How much do I need to spend? General pc

[Duncan_Mon]

Hi all,

Been a good few years since I was on here frequently. Think my last PC build was maybe 2006. Used to really follow the whole industry and its tech.

Fell completely out of touch and have had a pre built high end £1100 dell laptop since around 08. An XPS M1530. Think it was as high as it could be specced at time. Resolution was super high screen. Actual laptop graphics card etc.

Well, it finally succumb to the melting graphics card problem which I never knew anything about (there was a period of extended warranty). So its finally time for me to put together another PC build.

No doubts i could put it together easy. Doubt muchs changed. My problem is I have no idea how much I need to spend.

I want it to fit in my tv stand alongside xbox one, virgin etc. So I need to go mini or micro itx and case that suits. Not sure if this means I'm building a HTPC then? I'm not picky on case looks at all.

It will be used majority as a browser and media player. 1080p mkvs. Full hd Netflix streaming and elsewhere. I may do a bit of gaming. Some indie stuff on steam. My mainstream gaming is consoles now.

May want to stream audio to another room in future.

Used to code / photoshop / flash a bit which is what I bought my last laptop for college. But I pretty much dropped out the industry after college. It's not something I think ill ever go back to.

I want an SSD for system drive. Never had one before, Going to take the £500gb out my laptop and use that in USB cradle / inside new PC. Will get a 2tb or similiar after and outside initial budget.

So I was thinking £300 to £400?

But happy to go a couple hundred more if its necessary or worth it. But really I just want a machine that'll run win 7 (no desire for 10) and do basic stuff faster and quiter than my old laptop.

One thing I may want to run that may effect things is the real guitar input game Rocksmith? Will I need a sound card to do this laglessly etc?

It's just HDMI to a tv. Sound out is just tv atm but if I keep this cheap an av system amp nd speakers etc might be on cards soon.

So I've rambled enough. I apologize. I've spent days reading through builds in this forum but I'm still none the less sure what way to go.

If anyhing the mountains of parts are just confusing me furthur and I feel stressed over it. Too much choice!

If someone could recommend me a build or push me in the right direction or any replies would be appreciated. Cheers.

[Domestic_Ginger]

I'm not really up to date either. It sounds like any modern budget setup would be fine. The 2-3 hundred mark sounds doable.

I think 240gb ssds are about £50. A good start point!

I would find a case to right size and appearence. Peruse google images perhaps then maybe look at stores and reviews. Ideally with a low power build you might get an OK PSU and save some monies.

Budget AMD or Intel. No idea but I would find a decent mobo with the form factor of the case you have chosen and then the CPU. Probably nothing in it as it sounds like you won't be pushing it. Decent igpu maybe important.

Ddr3 is cheap atm. I would get 4gb; some might say 8. It is cheap so why not.

[Rossosaurus]

If you click on this link : uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/4L7PBm I have put together a quick mini itx PC you have water cooling so you don't melt another PC though that would be fairly impressive in my opinion. The GPU isn't the greatest but will do for indie games and is pretty good for £50. The CPU can be downgraded if you don't mind a dual core i3 or pentium. 8GB ram will do fine and the case is chheap one with ventilation. Any questions I'll try to answer

[Attila the Bun]

Duncan_Mon

Quick question...not being a console gamer I'm not sure what their capabilities are but I'm assuming that you are plugging your guitar into your console when you play Rocksmith...what console have you got and are you happy with the response times with that. I ask because if you know the console you can find out the tech spec of the said item. Then you can start to work out your minimum requirements.

Edit: best thing is decide your absolute max budget, so is it £400 or is it £600

[Duncan_Mon]

Thank you to both for your replies.

Really helps give me somewhere to start, I just feel over my head.


PC part picker really is fantastic. Last time I was on here it was individual scan links and I think I remember them first implementing a wish list you could let others view. How things have changed.

Thank you so much for that Ross if I get too stressed and down over this I now have a quick easy link to just go for that build. Wouldn't mind cutting it by £50 so I could include a ssd just at £400 ish.

Need to measure up my TV stand maybe look at alternate cases that would fit although that one might.

The main thing that confused me was the water cooler for the CPU? No stranger to aftermarket fans. Remember having a massive zalman (I think?) something like 6" heat sink and crazy fan design on my Athlon 64...

But yeah, water cooled? I know what it is. My basic understanding was of a reserve somewhere. With a cooler. Which is circulated through CPU unit and gpu etc. Is this still the same or has water cooling simpler and moved on?

Thanks again I really do appreciate it.

[Duncan_Mon]

Hi Atilla

Thanks for the reply hadnt refreshed page when I last replie.

I was playing rocksmith on my Xbox 360 which has since been replaced by an Xbox one. But I am now rocksmith less unless I get out the 360. There are other advantages due to availability of songs that playing on PC gives that is the main reason I want to go pc for rocksmith.

Response time with console rocksmith is negligible. I have read countless threads on rocksmith forums though about PC problems which was what made me think I may need a sound card or whatever.

£600 was sort of what I was willing to stretch to if I needed to go that far to just play the odd indie game and general pc use. Now that I've read a bit more and had a few replies it seems £400 would build me a PC that should perform way better i thought. So would rather stick to around there.

[Professor Frink]

It's a closed loop system that just goes from the CPU fitting to a single radiator (usually with one or two 12cm fans). Very hassle free.

youtube.

