Gaming PC, can I do it?
Discussion
Back in November 2019 I decided to replace my 8 year old laptop, purely to ensure I had a working computer for the future. I picked this up for ~£450; nothing special at all, but it meant I would have a computer should I need it. I didn't have space in my apartment for a tower either so only considered laptops.
Fast forward a year and a bit and I've been working from home for the past 11 months and have recently been converted to a permanent home worker. I've de-cluttered my bike room, added a large desk (1800 x 1200) and moved my work setup into the room (work laptop + 2 monitors). As a result, my personal laptop has been gathering dust for the past few months. This, combined with spending more time gaming has got me looking at PCs that are specced more towards the gaming side of things in place of my personal laptop. I'm not particularly techy so building is something I'm not looking at, but would a pre-built PC be in my price range?
Ideally I'd be looking to spend no more that £800 but would like to get something that would last me the next 4 or 5 years. It doesn't need to run AAA games, I have an Xbox for that. I'm looking more at the independent games side of things.
I'm not too clued up on the lifespan of GPUs, CPUs and motherboards. Would it be possible to swap them all out over the years to keep the PC modern?
Essentially what I'm looking for is for someone to tell me my thought process is utterly ridiculous and it can't be done within the price range
Fast forward a year and a bit and I've been working from home for the past 11 months and have recently been converted to a permanent home worker. I've de-cluttered my bike room, added a large desk (1800 x 1200) and moved my work setup into the room (work laptop + 2 monitors). As a result, my personal laptop has been gathering dust for the past few months. This, combined with spending more time gaming has got me looking at PCs that are specced more towards the gaming side of things in place of my personal laptop. I'm not particularly techy so building is something I'm not looking at, but would a pre-built PC be in my price range?
Ideally I'd be looking to spend no more that £800 but would like to get something that would last me the next 4 or 5 years. It doesn't need to run AAA games, I have an Xbox for that. I'm looking more at the independent games side of things.
I'm not too clued up on the lifespan of GPUs, CPUs and motherboards. Would it be possible to swap them all out over the years to keep the PC modern?
Essentially what I'm looking for is for someone to tell me my thought process is utterly ridiculous and it can't be done within the price range
It really depends on what your expectations are for an £800 PC.
If you're only going to run 1080p or 1440p then there's no need for a new-gen AMD 6xxx or Nvidia RTX3xxx GPU - you could probably made do with a GTX1660 Super (£220) or RTX2060 Super (£420).
The RTX2060 Super price is not far off what the RTX3070 was at RRP (£460), but will now take up 75% of your budget (£640), as the next-gen GPUs are now 20-30% more than original RRP (due to demand & chip shortages).
The knock-on effect of this is that all the older GPUs have gone up in price due to buyers' budgets being stretched and 'settling' for an older model.
e.g. my RTX3070 cost me £489 when I ordered my PC in November, it's now showing as £640 by the system builder. Even the RTX3060Ti is £540.
A decent CPU now should last a good few years, but if you've any plans to upgrade as you go along, you'll have to ensure the motherboard has a couple of chip revisions in it - the cheaper, more basic ones will work with previous/current gen CPUs only, and you'd have to budget for a MB when you upgrade to your next CPU in 4-5 years.
You may be happy with a pre-built or refurb - and if it's just for 1080p gaming then even something like this PS Specialist Tornado R5 @ £899 will be okay for 100fps @ 1080p in non-AAA games (i.e. not Cyberpunk) at high quality. 1440p will probably give you about 40-50FPS in the same games with the same quality settings.
If you're only going to run 1080p or 1440p then there's no need for a new-gen AMD 6xxx or Nvidia RTX3xxx GPU - you could probably made do with a GTX1660 Super (£220) or RTX2060 Super (£420).
The RTX2060 Super price is not far off what the RTX3070 was at RRP (£460), but will now take up 75% of your budget (£640), as the next-gen GPUs are now 20-30% more than original RRP (due to demand & chip shortages).
The knock-on effect of this is that all the older GPUs have gone up in price due to buyers' budgets being stretched and 'settling' for an older model.
e.g. my RTX3070 cost me £489 when I ordered my PC in November, it's now showing as £640 by the system builder. Even the RTX3060Ti is £540.
A decent CPU now should last a good few years, but if you've any plans to upgrade as you go along, you'll have to ensure the motherboard has a couple of chip revisions in it - the cheaper, more basic ones will work with previous/current gen CPUs only, and you'd have to budget for a MB when you upgrade to your next CPU in 4-5 years.
