Gaming PC - where to start?

My son has saved money and is looking for a gaming PC so has asked me to help him spec/look.

We have a reasonable monitor already and would like to spend less than £800 which, although a lot of money (I think) puts us into the 'budget gaming pc' box.

Do we start with the game we want to play the most, check the specs and work from there?
I did find this setup and wondered if anyone had an opinion as to whether it was good value
http://www.ginger6.com/g6-storm-x1-gaming-pc.html?___store=g62&___from_store=default&gclid=CLa13_SU088CFRa3GwodoIcIgA

Happy to research but if anyone has any recent experience in this area I would welcome any nuggets of wisdom.

Many Thanks
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Comments

  • Cycrow
    Cycrow Posts: 2,639 Forumite
    The most important part in a gaming pc is the GPU. So first its best to work out what GPU would be best to fit your budget, then build the rest of the PC around that.

    without a monitor, £800 should get you a fairly decent gaming PC as you dont need to spend lots to get one that will run most games adequately.

    some games need more power than others, so knowing what games you will likely play will help determine what you may need.

    are you planning on buying a prebuilt pc, or attempt to build your own?
    and does it need to include the OS?

    the PC in the link is not all that great, dropping to an i5 and boosting the GPU would be better.

    for £800 without monitor and including OS, you should be able to get an i5 with GTX1060
  • gonzo127
    gonzo127 Posts: 4,482
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    edited 14 October 2016 at 1:13PM
    if you are after a gaming system, then the most important thing is the graphics card, and with a budget of £800 a GTX750 is too weak in my mind

    now i wouldnt suggest going for the 'biggest' you can afford as you would have to make too many compromises on other components

    anyways this is good for graphics card ideas http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gpu-hierarchy,review-33383.html as it 'ranks' them according to power

    otherwise, i would suggest to go no higher than a i5 processor - i7 is a bit of a overkill for most games as not many take full advantage of the amount of threads available on a i7, so you would be paying a premium for a i7 that wouldnt be being used to its fullest

    i would also suggest getting a SSD for a boot drive with a normal drive for data storage - seriously speeds up the running of the system

    anyways my basic starting point would be something like http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/configurePrd.asp?idproduct=2543&qty=

    changing primary hard drive to a SSD (minimum 120gb-but for reference i have gone for the adata 240gb) then add a second hard drive for storage 1tb seems reasonable unless your son has lots of music photo videos etc, this takes it to £740 so gives £30-40 to play with on other parts, as DinoPC charge for delivery last i saw at about £25

    for example the GTX 1060 is in general a better graphics card than the RX470, but he might want more RAM, or a 2tb hard drive etc
    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)
  • Fast CPU > Fast Memory > £250 - £300 Graphics card = VR Ready Gaming PC.
  • Cycrow
    Cycrow Posts: 2,639 Forumite
    Fast CPU > Fast Memory > £250 - £300 Graphics card = VR Ready Gaming PC.

    VR Gaming is all about the GPU, a fast cpu and memory will make little difference to that.

    and faster memory in general makes little difference in real world performance and gaming.

    more memory is usually better than faster memory
  • fiish
    fiish Posts: 815
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    My opinion on gaming PCs as someone who builds his own an occasionally specs PCs out for friends/family, is that you need to spend more on the graphics card. Only the very fastest graphics cards like the £400 and up ones will require a high end CPU to go along with them.

    So something like a Core i3 will suffice for a gaming PC if paired with something like a GeForce GTX 1070 or Radeon RX 480. Make sure the card has at least 4GB of memory.

    For memory, 8GB is plenty, go for 16GB if your budget allows but it's not essential.

    For storage, SSD is the way to go. All that CPU and GPU power will not make a game feel fast when it has to load off a hard drive. If you can make your entire storage SSD based, do it. If you need lots of storage capacity for photos/videos/etc, go with a large hard drive and a medium sized SSD (I think 256GB is the sweet spot for price/capacity)
  • neilmcl
    neilmcl Posts: 19,460
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    Might be worth having a read of http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/best-gaming-pc
  • Ant555
    Ant555 Posts: 1,566
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    edited 17 October 2016 at 7:05AM
    Thanks for the replies so far - much appreciated.

    I'm going to have a long look at the options today as we counted his money last night and know how much we can shell out as I had reminded him that he needs to factor in buying the games too. Not sure yet but we might attach it to a 32" TV via HDMI and wait till Christmas time (or Amazon prime day!) for a decent monitor.

    The video card ranking link is very useful.

    I'll certainly look at the SSD for the boot drive as that seems like a relatively low cost way to add real value to the system. Someone at work swapped a normal lap top HD for an SSD and said his 'old' lap top was now amazingly responsive and would now last a few more years.

    Is the Nvidia/AMD graphics card choice very much personal preference or is one considered 'premium' and one less so?

    Cheers,
  • Cisco001
    Cisco001 Posts: 4,011
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    Ant555 wrote: »
    Thanks for the replies so far - much appreciated.

    I'm going to have a long look at the options today as we counted his money last night and know how much we can shell out as I had reminded him that he needs to factor in buying the games too. Not sure yet but we might attach it to a 32" TV via HDMI and wait till Christmas time (or Amazon prime day!) for a decent monitor.

    The video card ranking link is very useful.

    I'll certainly look at the SSD for the boot drive as that seems like a relatively low cost way to add real value to the system. Someone at work swapped a normal lap top HD for an SSD and said his 'old' lap top was now amazingly responsive and would now last a few more years.

    Is the Nvidia/AMD graphics card choice very much personal preference or is one considered 'premium' and one less so?

    Cheers,

    Nvidia/AMD graphics card is personal preference.
    Most people just choose the one with best value for money.
    You probably looking at GTX 1060 > RX480 > RX470. Pick one suit your budget.
  • Fightsback
    Fightsback Posts: 2,504 Forumite
    Cisco001 wrote: »
    Nvidia/AMD graphics card is personal preference.
    Most people just choose the one with best value for money.
    You probably looking at GTX 1060 > RX480 > RX470. Pick one suit your budget.

    Don't forget the soon to be released (expected this week) Nvidia GTX1050:

    http://www.itechpost.com/articles/41410/20161015/budget-gpu-battle-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-vs-amd.htm
    Science isn't exact, it's only confidence within limits.
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