Gaming PCs Thread...time for a sticky / running thread?

[ajprice]

Zod said:

nalaz said:

I'm hoping to pick up a nice 1440p screen in the black Friday sales.

Er, that’s six months away!

Yeah. There is Prime Day on Amazon, that's been in July for the last few years.

[wst]

Leicester Loyal said:

What's the rough cost for a gaming PC that can play things like Banished, Rome Total War 2, Skyrim and Fallout? Been debating getting one for a while.

It's either get one now (I don't have a lot of space), or wait and get one when I move out and get a gaming laptop for now.

The newest of those games is Fallout (assuming Fallout 4), and that is also the most demanding of them.

A very lazy search on Scan shows their prebuilt systems at around £700-750 (no peripherals) which would run those games happily. Add their £160 peripheral bundle to be fully set up.

Laptop-wise, frankly they are not too stupidly expensive these days. Just last week my girlfriend picked up a laptop for £1150 (post-student-discount) with an i7-7700hq, 16GB ram, IPS screen, 6GB GTX1060... which would be perfectly happy with those games you mention. There are less expensive versions available with less ram and probably an i5-7300HQ CPU which would be more than adequate for those games as well.

I am not too hot on what is the least power you'd need, but I can play fallout 4 fine with an i5-2500k from 2011 and 8GB ram/r9 290x (4GB) at 1080p, so anything modern and comparable would be just as fine and quite a bit cheaper!

[Leicester Loyal]

wst said:

he newest of those games is Fallout (assuming Fallout 4), and that is also the most demanding of them.

A very lazy search on Scan shows their prebuilt systems at around £700-750 (no peripherals) which would run those games happily. Add their £160 peripheral bundle to be fully set up.

Laptop-wise, frankly they are not too stupidly expensive these days. Just last week my girlfriend picked up a laptop for £1150 (post-student-discount) with an i7-7700hq, 16GB ram, IPS screen, 6GB GTX1060... which would be perfectly happy with those games you mention. There are less expensive versions available with less ram and probably an i5-7300HQ CPU which would be more than adequate for those games as well.

I am not too hot on what is the least power you'd need, but I can play fallout 4 fine with an i5-2500k from 2011 and 8GB ram/r9 290x (4GB) at 1080p, so anything modern and comparable would be just as fine and quite a bit cheaper!

Cheers for the advice. I will look into it a bit more before deciding what to do.

[westtra]

Currently have a hankering for a gaming pc. Joys of night shift and time to surf.

Want the pc to be under £1000 and quiet so playing and come up with this for £913 built and delivered. What people opinions/tips as been a long time since I had a pc. Currently play on xbox.

1 x Silent Gaming Case With 1 Fan USB3 Sound Proofing and Card Reader £49.66
1 x Intel Core i5 8400, S 1151, Coffee Lake, 6 Core, 6 Thread, 2.8GHz, 4.0GHz Turbo, 9MB Cache, 1050MHz GPU, 65W, CPU £193.18
1 x Gigabyte H310M-S2H, Intel H310, S 1151, DDR4, MicroATX Motherboard £57.59
1 x Corsair 16GB DDR4 Vengeance LPX 3000mhz Memory ( 2x8gb Sticks ) ( CMK16GX4M2B3000C15 ) £113.54
1 x Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming 6GB GDDR5 VR Ready Graphics Card £234.24
1 x Gigabyte 2.5 inch 120GB SATA III Solid State Drive £26.45
1 x Western Digital Blue 1TB Hard Drive 7200rpm 64mb Cache (WD10EZEX) £43.86
1 x Fractal 500W Series ATX Power Supply £34.87
1 x Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite 120 All-in-One Liquid CPU Cooler £45.56
1 x Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64bit Operating System Software £100.00

[smithyithy]

westtra said:

Currently have a hankering for a gaming pc. Joys of night shift and time to surf.

Want the pc to be under £1000 and quiet so playing and come up with this for £913 built and delivered. What people opinions/tips as been a long time since I had a pc. Currently play on xbox.

Are you dead-set on Intel or would you consider Ryzen?

For £1010 there's this build from PCpartpicker - Ryzen 2600 6-core, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2TB HDD, GTX 1070Ti..

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/guide/MLXscf/great-amd...

You could knock ~£50 off that if we went for say, a 512GB SSD instead, I have a pair of Samsung 850 EVOs and they've been great.

Also, Win10 you can get from one of the grey market sites for £20-25, if you'd rather not pay full price.