You may be happy with a pre-built or refurb - and if it's just for 1080p gaming then even something like this PS Specialist Tornado R5 @ £899 will be okay for 100fps @ 1080p in non-AAA games (i.e. not Cyberpunk) at high quality. 1440p will probably give you about 40-50FPS in the same games with the same quality settings.
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Processor
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB
- 8 GB RAM
- 1 TB HDD
- 256 GB SSD
- No mention of brand of motherboard, or speed of SSD or RAM - which is the risk you take with a pre-built (places like Dell/Lenovo are no different).
- semi/fully-modular PSU instead of pre-wired - so you only have to connect the wires you're actually using
- newer motherboard - so you can upgrade you CPU in future without needing a new motherboard
- faster wi-fi card - 2400mbps vs standard (probably 300mbps)
- faster RAM - 3200mhz vs the standard (probably 2400mhz)
- faster/bigger SSD - 3000mbps NVMe vs 500mbps SATA SSD
- etc.
Edited by mmm-five on Wednesday 17th February 10:28
Go to all the usual prebuilt sellers and just get the best spec you can for your money.
Do not listen to all the people talking about £500 graphics cards, you do not need them to game in 1080.
I have an i5 2500k with a Radeon R7 260x (£80 about 5 years ago) and I play Little Nightmares II on Ultra, Civ 6, FPV quad sims, World of Tanks all on high settings.
Any card costing about 150 will play most of what you want.
Yeah if you want COD in 4k or to play MS FLight Sim, you are going to have to buy a 2 grand PC. But for non cutting edge games you will be fine. Just having a dedicated gfx card will be a world of difference to your laptop.
Just make sure you get an SSD, 16Gb RAM and a decent cooler.
There is a lot of snobbery and stat chasing in gaming PCs. Its like telling someone not to buy a s
tty fiesta bacause a Porsche will go much faster.
If you want to spend £2k+ you can its up to you but you dont need to.
Do not listen to all the people talking about £500 graphics cards, you do not need them to game in 1080.
I have an i5 2500k with a Radeon R7 260x (£80 about 5 years ago) and I play Little Nightmares II on Ultra, Civ 6, FPV quad sims, World of Tanks all on high settings.
Any card costing about 150 will play most of what you want.
Yeah if you want COD in 4k or to play MS FLight Sim, you are going to have to buy a 2 grand PC. But for non cutting edge games you will be fine. Just having a dedicated gfx card will be a world of difference to your laptop.
Just make sure you get an SSD, 16Gb RAM and a decent cooler.
There is a lot of snobbery and stat chasing in gaming PCs. Its like telling someone not to buy a s
tty fiesta bacause a Porsche will go much faster.If you want to spend £2k+ you can its up to you but you dont need to.
Thanks for the advice guys, extremely valuable.
I've spent the last day or so browsing the various websites of builders having a look at the machines they offer. I've increased my budget (because what's the point in setting one if you can't go over it?) a bit as a result. PC Specialist can do this for roughly £900:
CPU: Intel Core i5-9400F
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1660-Ti
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 250GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB
RAM:16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 (2x8GB)
MBD: Asus PRIME A320M-K
I'm tempted to increase the HDD to 2TB as I'll also be using the machine as one of the places I'll store my photos.
Does anything on that spec seem an unnecessary spend? Alternatively, is there any part that is under-specced?
I've spent the last day or so browsing the various websites of builders having a look at the machines they offer. I've increased my budget (because what's the point in setting one if you can't go over it?) a bit as a result. PC Specialist can do this for roughly £900:
CPU: Intel Core i5-9400F
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1660-Ti
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 250GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB
RAM:16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 (2x8GB)
MBD: Asus PRIME A320M-K
I'm tempted to increase the HDD to 2TB as I'll also be using the machine as one of the places I'll store my photos.
Does anything on that spec seem an unnecessary spend? Alternatively, is there any part that is under-specced?
offspring86 said:
Thanks for the advice guys, extremely valuable.
I've spent the last day or so browsing the various websites of builders having a look at the machines they offer. I've increased my budget (because what's the point in setting one if you can't go over it?) a bit as a result. PC Specialist can do this for roughly £900:
CPU: Intel Core i5-9400F
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1660-Ti
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 250GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB
RAM:16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 (2x8GB)
MBD: Asus PRIME A320M-K
I'm tempted to increase the HDD to 2TB as I'll also be using the machine as one of the places I'll store my photos.
