Build Gaming PC

abby1234519

Basically I play City of Heroes. Well haven't played for a while as I moved house and didn't take computter from parents.

As well as that I love the Sims 2!
I have a friend who will build it for me but I don't need a top spec, just something that won't lag, City of Heroes takes a fair amount of graphics etc.

He said I could build one for about £300, not bothered.. any recommendations. I don't know ANYTHING about the innards of a computer so just tell me what I need

globalds

I recently built one for my daughter and it looks like I will be be building one for my son.
I went for a q6600 quad core .
DDR2 Ram is cheap as chips at the moment ...something like this
http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/275834/ocz-4gb-2x2gb-ddr2-800mhz-pc2-6400-/
A good graphics card I went for an Nvidea 9800 gt
Then a decent motherboard ,power supply , case and operating system.
Altogether I spent about £550 .

aliEnRIK

I cant see you building a decent 'spec' one for 300 quid
What was he going to put in it?

SJames_3

Both Sims 2 and CoH are about 4 years old. I don't think you'd require anything terribly powerful to run both smoothly. £300 might be realistic without a monitor and a copy of Windows, but you may be looking at £450 if you need both, at a very rough estimate.

Anything else to consider except gaming? Are you looking to build or would a shop-bought PC be preferred?

abby1234519

Well shop bought costs more, and as Mike builds pcs then I'd rather do it that way. I have a monitor etc so it really is just the tower.

aliEnRIK

Well if hes prepared to build anything to spec. Id be looking around ~
2 Gig ram or more
2.2Ghz Dual core (Or faster)
DVD dual layer burner
450 Watt power supply or more
Decent graphics card (ATI seem to be the best for the money at the moment)
250 Gig or more sata hard drive

windra

I had to laugh at some of those posts, the Sims2 and city of hero's are quite old games compaired to the type of PC's suggested.

A £300 machine will be far good enough, infact as long as it has a 256mb graphics card and at least 1GB of ram ANY Retail PC of £300 should do.

People tend to go waaay overboard when it comes to gaming PC's. BUT the graphic capabilities on the games mentioned do not warrent a high spec PC. Yes the higher the spec the better the graphics and performance, but its all about Need.

DVD Dual layer? Handy but No, you dont NEED to burn dual layer dvd's to play the SIM's 2.

Let me tell you about my pc...its old i built it myself a few years ago...it has a SINGLE core processor, 2gb of regular DDR RAM, and an AGP 256mb Geoforce 7600 graphics card(cost £30) and it runs the sims2 fine.

I reccomend you set yourself a budget and then choose components that come to that price.
You need:
A processor (any dual core about 1.8ghz will do but buy the best you can aford)
A motherboard compatible with your processor( £30-60) - it's important to check the version of SATA it uses, the type of ram and what type of graphics card it takes (may sound stupid but if you buy an old motherboard you might get a nasty supprise)
RAM- pretty cheap now, 2GB shouldnt be out of your range
power supply - from experience if you have a good graphics card buy a 500watt and dont be tempted to buy a cheap £10 one.
Hard drive - sata yes, but those two games probably use less than 20gb, have a smaller hard drive and a better graphics card, you can always add another hard drive later when you run out of space.

Graphics card - Nvidia or ATI its really all about preferance, Buy the best you can get for the money you have left...a £30 one will do but the more you spend the better the performance, read some reviews to see whats good at the moment.

Oh and don't forget the extras such as a case,mouse,monitor, DVD-RW if you dont already have them...they all cost money)

I buy all my parts from ebauyer or dabs but i'm sure there are many other places that are good too.
You might also find that it's just as cheap to buy a base unit from somewhere like dell that will do the job, costs do mount up especially if you need to spend £100 on a monitor.

BillScarab

If the OP is getting a new PC it's pointless building it to a spec to play 4 year old games. If they decide they want a new game it won't run it.

I would suggest a Core 2 Duo Processor, maybe something like a E7200

2gb RAM minimum but as it's so cheap it may be worth going for more.

A half decent graphics card, Radeon HD3870 or Nvidia 9600GT 512Mb would be good but not really necessary for what you want so you could go with something cheaper. However they would both cope with more modern games.

Put in a cheap DVD writer and a cheap hard disk and you'd have something that will play your games with no trouble at all and will also cope with newer titles.

Mind you f your mate will build it for you what does he recommend?

banger9365

i got to agree ,if playing the ol games like you do and already have a pc with an operating system look at this http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=20052&category_id=677&manufacturer_id=0&tid=ccl1010
us your old operating system on that
and monitor http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=28246&category_id=641&manufacturer_id=0&tid=yv19wp3

and after all that you have £20 left for a night out or takeaway
and if you really need a graphics card after all that it would put you £5 over buget http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=22598&category_id=800&manufacturer_id=0&tid=eah3450/htp/256m/a

just remember what we had as graphic cards 18 month or so ago,not has good has the cheapest ones know and they played then games fine

abby1234519

See I told you I don't know much about the innards of computers! I guess I could always get a "premade" motherboard from CCL