Lude Generation

My nephew is looking at getting his first desktop gaming PC, and has £600 to spend on Case/PSU/Mobo/Processor/Ram/Gfx card (He doesn't need monitor or keyboard/mouse)

Will be used for high end gaming, likes of BF4 and whatever new stuff is coming out so must be able to cope with that

I know some of you guys are much more up to date with current tech than I am

I was thinking i5 or i7 and 16gb ram for a start, then i get a bit lost

Tell him to save another 600 or all he'll be able to get is kit thats on the edge of being obsolete. Imho. Money spent is time bought in the it world and highend anything will be hard to impossible for that budget.

Or buy high quality recon kit. A bit older but still packing a punch.

Here's where I'd start:

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS Radeon R9 280X iPower IceQ X2 Boost 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £229.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Arctic White £74.95
1 x MSI Z87M-G43 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £71.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £67.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £55.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £53.99
Total : £739.00 (includes shipping : £11.75).




The CPUs with a K on the end of the part number can be overclocked, as can the Z87 motherboards - if you wanted to save some money, you could go for an H87 motherboard and a non-K processor. You could get a cheaper graphics card. You could replace the SSD with a mechanical hard drive (but I wouldn't suggest that at all - an SSD is by far the very best thing to happen to computers in recent years)

You could get a cheaper case, or a cheaper power supply - but the ones I specced will make quite a nice powerful little machine.

The other question is what size/resolution monitor is he running? If it's a 17" 1280x1024, then even the above will be massively overspecced to get a consistent 60fps.

If it's a 27" 2560x1440 beast - then even the above may struggle on the newer games to hit 60fps with the details on full.

Cheers, £600 is all he can afford at the mo, but I'll show him that and see if he wants to save up some more

I don't know the res of the monitor he's got, it's a few years old 22" I think, it's my sisters old one

If it's a 22", then it's probably a 1680x1050 panel, but it could also be 1920x1080.

I would imagine that he'll end up with a 1920x1080 monitor when he replaces the current one

Its worth keeping an eye out on ebay for people selling off their old stuff. Some people call 4 months old.
have a list of favorite items and keep on it

Housemate recommends www.scan.co.uk they offer bundles, build it yourself packages, overclocking services and good prices.
Just checked against confused list and came out same price but with an i7 cpu. Also very useful chat function apparently.

I've had my PC for 4 years, it still runs most stuff ok and I've never paid more than £100 for a gfx card, but I've replaced it twice in my PC's life time (as it went pop out of warranty)

I used to build PC's for a living many years ago and all the component companies have what they call "Road Maps" so they know the new tech they are going to release in 6 to 12 months, and reduce prices on "old tech" to get shot of it.

It's the "old tech" that's the stuff to buy, just I don't know what it is anymore