Building a gaming computer - where to buy bits?

m5rcc

photodgm wrote: »

For what it's worth I recently used DinoPC for a new system based on an i5. It was possible to build up what I wanted in several different ways so I did the cheapest. I did buy the graphics card I wanted from Dabs and fitted that myself. Very happy with the result but your budget is very tight for a gaming pc

+1 - Excellent customer service and good prices.

Corelli

pledgeX wrote: »

Your computer won't work without an OS. You have 4 choices:

- Use a free OS (e.g Linux). Unless you/your son is technically minded, you may struggle. Support has got a lot better in recent years, but gaming will still be tricky if not impossible to get playing properly. Especially on recent games.

- Buy windows. The best option but obviously the most expensive.

- Get a dodgy copy of windows (downloading or ordering from a dodgy website). This is illegal and stupid. Don't do it.

- The other option is to use an existing copy of windows that you have laying about the house. Depending on what type of license you have you MAY be able to install it on multiple machines, however this is unlikely. So check first.


As you've said this will be making you overdrawn, I would seriously re-consider this purchase. Do you really need to spend £400 to play games? Is that the sole reason for it? If so, why not just buy and xbox/playstation? Hell you could probably buy an xbox and with the leftover cash buy a cheap laptop/netbook to browse the net and for your kids to do their homework etc.

Good points. We've got some Windows disks lurking around somewhere that I'm assuming could be used for the OS. I think its been installed on other PCs.

And the reason for it ... its complicated. We've got an x-box and a laptop that is inadequate for this. Its more about finding a way for my Asperger's sydrome son (I hate to use labels but its a short cut way to describe a person who doesn't see the world in the same way as a Neuro Typical person) to find a way of using and developing his obsessions. I don't understand this at all but obviously some adults make a living in the gaming world and he has the drive to learn to programme and design and I want to see him explore this. Right now he is just getting frustrated with the laptop he has and I wanted to provide him with the tools he needs.

Corelli

neilwoods wrote: »

Could try this link, not the most up to date site, but it goes through the process of what you need and explains the difference's.

http://www.buildyourown-computer.com/Components.html

For £400 you can build a basic entry gaming rig, but you would allways be playing catch up (that can be said for any computer), but more so if you spend little in the inital build. At least if you spent double your budget, it would last longer before you needed to upgrade.

Gaming on a PC is expensive.

brilliant! thanks.

pledgeX

Corelli wrote: »

Good points. We've got some Windows disks lurking around somewhere that I'm assuming could be used for the OS. I think its been installed on other PCs.

And the reason for it ... its complicated. We've got an x-box and a laptop that is inadequate for this. Its more about finding a way for my Asperger's sydrome son (I hate to use labels but its a short cut way to describe a person who doesn't see the world in the same way as a Neuro Typical person) to find a way of using and developing his obsessions. I don't understand this at all but obviously some adults make a living in the gaming world and he has the drive to learn to programme and design and I want to see him explore this. Right now he is just getting frustrated with the laptop he has and I wanted to provide him with the tools he needs.

Fair enough

On the windows front. Do you know if the windows disks are the retail version or OEM? (Should hopefully say on the disc itself). If it's OEM you're out of luck and will need to buy a new one. If it's retail, you can install it on your new computer as long as it's not installed on another active machine. If the disc came with a computer, it'll almost certainly be OEM.

Would you or someone in your family be happy to build a computer from scratch with the individual components (cheaper but more complex)? Or would you buy a pre-built one (easier, but almost certainly more expensive)? As that would alter where you should be looking to buy from.

pcunite

I heard a lot about overclockers.co.uk being the newegg for this region.

bengalknights

Personally i tend to go with overclockers and novatech.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

crisis runs at full max settings with a geforce gtx260 graphics card.

i would favour an i5 processor over an i7 he wouldnt use it to its full potential and wouldnt see a difference really.

motherboard is KEY to not getting internal LAG and a fast hard disc drive to process the information quickly such as a solid state harddrives run in a raid configeration fast on their own and a decent memory such as corsair (lifetime garentee), crucial, or OCZ.. other lag would be down to your internet provider, ping upload and download and other PC's on the newtwork sharing the bandwidth and latency.

SLI or crossfire ready to joint two graphics cards together to make one powerfull one.

as for a monitor using a CRT on a modern system i wouldnt bother, he wont benefit from the graphics card. find a second hand a refurbished 22 -24" asus monitor or LG their pretty good have owned both and been happy.


to buy my PC over again but in modern equivalents would be £2900 ! i have just learned looking through novatech.

Corelli

The disk we have is Windows XP, I'm pretty sure it was used to install the OS on a couple of machines in the past (right now its disappeared ) but would we need Windows 7? My husband would like to build this with my son and he has lots of experience of the insides of computers, its just his knowledge isn't up to date and we know nothing about gaming. We must have lots of bits hanging around, a spare case or two, fans and stuff so I suspect its knowing how much memory, and what sort of graphics card. Eg, I'm looking on Novatech now and NVDIA cards range from just under £20 and one person writing a review of it says they've used it for crysis. The top of the range is £3893.27

Tbh, I'm realising more and more that choosing what to get as well as finding out where to buy it is the problem.

I'm not asking anyone here to design a system for us - I will go and do some more research. I'm extremely grateful for all the advice I've been given here and would love to think that by summer I'll be back to announce what a wonderful sucess the project has been.

Again, thanks to everyone.

Corelli

atrixblue.-MFR-. wrote: »

crisis runs at full max settings with a geforce gtx260 graphics card.

i would favour an i5 processor over an i7 he wouldnt use it to its full potential and wouldnt see a difference really.

motherboard is KEY to not getting internal LAG and a fast hard disc drive to process the information quickly such as a solid state harddrives run in a raid configeration fast on their own and a decent memory such as corsair (lifetime garentee), crucial, or OCZ.. other lag would be down to your internet provider, ping upload and download and other PC's on the newtwork sharing the bandwidth and latency.

SLI or crossfire ready to joint two graphics cards together to make one powerfull one.

as for a monitor using a CRT on a modern system i wouldnt bother, he wont benefit from the graphics card. find a second hand a refurbished 22 -24" asus monitor or LG their pretty good have owned both and been happy.


to buy my PC over again but in modern equivalents would be £2900 ! i have just learned looking through novatech.

Thanks for all that, really useful information

ChristopheB

Check out Toms Hardware It's a really useful site for learning about building PCs. You can definitely build a reasonable entry level PC for gaming for £400. But as other posters have suggested. It would be best to save another £100 to buy a monitor. You might not be able to connect your new PC to your old CRT monitor depending on the graphics card you use.