Can anyone spot any downsides to this gaming PC please?

mwddrwg

My son wants a gaming PC for Christmas so trying to plan ahead.


Found this on ebay and was wondering what you experts think of the spec and price (£345)? Will get a monitor an OS separately.


AMD Athlon X4 860K 4.3GHz Quadcore OC Processor with Arctic Cooler
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Graphics Card
8GB 1600MHz RAM/Memory
Super-fast 300Mbps Wifi
1TB Hard Drive
DVD/CD Rewriter and 3x USB 2.0/2x USB 3.0 ports
500W Power Supply
2 Year Warranty, including parts/labour
Operating System (Windows) not included


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ULTRA-FAST-QUADCORE-AMD-4-3GHz-GTX-750-Ti-2GB-Graphics-8GB-1TB-Gaming-PC-195028-/141599914715?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item20f8033adb


Anything I could look at swopping to improve it?


Cheers all

Cycrow

The main issue i see is that they dont really mention what psu is being used. Which is pretty important for gaming pcs, especially ones that have been overlocked.

Theres also no OS included, which you will need to consider

mwddrwg

Cycrow wrote: »

The main issue i see is that they dont really mention what psu is being used. Which is pretty important for gaming pcs, especially ones that have been overlocked.

Theres also no OS included, which you will need to consider

Thanks Cycrow. OS will be sorted (probably Windows 7) and I have a monitor in mind. Don't think this one is overclocked so would 500W be enough. Is the PSU make important?


Thanks

Strider590

You want at least 750w for a gaming PC.
I recently bought a new PSU, cost me £95. It's a gold standard EVGA with 10 year warranty, as I plan on using it in my next PC.

You really can't scrimp on these though, my last one blew its safety device (TVS diode) during a brown out, if it had been a cheap one it wouldn't have had one fitted and would likely have gone up in flames (or at least a lot of smoke).

The overall specs on that aren't really that brilliant, quite similar to my current PC, which I built in 2009.

The difference will be in the quality of the components though, you see a gaming rig is all about stability, you need the best quality parts to make it run without crashing during intense usage (games).

If I was building a mid-spec gaming rig right now, i'd expect to pay £600+, that's without fancy stuff like water cooling.

mwddrwg

Thanks for the tips. Just to explain a bit more, my son is only 11 at the moment so it's mostly going to be used for Minecraft initially. May be a bit of Call of Duty as well. So doesn't need to be too flash? Obviously may need to be upgraded as he gets older so was thinking pf getting my own upgrades when needed later on.


Is the spec I put in the first post OK for most games he'd play now?

Moto2

Have a look at the Chillblast website, they build good stuff usually

Cisco001

Limited upgrade ability of FM2+ platform.
No brand PSU

Ask them to change to XFX 450W. They sell it for £45.

If you want to get a machine can be upgrade, go for intel platform. For your budget right now, you should looking at intel G3258 + Z97 motherboard.

I would suggest you assemble your own if you know how to do it.

Cisco001

Strider590 wrote: »

You want at least 750w for a gaming PC.
I recently bought a new PSU, cost me £95. It's a gold standard EVGA with 10 year warranty, as I plan on using it in my next PC.

You really can't scrimp on these though, my last one blew its safety device (TVS diode) during a brown out, if it had been a cheap one it wouldn't have had one fitted and would likely have gone up in flames (or at least a lot of smoke).

The overall specs on that aren't really that brilliant, quite similar to my current PC, which I built in 2009.

The difference will be in the quality of the components though, you see a gaming rig is all about stability, you need the best quality parts to make it run without crashing during intense usage (games).

If I was building a mid-spec gaming rig right now, i'd expect to pay £600+, that's without fancy stuff like water cooling.

You don't need 750W PSU for gaming machine!!
Even GTX 980, a quality 500W will do.

pmartin86

The main issue is that in 7 months, that PC will be 7 months closer to being out of date, unless you're giving it to him now, stick the money in the bank and wait until closer to the time.

Cisco001

By the way, intel going to release new CPU with new socket soon.

Cycrow

For the PSU the make is more important than the wattage, the wattage doesn't really mean that much.

a decent make 300W PSU can deliver more power than a cheap 600W PSU.

The cpu is overclocked, if you look in the description, it has, AMD Athlon X4 860K 4.3GHz Quadcore OC Processor with Arctic Cooler.

OC = overclocked.

plus 4.3ghz is not the standard speed for that cpu.

Ideally, you need a PSU with a stable 12V rail. Its the main component that most people skimp on, especially in pre-built systems, but is the one component that you really shouldn't skimp on.

750W is abit overkill however, i run 850W on mine, and thats running in SLI. As long as its decent, 500-600W would be plenty for a single GPU.

my second machine only has a 500W psu and thats running a GTX480 (one of the more power hungry cards).