3790-kr?utm_source=google&utm_medium=products&gclid=CjwKEAjw9-CfBRD8lt_w86zJiDUSJAADZA38qyHTX6LLCA5Z_TfBgIoV0TzfEJ3KzqQai7dMJUiQvhoCZwfw_wcB

*drool*

I reckon I could put together a build for under a grand with one of those in

[Romeo]

Building it yourself should be cheaper, shouldnt it?

*drool*

I reckon I could put together a build for under a grand with one of those in

2 gb of ram and a celeron

[jock001]

Obviously computers are getting better and faster all the time but as I understand it, graphics processing is where the most advances are being made just now. Proper 3d card chipsets getting stuck in mobile phones means huge effort is being put into making them more efficient and cheaper.

That's why I'm going to give a weird opinion. Don't buy a great graphics card right now. Build a PC where the graphics card is the biggest problem and the first thing you'll upgrade at a later date.

You'll still be able to play everything in 1080 x 1920, just not in as polished a way or at 100FPS but when the time comes to upgrade it will be a lot cheaper.

[Venti]

Get one (or 2) of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/623639-evga-gtx-titan-black-6gb-gddr5-dual-dvi-hdmi-displayport-pci-e-graphics-06g-p4-3790-kr?utm_source=google&utm_medium=products&gclid=CjwKEAjw9-CfBRD8lt_w86zJiDUSJAADZA38qyHTX6LLCA5Z_TfBgIoV0TzfEJ3KzqQai7dMJUiQvhoCZwfw_wcB

Wonder if they'd take my kidney as payment.

[Romeo]

Obviously computers are getting better and faster all the time but as I understand it, graphics processing is where the most advances are being made just now. Proper 3d card chipsets getting stuck in mobile phones means huge effort is being put into making them more efficient and cheaper.

That's why I'm going to give a weird opinion. Don't buy a great graphics card right now. Build a PC where the graphics card is the biggest problem and the first thing you'll upgrade at a later date.

You'll still be able to play everything in 1080 x 1920, just not in as polished a way or at 100FPS but when the time comes to upgrade it will be a lot cheaper.

It's worth considering. I built mine using the A10 7850k (overclocked from 3.7 per core to 4, been great so far but a GPU is the next thing I am getting, probably an R7 270x. Without a gpu at the moment I can play Thief, Tomb Raider and others perfectly well, obviously not on max settings but fine for me (cue muffled laughs from MrX)

I spent a bit more on ram and got 8gb of ripjaw x (which I would thoroughly recommend) 2133 ram which really helps if using a CPU only system.

[Homer Thompson]

Obviously computers are getting better and faster all the time but as I understand it, graphics processing is where the most advances are being made just now. Proper 3d card chipsets getting stuck in mobile phones means huge effort is being put into making them more efficient and cheaper.

That's why I'm going to give a weird opinion. Don't buy a great graphics card right now. Build a PC where the graphics card is the biggest problem and the first thing you'll upgrade at a later date.

You'll still be able to play everything in 1080 x 1920, just not in as polished a way or at 100FPS but when the time comes to upgrade it will be a lot cheaper.

However, with a grand to spend, he can pretty easily put together a high spec PC with enough left over to buy a decent card - something in the £200-300 range.

GFX card technology has advanced year on year for a long time now. Im not sure now is any different really. A high end card will still give you several years of playing games at max res etc

[Venti]

Think my GFX card is about 4yrs old. Worth investing IMO.

Running Warlords of Draenor Beta on max & no issues.

[EdgarusQPFC]

Ive been working on my own PC since the start of the year, ive spent maybe £500 and i am very happy with my current rig. It leaves loads of room for expansion when needed and there is simply nothing i cannot play.

Processor: AMD A8 6600K 3.9Ghz Quad Core(Turbo to 4.2Ghz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte F2A55M-HD2 Board
Memory: 8GB DDR3 1600mhz Corsair Vengeance Memory = These 3 cost me £190
Storage: 1TB = £44
Graphics: Sapphire Radeon R9 270X = £120
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium = £ 45
Cooler master Heat sink = £16
So far ive thrown about £450 into this if you include delivery charges. So yeah you could do a hell of a lot better if you are sinking a grand into a PC


I didn't spend anything on a Power supply/case as i already had those. But you could get both for £60-70 or much less depending on what case you choose.

