Priorities for building a cheap gaming PC

Mr._Watson

Hello Everyone.

Since I am soon going to build a new PC for myself on a small (£500) budget, what components should I prioritise spending more money on (such as a good graphics card or a good processor)?

Cisco001

Is £500 include monitor & OS?

Or is it just the component for tower?

Edit: for gaming machine GPU > CPU, unless £500 has to include OS & monitor

RobTang

GFX card but only up to a certain level, once you get in the high end cards your £/fps really drops off fast.

AshleyPomeroy

There's a similar question further up the page. Short answer is GPU, adequate PSU, then CPU and memory in that rough order.

I built my PC and have done so since the 1990s, back when things were a lot simpler, and on a personal level I actually find it easier to start with the most value-ful, powerful CPU and build everything around that.

I do a lot of music and a little bit of video editing and so CPU grunt is important for me, which is unusual because most review sites concentrate on the games market. If I was starting from scratch right now (assuming I keep the case, monitor, keyboard, speakers, mouse... mouse pad, teacup, spoon, cables, etc), I would build, with prices sourced from Dabs.com:

i5-4430 - £140
Asus H81M MicroATX motherboard - £40
8gb memory - £80
GTX 660 - £150
Corsair 650W PSU - £70

It's always painful to pay a lot for a PSU. It's not sexy like a graphics card. But skimp at your peril. The above constitutes a modest, unspectacular but expandable gaming PC for (calculator) £480. As I say, this doesn't include the monitor, speakers, and of course an operating system. And a hard drive, mustn't forget that. 120gb SSD plus 2tb HD comes to another £120 or so.

You could shave off a little by looking out for a used graphics card on eBay, which is risky (you might end up with one that has a knackered fan). 8gb feels inadequate nowadays but it's essentially psychological, unless you have a thing for multiple VMs. With 64-bit Photoshop CS4 and lots of layers etc I have touched 6gb at times. I wouldn't turn down 16gb of memory if it was free, I can't say I miss it.

GunJack

http://www.ebuyer.com/579784-zoostorm-desktop-pc-7873-1213 £250
http://www.ebuyer.com/566861-ace-500w-black-psu-12cm-red-fan-pfc-psuace500br £12

add around £80 for a HD7770 GFx and away you go.

The stock PC is good enough to play CoD:Ghosts on it (got one for mini-Gun #2 for xmas) and it does it proud

InsideInsurance

Making sure all the components truly work with each other would be my top priority rather than stretching my funds as far as possible.

Its been a few years since I built my last rig but on paper all the components should have worked fine and they did for a few months and all of a sudden after that there was a conflict between the gfx and onboard sound which I never managed to get resolved. Both manufacturers pointed the finger at the other saying that the other had deviated slightly from the Intel/ NVidia standards