Does anything on that spec seem an unnecessary spend? Alternatively, is there any part that is under-specced?
I hope they don't you've got an Intel CPU and an AMD Motherboard. They won't work.I've spent the last day or so browsing the various websites of builders having a look at the machines they offer. I've increased my budget (because what's the point in setting one if you can't go over it?) a bit as a result. PC Specialist can do this for roughly £900:
CPU: Intel Core i5-9400F
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1660-Ti
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 250GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB
RAM:16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 (2x8GB)
MBD: Asus PRIME A320M-K
I'm tempted to increase the HDD to 2TB as I'll also be using the machine as one of the places I'll store my photos.
Does anything on that spec seem an unnecessary spend? Alternatively, is there any part that is under-specced?
Unless you're *really* determined to have an HDD in there, I wouldn't bother with the small SSD/larger HDD and just go for a 1TB m.2 drive, NMVe if the MB supports it.
It'll be faster, quieter, more reliable, and the price is almost exactly the same. Although you'll be down a few hundred GB in total storage, you don't need that today and it's easy to add at any point in the future. One day, Windows will run out of space on the smaller boot drive.
It'll be faster, quieter, more reliable, and the price is almost exactly the same. Although you'll be down a few hundred GB in total storage, you don't need that today and it's easy to add at any point in the future. One day, Windows will run out of space on the smaller boot drive.
Have you got a monitor? They make a big difference as I found out when my wife had to use my decent one on her wobbly home working desk :/
I got this 5 years ago and it's still fine for all the games I play in 1080p
Intel Core i5 4590
Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 3
16GB Corsair 2400mhz Vengeance Pro (2x8GB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB
Battlefield 1, Star Wars FPS thingy, Total War, Project Cars, WarThunder all work fine so I think anything you can buy these days that has a dedicated graphics card will work.
I got this 5 years ago and it's still fine for all the games I play in 1080p
Intel Core i5 4590
Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 3
16GB Corsair 2400mhz Vengeance Pro (2x8GB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB
Battlefield 1, Star Wars FPS thingy, Total War, Project Cars, WarThunder all work fine so I think anything you can buy these days that has a dedicated graphics card will work.
Despite an incompatible motherboard/CPU combo, that MB is quite old/basic and probably won't support any CPU upgrades.
If you do want to stay with Intel, you've also got to remember they change their chip socket more frequently than AMD - so a recent AMD motherboard might last 3 revisions, whereas an Intel one might only last 2 revs.
The CPU is also only single-thread per core - so 6 cores/6 threads vs other i5s and Ryzen 5s which are 6 core/12 threads.
So saving £30 now will mean having to spend another £150 in a couple of years time when you realise the CPU is holding you back, or you need to add an M2 SSD.
If you've used the PCSpecialist configurator, then there's no way (normally) it will let you pick an Intel CPU and AMD motherboard, so something is wrong somewhere. Plus it's probably specced you a very basic, inefficient, low-powered PSU.
You can save £50 by going for the 1660 Super - which will only mean losing 2-3FPS at 1080 High.
I think you've chosen a 550mbps SATA SSD (the Samsung 860 Evo) - but don't know if that's due to motherboard constraints or just not seeing the 1000-3000mbps M2 SSD options in the later drop-downs. You can get a 2000mbps PCS own-brand 512GB M2 SSD for the same price.
My recommendation for a sub-£1000 (£975 at the moment) 1080p build would be something like this (assuming parts are available, and considering everything is more expensive now than 3 months ago) - I've also left in the 2nd drive as I don't like to rely on a single drive - this could easily be replaced by a SATA SSD if you want faster backups/storage:
If you do want to stay with Intel, you've also got to remember they change their chip socket more frequently than AMD - so a recent AMD motherboard might last 3 revisions, whereas an Intel one might only last 2 revs.
The CPU is also only single-thread per core - so 6 cores/6 threads vs other i5s and Ryzen 5s which are 6 core/12 threads.
So saving £30 now will mean having to spend another £150 in a couple of years time when you realise the CPU is holding you back, or you need to add an M2 SSD.
If you've used the PCSpecialist configurator, then there's no way (normally) it will let you pick an Intel CPU and AMD motherboard, so something is wrong somewhere. Plus it's probably specced you a very basic, inefficient, low-powered PSU.
You can save £50 by going for the 1660 Super - which will only mean losing 2-3FPS at 1080 High.
