PC Specification

leikonner687

I've personally constructed this build, you should do great with it for the next 5 years. I'd advise you to get one more GPU and go for SLI if you're a gamer and plan to play games at HQ.

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($239.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H80i v2 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($112.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($72.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 256GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($181.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB FTW ACX 2.0+ Video Card ($629.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Corsair 500R Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Monitor: Dell P2416D 60Hz 23.8" Monitor ($294.37 @ Amazon)

Total: $1792.20
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

PenguinJim

leikonner687 wrote: »

I've personally constructed this build, you should do great with it for the next 5 years. I'd advise you to get one more GPU and go for SLI if you're a gamer and plan to play games at HQ.

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($239.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H80i v2 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($112.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($72.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 256GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($181.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB FTW ACX 2.0+ Video Card ($629.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Corsair 500R Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Monitor: Dell P2416D 60Hz 23.8" Monitor ($294.37 @ Amazon)

Total: $1792.20
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

That $1792 includes shipping to the UK? :A

Some of those parts, too... a 256GB SSD for US$181? That's over £100! You can get a top-end 256GB SSD for £50 fairly regularly now - my high-end 500GB SSD was £100 at the end of last year, and was £90 a couple of months ago. And just 256GB storage total?

$90 for a case? This is MSE! I agree with not going super-cheap for a case, but £40 gets you everything you need.

$294/£200 for a 60Hz monitor that crams 1440P into a tiny 23.8" screen? While I wouldn't recommend that size/resolution combination to anybody anyway, we've seen them come up for £130 a couple of times this year.

Good price on that PSU, though.

Regardless, right now is a terrible time to buy. The 980Ti is a year old and hasn't had a price cut yet, and we're weeks away from all the new graphics card tech. Some people say "always buy today, there's always new tech right around the corner", but those people don't know what they're talking about. You can definitely time tech purchases correctly in order to get the most out of your spend. Wait a couple of months to see if we get great DX12 cards that will last far longer than a 980Ti - or at least force big price drops across all GPUs.

SunnySusie

There are plenty of places to look for pre-specced builds which will give you a console beating gaming PC without spending a grand.

eg https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/wiki/builds

OP probably has it sorted now but I am gaming on a 5 year old PC, playing the latest games - was playing the new Forza beta last night and it looks beautiful!

RAM upgrade is cheap enough, I popped in 16gb, most would consider 8gb the minimum now. SSD is probably the best upgrade I've ever done! If you haven't already done this, just go buy one right now, the prices have come way down. I popped in a GTX960 which gives me great 1080 performance.

My 2nd gen i5 (2500k) is doing great still (and I've yet to overclock it). I have no issue with doing a full upgrade if needed, I have the money. But I just don't see a need. A couple of hundred quid was all I needed.

I did a "big" upgrade every two years, from '94 to 2010. But I just haven't felt a need to do it recently. I think I'll do a complete overhaul in a couple of years - when the new sockets have all come through...

d70cw6

wait to see how polaris and pascal compare imo for 1080p

sebo0607

I hope this question is Ok in this thread but I am looking for a budget gaming laptop for my oldest. Our budget is only £600 maximum. I have seen the following from Ebuyer but I do not know if they are suitable. Any advice would be appreciated, I know these are bottom end but given the budget, it is all we can afford.

Sorry I can't post links but:

ebuyer.com 718724-cyberpower-gaming-battalion-960-pc-ecc01272

ebuyer.com 747134-zoostorm-gaming-desktop-pc-7260-5246

ebuyer.com 747135-zoostorm-gaming-desktop-pc-7260-5247

Samsonite1

sebo0607 wrote: »

I hope this question is Ok in this thread but I am looking for a budget gaming laptop for my oldest. Our budget is only £600 maximum. I have seen the following from Ebuyer but I do not know if they are suitable. Any advice would be appreciated, I know these are bottom end but given the budget, it is all we can afford.

Sorry I can't post links but:

ebuyer.com 718724-cyberpower-gaming-battalion-960-pc-ecc01272

ebuyer.com 747134-zoostorm-gaming-desktop-pc-7260-5246

ebuyer.com 747135-zoostorm-gaming-desktop-pc-7260-5247

All of those machines would be fine for gaming - they all have the same graphics card which is the most important components. A GTX 960 will do well enough.

