Building a gaming computer - where to buy bits?

Corelli

My family want to build a desk top for use with games, it looks cheaper at the moment to build rather than get one off the shelf. Has anyone else researched this?

Particularly they are looking to source:

i7 quad
6-8 Gb ram
R.A.I.D graphics card

etc .......

Can anyone point me to reliable companies to buy this stuff ... Maplin does it all but I don't know how competitive they are.

Thanks

LucianH

Check out Novatech - they seem to get good reports and look competative.

Spank

I personally use www.scan.co.uk for most of my PC parts

neilwoods

Maplin are not competitive for prices, they are more of a convenient place to go and buy the item's and take away with you and if anything goes wrong, take it back to the shop. Although the i7 quad you want, would have to order that in from maplin.

There are quite a few places online to buy from, novatech and scan as said above. Also ebuyer.com and misco.co.uk

rosalie-lavender

neilwoods wrote: »

Maplin are not competitive for prices, they are more of a convenient place to go and buy the item's and take away with you and if anything goes wrong, take it back to the shop. Although the i7 quad you want, would have to order that in from maplin.

There are quite a few places online to buy from, novatech and scan as said above. Also ebuyer.com and misco.co.uk

Our son recently upgraded my daughter's computer. I had to order the parts that he picked and they came from Novatech, Misco and ebuyer.

wapow

Tell your family to shop at -

www.scan.co.uk

Theyre an excellent site and very competitive prices.
What you need to find out is how much gaming and what kind of gaming they want to do. Their budget, what kind of room the PC will be in (small room/big room/windows/no windows/hot room?)

Then i could help you out with all the parts that you need.

m5rcc

I'd get at least 16GB RAM

wapow

m5rcc wrote: »

I'd get at least 16GB RAM

You seen the Unreal Tournament 4 engine demo? Its AWESOME dont you think?

Corelli

wapow wrote: »

Tell your family to shop at -

www.scan.co.uk

Theyre an excellent site and very competitive prices.
What you need to find out is how much gaming and what kind of gaming they want to do. Their budget, what kind of room the PC will be in (small room/big room/windows/no windows/hot room?)

Then i could help you out with all the parts that you need.

Thanks Wapow,

your offer of help is much appreciated as this is a strange new world for me. The more I google on e.g. 'graphics cards for gaming' the more flummoxed I become with the enormous range of possibilities. I went to Scan and didn't know where to start. Fortunately Oh is good at putting computers together but his area of expertise is music.

The budget has got to be low £400 max really. I suppose we can compromise with cheapy keyboards and existing crt monitors and upgrade them as soon as possible. He has a Razor Death Adder mouse already.

My boy dreams of Alienware but I suspect that with a lot of their stuff you are paying for the pretty box and the name.

At the moment his obsession is Minecraft, he would like to play that and other high end (have I got the terminology right?) games like Crisis without lagging.

He also wants to run and make (high end?) mods, and learn programming to do this. Ideally hosting a Minecraft server as well.

The room is quite small, not very good ventilation but it does have an openable window.

pledgeX

eBuyer or OverclockersUK. Never had a problem with either of these in over 10 years of buying bits.

A couple I've used and had issues (only minor mind you) with are novatech and dabs.

Not used scan so can't comment on them..

**Edit**. Just seen your previous post. £400 is tight. Impossible if you want an operating system and a monitor (although you've said you can use an old CRT). You'll need a very cheap case. If you want to game you need to put a fair chunk of cash into the graphics card. NEVER skimp on a power supply either.

Teacher2301

This is the cheapest gaming PC (not OP specs) I have come across near to £400 - http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/Gallant-AMD-4100-94p1213.htm

For the OP specs - you would need to modify this model and add in the i7, 8MB ram (16 MB not available) and chose the graphics card you wanted but this would be at least £750 (including Windows 7 OS),

I find dinopc.com an excellent site and give you an easy way to see how your own customisations come out in price. Plus they build it for you if you are not confident about building your own.