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Gaming PC - what to buy?
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laurenjade1402
Posts: 352 Forumite
in Techie Stuff
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
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
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Comments
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do you need a monitor, keyboard and mouse or just a base unit?
are you thinking self build or pre built?Drop a brand challenge
on a £100 shop you might on average get 70 items save
10p per product = £7 a week ~ £28 a month
20p per product = £14 a week ~ £56 a month
30p per product = £21 a week ~ £84 a month (or in other words one weeks shoping at the new price)0 -
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.0 -
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.0 -
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?0
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Robin_T_Cox wrote: »
Outdated machine...0 -
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.0 -
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.0
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