The pick of the bunch by a long way is the second one. Not only does it have double the memory and hard disk capacity, it has the fastest CPU too, so a no-brainer really. You can compare CPUs on CPUBoss.com you will see that the AMD A10 7850K beats the other two. I have one of these CPUs in one of my machines and can confirm that it is decent and the built in graphics is also very decent (essentially giving you 2 good graphics cards).

The second one is £100 under budget and I would strongly recommend getting an SSD drive - a 240GB drive only costs around £50. Ideally you would install the Operating System on the SSD to make the machine boot up really quickly and feel snappy. This may be harder work than you want, so alternatively you could just stick a 500GB SSD in for installing the games to and make them load up and perform super fast.

PenguinJim

Samsonite1 wrote: »

The pick of the bunch by a long way is the second one. Not only does it have double the memory and hard disk capacity, it has the fastest CPU too, so a no-brainer really. You can compare CPUs on CPUBoss.com you will see that the AMD A10 7850K beats the other two. I have one of these CPUs in one of my machines and can confirm that it is decent and the built in graphics is also very decent (essentially giving you 2 good graphics cards).

That A10 7850K CPU is far, far behind probably even the oldest i5, let alone a Skylake i5 paired with DDR4. CPUBoss doesn't use apples-to-apples objective measurements to compare CPUs, and is actually a bit of a joke in the professional community.

If you take a look at the thousands of user-submitted benchmarks here, for example, you can see that the i5-6400 (the same as the CPU in the third machine above) is about 45% faster. The i5 is also far more power-efficient and will run cooler.

As for 16GB of RAM, it's completely unnecessary unless you're doing fairly specific tasks, like enormous batches of file compressions. Here, even a system running the latest games while also using Chrome with 65 tabs open doesn't benefit from more than 8GB of RAM.

2TB is nice, but 1TB is still a lot, and by far the simplest to expand with USB storage.

Finally, even though the i5 machine is clearly the fastest of the three linked, it's not suitable for sebo0607... as it's not a gaming laptop, as requested! :rotfl:

PenguinJim

sebo0607 wrote: »

I hope this question is Ok in this thread but I am looking for a budget gaming laptop for my oldest. Our budget is only £600 maximum. I have seen the following from Ebuyer but I do not know if they are suitable. Any advice would be appreciated, I know these are bottom end but given the budget, it is all we can afford.

Sorry I can't post links but:

ebuyer.com 718724-cyberpower-gaming-battalion-960-pc-ecc01272

ebuyer.com 747134-zoostorm-gaming-desktop-pc-7260-5246

ebuyer.com 747135-zoostorm-gaming-desktop-pc-7260-5247

Those machines are desktop PCs, which will need to be tethered to a wall socket and plugged into a monitor. Can I just check - you're definitely after a portable gaming laptop?

sebo0607

Thank you both for the replies, I am looking for a gaming PC not a laptop, it is my mistake I am looking for a desk top PC.

We already have an external 1TB hard drive which is not being used so I assume this could be used with the desktop if more memory is needed.

As you can tell I am not very tech savvy.

Thanks again for the replies.

Samsonite1

PenguinJim wrote: »

That A10 7850K CPU is far, far behind probably even the oldest i5, let alone a Skylake i5 paired with DDR4. CPUBoss doesn't use apples-to-apples objective measurements to compare CPUs, and is actually a bit of a joke in the professional community.

If you take a look at the thousands of user-submitted benchmarks here, for example, you can see that the i5-6400 (the same as the CPU in the third machine above) is about 45% faster. The i5 is also far more power-efficient and will run cooler.

As for 16GB of RAM, it's completely unnecessary unless you're doing fairly specific tasks, like enormous batches of file compressions. Here, even a system running the latest games while also using Chrome with 65 tabs open doesn't benefit from more than 8GB of RAM.

2TB is nice, but 1TB is still a lot, and by far the simplest to expand with USB storage.

Finally, even though the i5 machine is clearly the fastest of the three linked, it's not suitable for sebo0607... as it's not a gaming laptop, as requested! :rotfl:

I noticed that he asked for laptops but the fact that he posted 3 desktops seems like he meant gaming desktop, otherwise more research needed! You will not get much of a gaming desktop for £500 and an A10 is decent for gaming on a laptop. I have an A10 gaming laptop myself - works perfectly in 1080p and full detail - that means more to me than some user benchmarks that include overclocking, etc.. Modern games will use more memory if it is available - it is more important on a laptop of course as there is probably going to be shared graphics memory. Also future proofing is a thing.