£500 Gaming PC

[mycarsavw]

The boy has decided Xbox isn't the future and wants to come over to the Darkside.

Games will be older COD (MW2, BlOps), Minecraft (lots of mods he says) and not much else.

Prices and budget are exc. VAT

CPU - AMD FX 6300 Black - £67
Mobo - Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 - £41
GPU - Assistance required!
RAM - Corsair Vengeance 8Gb - £33
PSU - Corsair CXM430 - £36
SSD - Crucial BX100 250Gb - £55
ODD - Already have one.
Case - Fractal Design Mini - £54
OS - W8.1 64bit - £65
Monitor - Already have a TV-cum-monitor, 19" 720p
Keyb/Mouse - TBA

Total ~ £351 which leaves £149 for a GPU.

Suggestions on a GPU and improvements on the above will be greatly received, thank you

[kalniel]

GTX 960 is hard to beat for £150 - quite a pocket rocket. Looks like a nice build.

[DanceswithUnix]

The R9 380 can also be had for under £150, a bit quicker than the 960. Both will only have 2GB of vram at that price.

http://www.ebuyer.com/714714-sapphir...e-11242-02-20g

Edit to add: TBH, I am not sure which of the two I would go for they are fairly evenly matched. When I made my decision there was a clear price advantage as the 960 was stupidly overpriced.

Thoughts of getting a freesync monitor in the future did play a part in going AMD.

For your current 720p requirement, either would give really high frame rates with the quality turned quite high up.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I had a GTX960 - its alright but the R9 380 is a better card and Novatech did have an R9 380 2GB for £120 recently.

This is the only mATX AMD AM3+ motherboard I would get:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TOBQQTK/?tag=pcp0f-21

It uses the 970 chipset.

I would also consider the new Skylake Core i3 chips too and a cheap motherboard:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...47w-cpu-retail
http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-...b150-micro-atx

Not sure if the Skylake Core i3 chips can be overclocked or whether the chipset limitations are still there,so went for the most reasonably priced mATX motherboard with 4 RAM slots.

You might want to consider this PSU:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/430w-...mm-fan-atx-psu

Here is the only review I found:

https://translate.google.co.uk/trans...tml&edit-text=

It appears to use an ADDA Hydro bearing fan and reasonable quality capacitors.

There is also higher wattage versions of the same TS range and the older XFX PRO 550W is available for around £40:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...-1x-135mm-fan-

[DanceswithUnix]

This is the only mATX AMD AM3+ motherboard I would get:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TOBQQTK/?tag=pcp0f-21

It uses the 970 chipset.

I have one of those, last I looked the price was over £70 hence I didn't mention it. Nice board, lots of fan options in the BIOS which is nice for a compact machine.

[mycarsavw]

GTX 960 is hard to beat for £150 - quite a pocket rocket. Looks like a nice build.

The R9 380 can also be had for under £150, a bit quicker than the 960. Both will only have 2GB of vram at that price.

http://www.ebuyer.com/714714-sapphir...e-11242-02-20g

Edit to add: TBH, I am not sure which of the two I would go for they are fairly evenly matched. When I made my decision there was a clear price advantage as the 960 was stupidly overpriced.

Thoughts of getting a freesync monitor in the future did play a part in going AMD.

For your current 720p requirement, either would give really high frame rates with the quality turned quite high up.

I was stuck between a GTX 960 and an R9 - seems I was on the right track.

I thought it was a nice build too, then CTF visited my thread and now my head hurts!

I was considering giving the boy my R9 285 and getting a new card for myself, but I think that's upgrade-itis kicking in. I'll hang on a bit to see what happens on Scan's TO offers but I think it's going to be whatever is cheaper at the time.

I had a GTX960 - its alright but the R9 380 is a better card and Novatech did have an R9 380 2GB for £120 recently.

This is the only mATX AMD AM3+ motherboard I would get:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TOBQQTK/?tag=pcp0f-21

It uses the 970 chipset.

[...]

You might want to consider this PSU:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/430w-...mm-fan-atx-psu

Here is the only review I found:

https://translate.google.co.uk/trans...tml&edit-text=

It appears to use an ADDA Hydro bearing fan and reasonable quality capacitors.

There is also higher wattage versions of the same TS range and the older XFX PRO 550W is available for around £40:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...-1x-135mm-fan-

Thanks as always CTF.

I've not used ASRock before, stupid question but what makes it better than the one I initially picked?

I considered Skylake but I'd been out the loop for too long and it sort of passed me by. Are the benefits enough to outweigh the extra costs?

The only issue I see with the PSUs is the lack of modular connections - the case is quite compact and it's nice to be able to remove what I don't use. That said, I used an Antec TruePower Classic 550W in my last build (in the same case) on your recommendation and other than a bulging side panel <fnar> it all fitted nicely.

I can see me gifting him my current PC and building myself a new one at this rate

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The motherboard you chose is base on an ancient chipset and does not use cooled VRMs which are kind of important for FX CPUs. The Skylake Core i3 chips might be quite good I suspect but we will need to wait for some reviews.

[cptwhite_uk]

RE: GPU I got an offer for the Powercolor PCS R9 380 4Gb for £153 around a month ago, using bespokeoffers website (works like Flubit). It's currently £160 on Novatech, if you can't be bothered with the hassle of waiting for an offer.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Novatech had an MSI R9 380 2GB for £120,which I was tempted to buy especially after getting a refund on the GTX960 I had which went kaput but I am going to wait for a R9 380 4GB or GTX960 4GB primarily since I might want to mod FO4.

OcUK did have an MSI GTX780 3GB for £170,which I nearly bought but I am uncertain with Pascal launching next year,whether Nvidia will bother optimising performance for Kepler anymore!

[mycarsavw]

The motherboard you chose is base on an ancient chipset and does not use cooled VRMs which are kind of important for FX CPUs.

Gotcha, 970 being the chipset.

The Skylake Core i3 chips might be quite good I suspect but we will need to wait for some reviews.

Gotcha again, thank you.

[mycarsavw]

Revised parts list;

CPU - AMD FX 6300 Black - £67
Mobo - ASRock 970M Pro 3 - £56
GPU - R9 380 - £127
RAM - Corsair Vengeance 8Gb - £33
PSU - Corsair CXM430 - £36
SSD - Crucial BX100 250Gb - £55
ODD - Already have one.
Case - Fractal Design Mini - £54
OS - W8.1 64bit - £65

Total ~ £493

[mycarsavw]

Little snag with this one, the mobo is OOS until mid-November.

Could anyone suggest a decent alternative. I'm a bit reluctant to go with my original choice based on CTF's feedback.

[DannyM]

http://www.lambda-tek.com/Asrock-970...ZfAaAnoR8P8HAQ

[mycarsavw]

Yup, found that one too, but there's a 3 day lead time and I need it tomorrow

[Zak33]

spend MORE on the SDD bud... less on the graphics card

Get the BEST SSD you an afford and drop less dough on the graphics card.

I'd also spend more on the PSU and less on the grpahics card

Lets be fair.. Minecraft.... COD Blops....

i AM right and next year when you upgrade the card for him as a birthday present, you KNOW it will all make sense!

[mycarsavw]

*shakes fist* Welcome to the thread Zak

I plan to not spend anything more on this PC than you see here. This is the "I'm looking for a job that'll allow me to buy my own upgrades in the future" build. I'm kickstarting his PC career, the rest is up to him.

Tempted to bin the mobo/CPU and opt for FM2+ by way of an X4 860K Black Edition @ £46 and a Gigabyte F2A88XM-DS2 @ £35 which drops it all down to £445 and leaves me enough to grab some peripherals (keyb, mouse, headphones).

Edit: All change.

Intel build here we come(!)