I think you've chosen a 550mbps SATA SSD (the Samsung 860 Evo) - but don't know if that's due to motherboard constraints or just not seeing the 1000-3000mbps M2 SSD options in the later drop-downs. You can get a 2000mbps PCS own-brand 512GB M2 SSD for the same price.
My recommendation for a sub-£1000 (£975 at the moment) 1080p build would be something like this (assuming parts are available, and considering everything is more expensive now than 3 months ago) - I've also left in the 2nd drive as I don't like to rely on a single drive - this could easily be replaced by a SATA SSD if you want faster backups/storage:
| COMPONENT | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 3 3600 (6-core/12-thread - and much better than the i5-9400F) |
| Motherboard | ASUS TUF Gaming B500-Plus (or save £5 with the ASUS Prime 550, or spend an extra £18 for the ASUS TUF Gaming B500-Plus with onboard Wifi although you can spend £11 to get better wifi from the Intel AX200 add-in card) |
| RAM | 16GB (2x8) Corsair Vengeance 3200MHz (a little cheaper than the slower options) |
| GPU | 6GB Nvidia GTX1660 Super (£50 cheaper than the 1660Ti) |
| HDD | 2TB Seagate Barracuda (£9 more than the 1TB) - for storage/backup |
| SSD | 512GB PCS M2 (can go for Samsung or Seagate for another £100) for fast booting/apps |
| PSU | Corsair 550W TXm (semi-modular, allowing easier upgrades, and some overhead for any additional components you want to fit) |
| Cooler | standard AMD Wraith cooler |
| WiFi | £11 extra for the Intel AX200 card (or buy a motherboard with WiFi included) |
| OS | Windows 10 Home |
| AV | No additional AV (Windows Defender is very good now) |
| Warranty | PCS Silver Warranty (£5 extra for 12 months of collect & return for warranty) |
Edited by mmm-five on Thursday 18th February 12:27
Yeah, the only problem right now (and for the foreseeable future) is getting hold of any decent GPU.
As an example, a 1660 Super (or Ti, they're much the same) which would be an excellent card for 1080p gaming and which was about £200 a year ago, will likely now cost at least double that...if you can find one in stock.
As an example, a 1660 Super (or Ti, they're much the same) which would be an excellent card for 1080p gaming and which was about £200 a year ago, will likely now cost at least double that...if you can find one in stock.
Edited by loudlashadjuster on Thursday 18th February 12:27
Based on what they can build here's a £899 configured pre-build from Box. This is a good component (no cutting corners cheap crap hidden away) build. Other builders are available, other options are available etc. This is an example.
I even went high with the case to get a good airflow case (mesh & filter front), there are ones half the price on there but they are garbage. The Corsair 4000D will have good airflow to keep components cool and handle any upgrade you take. Can be had in black or white
I requested a share link but it's taking ages so here's a big screenshot, click through for full size.
Ryzen 5 3600 & Gigabyte B450M DS3H
Corsair 4000D Airflow (comes with 2 fans for front intake) + 1 extra added for rear. Big case can take longer cards up to 360mm.
16GB (2x 8GB) Hyper Fury 3200Mhz
Asus Dual GTX 1660 Super
500GB Seagate Barracuda M.2 NVMe boot drive + 2TB Barracuda HDD storage
550W Corsair TX550M PSU (semi modular for better cable management)
No OS but you can do that yourself with your laptop and a USB stick with the Windows 10 installer and a cheap key.
Link arrived - https://www.box.co.uk/create-your-own-custom-pc?s=...
Missed off the build time option, which is another £100.....but you get the idea of current prices.
I even went high with the case to get a good airflow case (mesh & filter front), there are ones half the price on there but they are garbage. The Corsair 4000D will have good airflow to keep components cool and handle any upgrade you take. Can be had in black or white
I requested a share link but it's taking ages so here's a big screenshot, click through for full size.
Ryzen 5 3600 & Gigabyte B450M DS3H
Corsair 4000D Airflow (comes with 2 fans for front intake) + 1 extra added for rear. Big case can take longer cards up to 360mm.
16GB (2x 8GB) Hyper Fury 3200Mhz
Asus Dual GTX 1660 Super
500GB Seagate Barracuda M.2 NVMe boot drive + 2TB Barracuda HDD storage
550W Corsair TX550M PSU (semi modular for better cable management)
No OS but you can do that yourself with your laptop and a USB stick with the Windows 10 installer and a cheap key.
Link arrived - https://www.box.co.uk/create-your-own-custom-pc?s=...