ETA: Just knocked up this one as an alternative, currently coming out at £942 without an OS, so factor in about £25 for that if you're okay not buying it officially like I said above.. Also leaves you a few quid for a couple of cheap fans for the front of the case, as you'll only have the main CPU cooler and the 1 rear case fan otherwise.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/D8JV9J

• i5-8400
• Cryorig H7 air-cooler
• Gigabyte DS3H MicroATX MoBo
• Corsair Vengeance 2 x 8GB 2400
• Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD
• Seagate 2TB 72--RPM HDD
• Zotac GeForce GTX1070 8GB Mini
• Phanteks P400S mid-tower case (silenced, I have this case but with the window and it's been excellent)
• SeaSonic 550W full-modular platinum rated PSU

There's some surprisingly good prices on parts at the moment I found. That GTX1070 is a relative bargain for an 8GB card.

One last thing to note - are you factoring costs for other parts, like a monitor, mouse + keyboard?

Edited by smithyithy on Monday 28th January 18:12

Edited by smithyithy on Monday 28th January 18:13

Edited by smithyithy on Monday 28th January 18:15

[westtra]

Budget is for the PC only so know need more for decent keyboard, mouse and screens.

Was initially thinking for gaming hooking it up to my tv the xbox is connected to as it wont really be used as a desktop very often.

Not set on an intel just what I have been used to years ago when amd was not the best and a quick search said the i5 8400 was a good chip for gaming at a sensible price.

The main thing for me though is bit of future proofing & quiet.

Not too sure about building one myself though, I have no problem swapping ram/hard drives etc. but just a bit worried I would make a mess of it if I built from scratch.

[smithyithy]

On the topic of building, I hadn't even swapped RAM before building mine ~2 years ago and it all went off without a hitch, it's really simple if you're just putting together off-the-shelf components like this, couple of decent YouTube guides and you're good to go, honestly if you're even slightly handy / techy then you should have no problem.

Plus you do get a sense of accomplishment from doing it, and it helps for when you come to upgrade or make small changes over time, you'll know exactly how it was put together and where everything is

[westtra]

ITS tempting. Just that worrying feeling that I do something wring and break something expensive.

[smithyithy]

I get your concern. Practically everything is 'plug and play', unless you're doing crazy watercooling setups! The only nerve-racking part I found was (depending on the chip I guess) when you've inserted the CPU and have to close the sprung cover over it, first time I'd ever done that with my i7-6700K and it sounds like the thing has snapped, but it's normal

I'd say at least check out one of the popular Youtube tutorials and see if you feel confident to have a crack at it afterwards

[wst]

There is not a lot to fear from building your own. Most things only insert one way and there are lots of youtube resources out there to help with any tricky things. I've only built one PC and I wouldn't hesistate to do it again. I've had to upgrade it at times but otherwise it's been 7 years of hassle free entertainment.

[westtra]

Never noticed that. Have done a further bit of playing around and came up woth this and it shows no conflicts.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/x4qRxG

Have set to get from amazon for extra couple quid to save opening multiple accounts else where.

[Jinx]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Must not buy as have no need for it..........

[westtra]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I want too everything sitting in my basket. Just need to push purchase after justifying.

[The Nur]

westtra said:

I want too everything sitting in my basket. Just need to push purchase after justifying.

Buy now. Justify later.

[LeadFarmer]

Looks a good deal..

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-stronghold-2600-six-c...

[Rick_1138]

Thought my PC CPU was on the way out playing the Anthem PC demo, as it was at 90% usage and getting quite hot.

However found online that it seems the demo wasnt very well optimized for pc and should be better for full release.

However it got me thinking about upgrading.

Currently on an i5-4460, DDR3 Ram and associated motherboard.

To change to a slightly better spec (cant afford i7 and for gaming at 1080p with possible upgrade to 1440p, its not really necessary. Looked at a Ryzen 5 2600X, micro ATX motherboard, 16gb ddr4 and a replacement cpu cooler i am looking at £320.

GFX card is a MSI GTX1070x and is quite happy with most games at ultra at 1080p so it wont need changing.

[wst]

With Ryzen 1xxx and 2xxx fast RAM is a significant performance increase. It's worth paying a bit extra for 3000 or 3200Mhz RAM, if you go that route.

[Rick_1138]

wst said:

With Ryzen 1xxx and 2xxx fast RAM is a significant performance increase. It's worth paying a bit extra for 3000 or 3200Mhz RAM, if you go that route.

thanks. I had read a bit about that. I currently just went for 1333 ram but if I upgrade I'll get 28gb 3000 corsair vengeance sticks

[RobDickinson]

Hoping to build a Ryzen 3 3700x in April but looks like it might be later.

[LeadFarmer]

Looking at buying this deal, but would appreciate some help with choosing the upgrades please..

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-stronghold-2600-six-c...

Im wanting to have 1440 resolution gaming and be able to play the latest game releases. Most of the options are within my budget, but I don't want useless overkill. I'd rather put that money into a monitor.

Which of the following options would you choose?


Motherboard





CPU
Ryzen 5 2600?




RAM
16GB Vengeance 3000 or 3200?




Graphics card - I believe i need Vega 56 for 1440 gaming, but which one?





WIFI

Edited by LeadFarmer on Tuesday 19th February 20:01