Best options for a sub £500 Gaming PC

[DMN]

I need some help deciding what the best route to go is. I've been out of the CPU/APU/GPU wars for sometime and have no idea whats what.

I'm looking for a sub £500 desktop gaming PC that has plenty of ability to be upgraded. Ideally the best bang for buck APU, with enough RAM and Graphics power to get by for now. Then in the future upgrade those as needed.

I've been looking at things such as these:

http://www.ebuyer.com/517546-pc-specialist-infinit...

http://www.ebuyer.com/641792-cyberpower-quad-comma...

http://www.ebuyer.com/641587-cyberpower-gaming-arm...

http://www.ebuyer.com/656273-cyberpower-gaming-bat...

Is there anything else I should be considering?

[Med1c]

Take a look at the Alienware x51 r2 I've had mine a week now ands it's quite impressive . Slightly over 500.00 at 549.00 but case is nice to look at and it's very small compared to standard units .

[tobster]

Custom PC have actually just covered this topic in their latests issue and they built a really good gaming PC for about 500 quid which included a 256 SSD drive.

As far as I can recall as I don't have the magazine with me, they went for the new Devils Canyon Pentium processor which is unlocked and they overclocked it to 4.8 ghz without any fancy water cooling, the processor is about 50 quid along with a Asus motherboard.

[DMN]

If you could find out the details for me tobster that would be great.

[sgrimshaw]

Here you go, you also have mail.

[DMN]

Brilliant. Thank you very much.

[DMN]

Thanks for the advice all.

I've decided to go for this one:
http://www.ebuyer.com/641792-cyberpower-quad-comma...

Give me enough power out of the box to to what I want, and should be upgradable enough. Although, am I right in thinking that I can buy an AMD graphics card and combine it with the onboard card for better performance?

[Foliage]

What processor and motherboard do you have?

As ive just upgraded (new ram and graphics card) my machine im running a 6/7 year old 1st generation i7 overclocked and its solid, after discussion with some very computer savvy friends of mine the conclusion was that the initian investment i made into the i7 and high-end motherboard was exceptional (they where a popular choice at the time) and they should be kept especially considering the overclocking ability of the i7 I have (its a 2.6ghz running at 4ghz consistently for 6 years).

So have a look at what you already have, if you do already have a gaming desktop, i spent the money i was going to spend on a processor/motherboard on a new monitor instead.

[Jinx]

DMN said:

Thanks for the advice all.

I've decided to go for this one:
http://www.ebuyer.com/641792-cyberpower-quad-comma...

Give me enough power out of the box to to what I want, and should be upgradable enough. Although, am I right in thinking that I can buy an AMD graphics card and combine it with the onboard card for better performance?

Do like the way they've included a game but no operating system As to your question - yes but you are better off buying a better card (you'll get better performance with an R7 250 - £60 in "hybrid crossfire" but would get much better performance with a R9 270 - £115 on it's own).
You can also get micro stuttering with hybrid crossfire (as with normal crossfire) so your mileage may vary.
Though if you did pick up an older GDDR5 HD7750 to put into hybrid crossfire for peanuts (second hand) it would probably be worth a go.

Edited by Jinx on Thursday 21st August 11:43

[DMN]

Well they say you only live once, so I've got this arriving on Saturday:

http://www.ebuyer.com/657809-pc-specialist-fusion-...

[Randomthoughts]

Ebuyer's web team really have gone to st. The first link you posted, the processor 'turbo's to 4GHz', and the second one declares it to have nVidia GTX graphics with an AMD board!!

[Jinx]

DMN said:

Well they say you only live once, so I've got this arriving on Saturday:

http://www.ebuyer.com/657809-pc-specialist-fusion-...

Nice - happily play BF4 on ultra at full HD with that machine. Also given the CPU you'll probably save a lot on your heating bills

[jimmyjimjim]

DMN said:

Well they say you only live once, so I've got this arriving on Saturday:

http://www.ebuyer.com/657809-pc-specialist-fusion-...

Randomthoughts said:

Ebuyer's web team really have gone to st. The first link you posted, the processor 'turbo's to 4GHz', and the second one declares it to have nVidia GTX graphics with an AMD board!!

Powerful NVIDIA GTX Graphics

The AMD Radeon™ R9 270X graphics processor harnesses visionary GCN Architecture.

Impressive...

[lemonoo7]

DMN said:

Well they say you only live once, so I've got this arriving on Saturday:

http://www.ebuyer.com/657809-pc-specialist-fusion-...

I've pm'd you asking how are getting on with it