Missed off the build time option, which is another £100.....but you get the idea of current prices.
Edited by FourWheelDrift on Thursday 18th February 13:17
FourWheelDrift said:
Based on what they can build here's a £899 configured pre-build from Box. This is a good component (no cutting corners cheap crap hidden away) build. Other builders are available, other options are available etc. This is an example.
I even went high with the case to get a good airflow case (mesh & filter front), there are ones half the price on there but they are garbage. The Corsair 4000D will have good airflow to keep components cool and handle any upgrade you take. Can be had in black or white
I requested a share link but it's taking ages so here's a big screenshot, click through for full size.
Ryzen 5 3600 & Gigabyte B450M DS3H
Corsair 4000D Airflow (comes with 2 fans for front intake) + 1 extra added for rear. Big case can take longer cards up to 360mm.
16GB (2x 8GB) Hyper Fury 3200Mhz
Asus Dual GTX 1660 Super
500GB Seagate Barracuda M.2 NVMe boot drive + 2TB Barracuda HDD storage
550W Corsair TX550M PSU (semi modular for better cable management)
No OS but you can do that yourself with your laptop and a USB stick with the Windows 10 installer and a cheap key.
Link arrived - https://www.box.co.uk/create-your-own-custom-pc?s=...
Missed off the build time option, which is another £100.....but you get the idea of current prices.
Following on from that, I'd say it won't really matter which system builder you buy from, any of the big ones will be fine (CCL, PCS, Box, Overclockers, Scan, Cyberpower, AWD-IT, Chillblast, Novatechetc.) - just stay away from anything pre-built, as FourWheelDrift says, they'll use the cheapest parts they can get away with...and it's not to give you a better price.I even went high with the case to get a good airflow case (mesh & filter front), there are ones half the price on there but they are garbage. The Corsair 4000D will have good airflow to keep components cool and handle any upgrade you take. Can be had in black or white
I requested a share link but it's taking ages so here's a big screenshot, click through for full size.
Ryzen 5 3600 & Gigabyte B450M DS3H
Corsair 4000D Airflow (comes with 2 fans for front intake) + 1 extra added for rear. Big case can take longer cards up to 360mm.
16GB (2x 8GB) Hyper Fury 3200Mhz
Asus Dual GTX 1660 Super
500GB Seagate Barracuda M.2 NVMe boot drive + 2TB Barracuda HDD storage
550W Corsair TX550M PSU (semi modular for better cable management)
No OS but you can do that yourself with your laptop and a USB stick with the Windows 10 installer and a cheap key.
Link arrived - https://www.box.co.uk/create-your-own-custom-pc?s=...
Missed off the build time option, which is another £100.....but you get the idea of current prices.
Edited by FourWheelDrift on Thursday 18th February 13:17
Be warned though OP, as tweaking can become seriously expensive. Mine started out at £1500 and ended up at £2400
BTW, If I take Windows & the Intel WiFi Card off, and upgrade to the Corsair 4000D + exhaust fan, the the PCS one comes down to an almost identical £900 - but including the build cost
Edited by mmm-five on Thursday 18th February 14:25
Update time!
After a bit of time mulling it over, along with a bit of encouragement from friends, some videos online and the advice shared in this thread, I decided to try building the machine. I had holiday to take so thought it would also be a good project to keep me busy while off for the week.
I ordered the parts in a couple of separate orders to prevent me from getting over-excited and rushing the build. Of course, the GPU shortage was (and to a degree, still is) a problem. but I'll get to that shortly.
First bits to arrive were the case (Kolink Overseer), CPU (Ryzen 5 3600), motherboard (MSI X570-A Pro), RAM (Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB RGB Pro) and CPU cooler (Coolermaster Hyper H410R). I spent an evening following tutorials and carefully installing the parts.
The next order to arrive had the drives in it. WD Blue SN550 250GB NVME M.2 and Seagate BarraCuda 3TB HDD. While getting the parts installed was nice and easy, the cable management side of things was looking like quite a challenge!
The 3rd and final delivery had the PSU and some fans in it. The case came with two fans, but I wanted some colour so ordered 6 Phanteks 120mm RGB fans.
I spent the next day carefully getting everything in while watching videos and reading articles on how best to install. All the while I was searching for a GPU.
Originally I had budgeted for a GTX 1660 Super and kept my eye out for them. The only place I could seem to find them was Amazon or eBay, although the +£500 price tag was enough to make me hold out on buying one!