[Attila the Bun]

Just to give you a bit of a start (and I'm using Rocksmith as your baseline requirement) this link
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php...and-FAQ-Forums gives you minimum/recommended requirements.
The hardware listed is all end of life stuff but their current generation equivilent should be within budget.
Not knowing what Rocksmith version you have I don't know if the configuration stuff is of use to you but I bet there are other threads for different versions.

This link:
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/15...-specs-compare gives a breakdown of the Xbox Ones system specs and shows it's all pretty low end stuff so again you shouldn't have any problems staying within budget.

[Rossosaurus]

Corsair now have a water cooling system that is closed loop which means no maintenance is needed, refilling resovoir e.t.c, they're good if you dont want to go custom water cooled. If want to cut £50 maybe reduce to 4GB ram or a cheaper motherboard there was some ram without a heatspreader on there that was much cheaper still 8GB that might be alright.

[Attila the Bun]

Point about the closed loop water cooling systems. They start from about £35+ and unless you are planning to overclock your CPU to any degree, are an expensive unnecessary luxury. In most cases the supplied reference cooler (if you buy a retail CPU rather than an OEM CPU) is perfectly capable of handling the temperatures created by light gaming. If you plan to have this in your lounge then you may find that the reference cooler is noisy at high loads in which case you could invest in a cheapish 3rd party air cooler with a quiet fan at a later date.

Edit...if you choose the Intel Skylake option then be advised that they don't come with a reference cooler.

Thing about RAM...if you end up with an Intel CPU then all the HEXUS reviews I've seen have shown little difference in performance between 1600mhz RAM and those with higher frequencies. In this case some generic DDR3 8gb 1600mhz memory will set you back about £30-£35. If you go for an AMD APU option then the speed of the RAM has shown to be a significant factor in upping performance (HEXUS reviews again) so the money saved on buying an AMD APU / Motherboard setup can be spent on faster/bigger RAM. Not sure on the effect on AMD FX CPUs but I'm sure that there are reviews out there.

[EndlessWaves]

Not sure if this means I'm building a HTPC then?

Pretty much yeah.

I'd stick to Micro ATX, Mini-ITX motherboards are the latest fashion (usually in ludicrously large cases) and has rather a price premium these days.

It will be used majority as a browser and media player. 1080p mkvs. Full hd Netflix streaming and elsewhere. I may do a bit of gaming. Some indie stuff on steam. My mainstream gaming is consoles now.

We're currently going through a transition to new video encodings (HEVC and VP9) and dedicated decoding hardware is being released in bits and pieces. It's a shame your machine died now as Skylake is likely to be released in just a month or two which should be a further improvement.

Although on a desktop it's not too big a deal as you can always add a graphics card in future.

But happy to go a couple hundred more if its necessary or worth it. But really I just want a machine that'll run win 7 (no desire for 10)

Windows 7 security patches end in just over four years (January 2020) so you'll likely need to switch to Windows 10 at that point anyway. I'd just install it from the start personally.

PC part picker really is fantastic. Last time I was on here it was individual scan links and I think I remember them first implementing a wish list you could let others view. How things have changed.

Be aware that PCPartPicker has some fairly large holes in it's listing. Some categories like CPUs have everything but when it comes to picking a motherboard or case you want to see what's actually for sale on the store websites - even those PCPartPicker purports to represent.

The main thing that confused me was the water cooler for the CPU? No stranger to aftermarket fans. Remember having a massive zalman (I think?) something like 6" heat sink and crazy fan design on my Athlon 64...

Yeah, closed loop coolers are just fancy toys most of the time. They're good if the PC gets moved a lot (most of the weight is attached directly to the case) and the high end ones may have something to offer but generally a normal air cooler will be cheaper and quieter.

Response time with console rocksmith is negligible. I have read countless threads on rocksmith forums though about PC problems which was what made me think I may need a sound card or whatever.

It's pretty unusual for a game to use hardware sound processing these days, but app specific knowledge always trumps general trends. If the rocksmith players find it worth better with a certain sound card then you may want to include that (or at least budget for it if you want to try first without).

Now that I've read a bit more and had a few replies it seems £400 would build me a PC that should perform way better i thought. So would rather stick to around there.

Well the mainstream these days is in laptops and they're getting thinner and lower power so even the cheapest £28 Celeron G1820 is a fast, mid-range processor overall and can keep up with all but the fastest laptops.

£400 will require a couple of economies if you want a complete base unit, something like Rossosaurus's build is missing drives and a copy of windows which will add £150-200, depending on what storage you want.

I'd say about £450-500 for the best general use PC, an i3 system with all the trimmings. SSD + hard drive, Wi-fi, bluetooth etc. £400 is certainly doable though and there'll be nothing wrong with such a system, it'll just require a bit of thinking about what you do and don't want.

Edit...if you choose the Intel Skylake option then be advised that they don't come with a reference cooler.

That is only the currently released and very expensive K-suffix models for overclocking enthusiasts. Once we see the rest of the range get released I expect they will do.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Firstly,measure how much space you have - before a system is specced we will need to know what size case you will need! Also,I would get a sub £70 AMD A8 7600 - it will be more than fast enough for your needs. I know people will similar CPUs and they are perfectly fine for general purpose use.