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Hi all,

Soon I will hopefully be getting a new desktop pc, the only problem is finding one good enough for gaming and stuff.

My budget is approximately £900. I've been thinking about going with a custom built pc but every time i choose a configuration it ends up costing too much.

So, can anyone recommend any good normal pcs or any good custom pc sites/ configurations for those sites?

Thanks, in advance.

HP pavillion laptop with dual core. Very nice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A series

Hiya mate, i just got one, I did plenty of research before I bought it.

Are you going to be building it yourself or buying it premade?

If you build it yourself then you would well be in budget.

The I5-2500K is the chip of choice right now, I just got one and its turbo fast, slightly slower than the I7-2600K, but not much, and far cheaper.

Id buy this, and ask them for a better graphics card and a bit more ram. Should be nicely under £900.

But regardless, pick one off the A list from PC PRO in general and you cant go far wrong.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/desktops/366679/palicomp-phoenix-i5-destiny

I custom built mine using ebuyer and it set me back about 800 quid, and my pc is now awesome.

Oh and instead of a monitor, i bought a HD TV, and use that, and its sweeeet. 36" call of duty.

You should just wait until bulldozer comes out to a see what is it like.

But don't buy an expensive intel cpu. They are only marginally better amd ones but they cost over 200 euros while an amd can do almost the same with 100 euros. Also intel motherboards are more expensive.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_corei7_2600k_and_corei5_2500k/10.htm

only in cpu heavy games (most aren't cpu heavy bfbc2 is cpu heavy) and with low resolutions you will end up with cpu bottleneck although with with low res you will propably over 60 fps anyway. Console ports are sometimes cpu heavy but they dont cause huge stress on modern pcs anyway.

For the video card you would recommend the best you can afford but dont buy dual gpu cards because thats just overkill for single screen (I'm assuming you are going to play on single screen)

£900?

Build it yourself.
I built something that can handle pretty much any game on max settings for only £1000.

illuknisaa wrote:You should just wait until bulldozer comes out to a see what is it like.

But don't buy an expensive intel cpu. They are only marginally better amd ones but they cost over 200 euros while an amd can do almost the same with 100 euros. Also intel motherboards are more expensive.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_corei7_2600k_and_corei5_2500k/10.htm

only in cpu heavy games (most aren't cpu heavy bfbc2 is cpu heavy) and with low resolutions you will end up with cpu bottleneck although with with low res you will propably over 60 fps anyway. Console ports are sometimes cpu heavy but they dont cause huge stress on modern pcs anyway.

For the video card you would recommend the best you can afford but dont buy dual gpu cards because thats just overkill for single screen (I'm assuming you are going to play on single screen)

Mate, I dont get it, you said not to buy the intel processor, and the link you put on said they were awesome! look..

Pros:
Awesome overclocking
Lower temperatures
Great performance
Lower power consumpotion
Great media capabilities
Strong Integrated graphics solution
Pricing

Cons:
None



I say go with intel, the new Sandy Bridge stuff is fething mint!

Thanks for all the advice. I'm probably looking at buying pre-made and then upgrading it a bit or something along those lines.

What are the main sort of things needed for RTS/RPG games as these are what I'll be playing mostly.

mattyrm wrote:

illuknisaa wrote:You should just wait until bulldozer comes out to a see what is it like.

But don't buy an expensive intel cpu. They are only marginally better amd ones but they cost over 200 euros while an amd can do almost the same with 100 euros. Also intel motherboards are more expensive.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_corei7_2600k_and_corei5_2500k/10.htm

only in cpu heavy games (most aren't cpu heavy bfbc2 is cpu heavy) and with low resolutions you will end up with cpu bottleneck although with with low res you will propably over 60 fps anyway. Console ports are sometimes cpu heavy but they dont cause huge stress on modern pcs anyway.

For the video card you would recommend the best you can afford but dont buy dual gpu cards because thats just overkill for single screen (I'm assuming you are going to play on single screen)

Mate, I dont get it, you said not to buy the intel processor, and the link you put on said they were awesome! look..