Eventually, after a few days of constant refreshing, Scan announced they would have some GPUs in at the end of March, although they were RTX 2060s and at £359 were over £100 more than I had intended to spend. I decided to suck it up and go for it, meaning I've still got over 2 1/2 weeks to wait for my GPU.
In the meantime, a colleague has very kindly sent me his spare RX 480 8GB to allow me to get the PC up and running. So here it is, a PC I have actually built myself.
Amazingly, the whole thing went off without a hitch, it booted first time and everything installed without issue.
This was a great learning process, and I'm sure if I did it again, I would change a few things, namely:
1. A little more research into the motherboard as I'm now aware this one isn't viewed too greatly. However, for the kind of use it will be getting from me, it should be just fine.
2. Spend a little more on the case, again, this one has worked well, but the room in the back isn't amazing and having looked at others the build would have been easier if I'd gone for one with a bit more space 'behind the scenes'.
3. A different cooler, from an aesthetic perspective. The one I've got is metal, so does standout amongst all of the black. Next time I'd look at a less shiny option. Performance wise, this one is doing an excellent job at keeping the CPU temperatures down.
Overall I did go over my budget by roughly £150, this was mainly down to the GPU upgrade and my desire to have fancy coloured fans!
I must say, if you can find the time I would wholeheartedly encourage people to build their machine. It's been a fantastic learning experience. I keep looking at it in disbelief while muttering to myself, "I can't believe I managed to build you".
After a bit of time mulling it over, along with a bit of encouragement from friends, some videos online and the advice shared in this thread, I decided to try building the machine. I had holiday to take so thought it would also be a good project to keep me busy while off for the week.
I ordered the parts in a couple of separate orders to prevent me from getting over-excited and rushing the build. Of course, the GPU shortage was (and to a degree, still is) a problem. but I'll get to that shortly.
First bits to arrive were the case (Kolink Overseer), CPU (Ryzen 5 3600), motherboard (MSI X570-A Pro), RAM (Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB RGB Pro) and CPU cooler (Coolermaster Hyper H410R). I spent an evening following tutorials and carefully installing the parts.
The next order to arrive had the drives in it. WD Blue SN550 250GB NVME M.2 and Seagate BarraCuda 3TB HDD. While getting the parts installed was nice and easy, the cable management side of things was looking like quite a challenge!
The 3rd and final delivery had the PSU and some fans in it. The case came with two fans, but I wanted some colour so ordered 6 Phanteks 120mm RGB fans.
I spent the next day carefully getting everything in while watching videos and reading articles on how best to install. All the while I was searching for a GPU.
Originally I had budgeted for a GTX 1660 Super and kept my eye out for them. The only place I could seem to find them was Amazon or eBay, although the +£500 price tag was enough to make me hold out on buying one!
Eventually, after a few days of constant refreshing, Scan announced they would have some GPUs in at the end of March, although they were RTX 2060s and at £359 were over £100 more than I had intended to spend. I decided to suck it up and go for it, meaning I've still got over 2 1/2 weeks to wait for my GPU.
In the meantime, a colleague has very kindly sent me his spare RX 480 8GB to allow me to get the PC up and running. So here it is, a PC I have actually built myself.
Amazingly, the whole thing went off without a hitch, it booted first time and everything installed without issue.
This was a great learning process, and I'm sure if I did it again, I would change a few things, namely:
1. A little more research into the motherboard as I'm now aware this one isn't viewed too greatly. However, for the kind of use it will be getting from me, it should be just fine.
2. Spend a little more on the case, again, this one has worked well, but the room in the back isn't amazing and having looked at others the build would have been easier if I'd gone for one with a bit more space 'behind the scenes'.
3. A different cooler, from an aesthetic perspective. The one I've got is metal, so does standout amongst all of the black. Next time I'd look at a less shiny option. Performance wise, this one is doing an excellent job at keeping the CPU temperatures down.
Overall I did go over my budget by roughly £150, this was mainly down to the GPU upgrade and my desire to have fancy coloured fans!
I must say, if you can find the time I would wholeheartedly encourage people to build their machine. It's been a fantastic learning experience. I keep looking at it in disbelief while muttering to myself, "I can't believe I managed to build you".
Edited by offspring86 on Friday 12th March 16:06
loudlashadjuster said:
Good stuff. And the best thing is you know how it all goes together and can fixe/upgrade it yourself in future, safe knowing that the parts are all off-the-shelf standards, unlike some pre-builds which can have proprietary PSUs, MBs etc.
Absolutely, couldn't agree more.Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff