Gaming PC - what to buy?

laurenjade1402

Hi hope someone can give me some advice. My son is wanting a gaming pc for Christmas but I have no idea what I should be looking for.
He wants to be able to play Minecraft and I would like this pc to last him a while.
I am looking at spending up to £800 and any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

gonzo127

do you need a monitor, keyboard and mouse or just a base unit?

are you thinking self build or pre built?

laurenjade1402

Hi,

I need the lot he's moving on from his laptop. i would prefer already built as I'm not sure I would have any idea where to start on a self build but if it was worth it would be willing to go that way.

Cisco001

http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/configurePrd.asp?idproduct=1578

I would recommend upgrade Video card to 7850 2GB, it will come to £680. It could be slightly over budget as you need to get monitor/ keyboard + mouse and speakers.

MoneyPound

Just so you are aware MineCraft isn't that PC intensive at all, I presume your expecting him play more main-stream games on it too?

Robin_T_Cox

For very good value moneysaving refurbished games ready PCs. see:

http://microdream.co.uk/gaming-pc

Cisco001

Robin_T_Cox wrote: »

For very good value moneysaving refurbished games ready PCs. see:

http://microdream.co.uk/gaming-pc

Outdated machine...

AdamJK_2

Personally I'd be looking at an AMD based system such as this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-290-OE&groupid=43&catid=2385&subcat=1444

It's a good all round value for the performance it offers. You just need to add the operating system (Win 7 I'd use) should your son not have retail on the laptop and swap the HDD to the 1TB Seagate.

As for monitor I have a couple of the below as second & third displays and they're also really good value too.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-055-BQ&groupid=17&catid=510&subcat=

Should all come in just under budget with enough spare for basic speakers, keyboard and mouse.

Lum

Agree with the above, only I'd choose the 2GB 7870 for the graphics card and I'd also pick Windows 8 rather than 7 as it's slightly cheaper and in my experience has slightly better performance for gaming.

Also beware that by default that system comes with a 60GB SSD hard drive. Those are very very fast and I love my SSD to bits, but 60GB fills up rapidly, so you would need to consider either swapping that SSD for a slower mechanical drive such as the 1TB Seagate they offer, or adding a mechanical drive as a second hard drive.

It is possible, and reasonably easy, to add an additional hard drive at a later date, perhaps on his birthday?

To be honest, remembering my experience of 14 year old me ending up with a PC that was both overpriced and underspecced compared to my preferred option. I would suggest you just ask your son for advice. It's not your fault if you get the wrong one then!

One thing I wouldn't do is get one of those secondhand Dell PCs suggested in post #6. We used to have a load of those as office PCs where I work, I've had to replace them all over the last few years as they have all suffered hardware failures.
I can't believe they're trying to flog a GX280 on to some poor unsuspecting customer. The only thing that is surprising me more is the fact that they still have a GX280 that hasn't had the capacitors explode and spew nasty brown goop over the insides.