Pros:
Awesome overclocking
Lower temperatures
Great performance
Lower power consumpotion
Great media capabilities
Strong Integrated graphics solution
Pricing

Cons:
None



I say go with intel, the new Sandy Bridge stuff is fething mint!

Check the charts while intel is better than amd amd is not far behind and considering those charts don't reflect reality (low gpu usage) that gap between amd and intel will be even smaller (0-10 fps)

tantan628 wrote:Thanks for all the advice. I'm probably looking at buying pre-made and then upgrading it a bit or something along those lines.

What are the main sort of things needed for RTS/RPG games as these are what I'll be playing mostly.

Don't buy premade and upgrade that because it's way more expensive and you want the best you can afford and premade pc parts might not be compatible with upgraded parts or you have to upgrade everything in order to get the maximum potential of your pc.

It's really hard to say what parts are good for rpg and rts games but they require more cpu power than gpu due to various backgound calculations (ie your str vs enemy toughness) but for instance wither 2 just loves gpus and my cpu (amd phenom II x4 965 oced to 3.7ghz) hardly doing any work.

Y'know, I need to replace my PC - these computer threads have made me seriously think about building my own. Is it difficult?

Albatross wrote:Y'know, I need to replace my PC - these computer threads have made me seriously think about building my own. Is it difficult?

Its not like you can just crack it yourself like mate, me and my brother built mine, and I have to say, the techie nerds overstate the savings, you know, the sort of speccy dweebs that mock you if you dont use linux? Im convinced they lie about the savings to try and sound clever.

I commented this after I finished mine about 3 months ago, I spent about 700 quid on parts, but then once I had bought windows (90quid) my nice 32" telly (250) I think I saved about what, 50 quid?

And I shopped around and got my parts cheap as I could using amazon and ebuyer. I literally couldnt get the stuff any cheaper, maybe I paid slightly over the odds store buying windows, but still.

If I was you, Id get one premade, and im going to do that next time around. Apparently both chillblast and palicomp make excellent PCs from scratch, and you pay only slightly more than you would anyway.

Do the math yourself, take this for example.

http://www.chillblast.com/product.php?productid=19928&mode=reset

Try and buy all the parts, including windows 7, for 500. I doubt its doable.

Yeah, that looks pretty good for the price... interesting.

I've been looking at a few guides, and it doesn't look MEGA-difficult, but I reckon you might have a point on the parts cost. Saying that, I don't need a case, DVD/CD RW drive or a flatscreen monitor as I already have that stuff - I'd need a motherboard, processor, hard-drive, RAM, power supply etc., so I could probably make some savings...


A lot to consider.

It really isn't difficult.

If you shop around you can get a computer capable of DX11 graphics, 8gb ram, and a terrabyte of harddrive for about 500 quid.

mattyrm wrote:
http://www.chillblast.com/product.php?productid=19928&mode=reset

Try and buy all the parts, including windows 7, for 500. I doubt its doable.

I'll take that challenge

that chillblast has mobo,good cpu ,really crappy unsuited to any gaming onboard gpu, 4gb of ddr3, 500w psu, optical drive, atx case 1 tera harddrive, monitor, mouse and keyboard and speakers.

=800 dollars I don't know were you uk shop so I'm using newegg for the prices

ASUS M4N75TD AM3 115$ (you can also crossfire or sli which is good for the future)
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition 189$ (black edition is a must)
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 32$
SONY Black 18X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1681S-0B - OEM 16$
COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power RS600-PCARE3-US 600W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Power Supply 65$ (600w is a safe bet 700w is safe for non high end crossfire)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM 95$
SAMSUNG Spinpoint M7 HM500JI 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive 54$ (buy another for 1 tera but I find 500 gb large enough)
Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 60$
XFX HD-677X-ZNLC Radeon HD 6770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card 120$

745$

Ok this doesn't include screen, mouse, keyboard and soundsystem but most people already have these things and you can hook this machine to a tv via hdmi which will give you soundsystem (most tvs have built in speakers). The really good advantage this custom pc has over chillblast is that you can actually play games with this. Most games will run maxed with 1600x1000 resolution. The problem with chillblast is that it has onboard intel gpu and it is gak and that 500w psu is very limiting for extra gpu you have to buy inorder to play games.