[forehead7]

I built mine about 10 months ago and spent more than a grand, but that includes monitor, keyboard, mouse, wireless adapter, Windows 7, webcam some other shit.

I think mine was;

Processor - i5 4670k
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770

RAM - 8GB - can't recall or find the brand

Motherboard - MSI Z87-G45 Gaming

Storage - originally I had a 120GB SSD but I upgraded to 250gb fairly recently. Also have a 1TB internal hard drive

Power Supply - 750W Corsair

Case was just a cheap one, I'd definitely spend a bit more on a case next time/if I decide to put some more money into it.

I build this myself having never really done anything like it before. I watched a bunch of Youtube videos beforehand (most notably, Carey Holzman's channel). It was far easier than I thought it would be.

[Homer Thompson]

I built mine about 10 months ago and spent more than a grand, but that includes monitor, keyboard, mouse, wireless adapter, Windows 7, webcam some other shit.

I think mine was;

Processor - i5 4670k

Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770

RAM - 8GB - can't recall or find the brand

Motherboard - MSI Z87-G45 Gaming

Storage - originally I had a 120GB SSD but I upgraded to 250gb fairly recently. Also have a 1TB internal hard drive

Power Supply - 750W Corsair

Case was just a cheap one, I'd definitely spend a bit more on a case next time/if I decide to put some more money into it.

I build this myself having never really done anything like it before. I watched a bunch of Youtube videos beforehand (most notably, Carey Holzman's channel). It was far easier than I thought it would be.

Its one of those things that looks really daunting, but actually is pretty straightforward if you know what you're doing/have instructions. It literally isnt any more complicated than screwing the MB to the case and then plugging everything into the MB.

Heres the list of what I bought a couple of years ago

http://www.ebuyer.com/lists/list/166285

A lot of it isnt available anymore, but the whole lot cost around £700. I already had storage though

One thing I forgot to mention was that, for a gaming PC, you should really keep around £100 of the budget for a decent mouse and keyboard. Unless you intend to use a gamepad.

[hellbhoy]

I'm looking to get a gaming PC , mainly cos I want to play Elite dangerous and also the kids will use it. I've been advised to try the likes of Scan or Cyberpowersystems rather than the high street but I'm really not sure what sort of spec I need to make sure it's a decent experience.

Would a budget of about a grand get something good? I realise you can spend absolute thousands but is that enough to run most games well?

I read something saying I should be looking at 6 core or higher to future proof it but I'm really struggling with all the options you get on these PC websites mainly because I haven't a feckn clue.

Thanks in advance!

There PC's out there at around the £600 mark that will easily play most modern games on high to very high settings if you are not too bothered about achieving the highest possible frame rate and textures.

As for six core PC's ?, they are really only good for rendering video projects as the video card itself that does all the hard work leaving a six core CPU almost idle on some cores. An Intel i7 4820k quad core is more than ample at X4 3.7Ghz and is in the LGA 2011 socket format which is future proof or you could go for a i7 4770k which is cheaper on a LGA 1150 socket.

As posted the ram should be at least 8 gig or more and be DDR3 16,000mhz minimum but I'd suggest 16 gig because games and programs are growing in size by the month chewing up any free ram you may have pretty quickly in future and quickens loading times .

Also the power supply is very very important !, get one like a Corsair that is gold certified if at all possible to avoid blue screens and shut downs and other problems cheaper ones give and have a decent headroom for performance.

An SSD drive with at least over 200 gig like a Samsung Evo which is one of the fastest available will load anything quickly.

Lastly the video card !, AMD and Nvidia make damn good cards but the specific card manufacturer who make the cards from the GPU's can be a minefield, cards are becoming smaller faster and more efficient like the Nvidia GTX 650 Ti on the new Maxwell chip is lightening quick but uses not a lot of power and runs more quietly and is cooler. I have an Nvidia GTX 760 which runs just about most games near the highest settings or ultra on some older games without sounding like a hoover in the background.

Ebay shops sell decent custom builds at around the £700 to £800 mark fitted with quality parts ready to go.

Good luck.