Help needed - buying a PC for media

scooby359

Can anyone give me some advice with this? Really not in the loop with hardware so not sure what's best to buy..

I've got a HD TV but I want to connect a PC which can play HD films and music streamed from a PC elsewhere in the house, browse the internet, and do some gaming - old console emulation, stuff like World of Warcraft (fancy trying it!)

I've seen a couple of small pc's:
Acer Revo L80
Lenovo Q180

Any recommendations on which would be best or are there any other betters options out there? Looking at a budget of £250-£300

Had considered building one from scratch which I know would be better value for money, but with not knowing what the best hardware is these days, I'm worried about buying all components which will match / fit

Thanks for your help!

Shimrod

I think you may be challenged on both CPU performance and graphical performance if you want to play world of warcraft. Minimum/recommend spec is here https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/minimum-system-requirements-for-world-of-warcraft
I'd suggest going for build your own - I think the biggest cost out of your budget may well be the computer case if you want something 'stylish'.

scooby359

No need for stylish, just going to be hidden away once it's hooked up. Quite happy building a pc, it's just I've no idea these days what mother boards fit which cases with what processor, etc for when I'm buying

It's all the stupid names that confuse me I think.. An intel pentium d?? Whats that supposed to mean? When I used to do hardware, it was single core and the faster the Hz the better, it's gone all technical now lol

gonzo127

the 2 you have linked would not be suitable for gaming on, however as your willing to build your own i it wont be that much of a problem,

now your biggest demand is playing games on it at tv resolution (im guessing 1080p) so if you go the intel route you will need a dedicated graphics card, however if you go AMD you will not necessarily need a dedicated card (and the processors tend to be cheaper as well) so this is the way i would suggest you go

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-5800k-a8-5600k-trinity-apu,3241-10.html

gives you some indication of the the amd's performance and goes to show that you could even 'drop' to the a6-5400k processor and still be able to play WoW, although other games would have to be dialled down

AMD A6-5400k at £50
matched with a FM2 a75 motherboard, about £40-50
4-8gb of ddr3 1866 ram £20-40
and a cheapish 120gb SSD (for faster boot up and quietness - basing on the fact you bigger files will be stored elsewhere) about £70 - you of course could go for a normal mechanical hard drive and save some money here, but I like SSD's and think the speed would be appreciated on boot up

the above will set you back about £200,

add in a case, £15-40
PSU, £30-50 (max you should need is 450 watt and i would suggest spending a reasonable amount on this due to stability and also quietness, at least £30)
optical drive (if you need one) £15
and windows £70-80

and would come to about £300-350

scooby359

Thank you so much for your advice gonzo127!!

I've been looking at components you recommended and gone up slightly with some, I think, from your recommendations, thinking for the price, I might as well buy better in terms of it's capability and future proofing

I've come up with the list below, sound ok?

AMD A10 5800K Black Edition 3.8GHz Socket FM2 4MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £91.96
Asrock FM2A75 Pro4 A75 Socket FM2 VGA DVI HDMI 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard £59.92
Crucial 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz Ballistix Sport Memory Kit CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.5V £24.99
Inwin EM019 Micro ATX Screwless Black/Silver Case with 400W PSU £37.98
SanDisk 64GB Pulse SSD - 2.5" SATA-III - Read 490MB/s Write 240MB/s £40.49
Tenda Wireless-N300 PCI Adapter £7.98
Windows 8 £25
Total inc vat: £288.32

gonzo127

dont have much time at the moment to go over in detail the spec you have laid out, and i dont want you to think i am picking fault too heavily, however just wanted to post my initial thoughts on your posted spec -

one thing that sticks out at me is the micro ATX case - is the motherboard a micro ATX motherboard? if not it probably wont fit.

windows - the £25 offer on windows 8 i think is just for the upgrade version in which your surposed to have a copy of windows already installed, make sure you look into this properly to make sure you understand the implications of that offer

64gb ssd - really good price and sandisk are pretty good (i run a sandisk ssd in one of my systems) but wont give much space for many programs or games - taking ~15-20gb out for windows that only leaves ~35-40gb max of storage space for games and other programs, is this enough?

RAM - can you stretch to 1866 ram over the 1600, this isnt a deal breaker by any means but the AMD A series processors love faster ram with a passion!

scooby359

Gonzo, you're a star, thank you so much for your help!!

I'll have a look a the weekend and order all the bits then have a go at building

gonzo127

have you checked the motherboard as i am sure when i checked the one you had picked was not a micro ATX one which means it wouldnt fit in the case you had picked.

also have you read about the £25 windows 8 offer and that you are happy with the conditions it sets to get it for that price?

scooby359

Nope, haven't done anything on it yet - been working 14 hour days this week, absolutely knackered so don't wanna make any mistakes again when I buy the parts.

Can't see a way to get Windows 8 at a discounted price, so just going to have to shell out the 80 odd quid for an oem version.

I realised after what you meant about the motherboard / case, I'll go with an ATX case and board to keep it simple.

Will up the ram, not much difference in price, and probably look at two drives, ssd for the OS speed and a traditional disk for storage

scooby359

Just thought I'd update this..

Finally got round to doing it - got an A10 processor, motherboard, 4GB ram, 1.5TB hard drive, case, windows 7 OEM, for around £250. Went together really easy, everything just pops in and Windows loaded with no problems.

Runs brilliantly for films, general use, and games are looking pretty good too!

Thanks so much for your help Gonzo, you're ace!