Fed up with Laptops, want to return to a Desktop......need advice.

[Skynhead]

I used to be into PC gaming and back in the day I had a fairly powerful gaming machine - for it's time. I gradually drifted off and started playing more games on the PS3 and xbox360 but now I'd like to return to the PC and see just how good things have gotten.

At the moment I only have £400 to spend on a machine, but this will be the base system, I intend to add a GFX card (budget approx £200 for GFX) .... and I've got a few questions..

a. Is it still cheaper to build the machines ourselves?

b. Can a higher clocked i5 processor outperform an entry level i7 in gaming? (particularly in games that don't use more than 2 cores)

c. Is a monitor still an essential purchase or could I get by with a 1080p tv screen?

d. Are Intel still top dog, or have AMD got any aces up their sleeves?

e. Will I need more than 8Gb of Ram?

 

[oneman]

a - only cheaper if you don't include the O/S. You have more control over the components building it yourself.

b - Yes, single threaded games will benefit from higher clock speed. But i5 + decent cooler + z77 motherboard is going to more or less the same as a entry level i7 + B75 motherboard.

c - I know plenty of games using large screen TV.

d - At the higher end intel are top dog. AMD have better integrated GPU but if are buying a discrete gfx card and have the cash then stick with intel

e - Nah, not for the foreseeable future

 

[Skynhead]

Any advice on where to buy the parts would be great, is Dabs the cheapest?

 

[BIG-HOL]

ebuyer normally do some nice deals,also scan can be good too.

 

[turner brown]

why not buy second hand machine mate
I got a i7 with 12 gig ram 2 gb graphics card , watercooled cosair case and 1000 watt psu
for £400 with a 1 tb hard drive a year ago on ebay so can get great systems at cheap prices

 

[oneman]

For parts I usually aria but as tuner said, it might be worth looking at what's available second hand.

 

[sdmachines]

A hyper threading i5is fine. 8 gigs is fine. the majority of the game load is actually on the video card. todays current recommended cards start at 300.00 US. Amd 6 or 8 core processors work fine but AMD still has a long way to go to beat Intel's architecture. Keep in mind the the AMD processors are more than adequate for gaming.

 

[Skynhead]

Done some reading and decided on this....

CPU - AMD FX 8320 Black Edition.
RAM - 8Gb DDR3 1866
GFX - Nvidia 650 GTX 2Gb DDR5
Motherboard - Gigabyte 970 DS3
PSU - 750w

I've priced this at under £400, is this a good buy?

All recommendations appreciated.

 

[oneman]

Done some reading and decided on this....

CPU - AMD FX 8320 Black Edition.
RAM - 8Gb DDR3 1866
GFX - Nvidia 650 GTX 2Gb DDR5
Motherboard - Gigabyte 970 DS3
PSU - 750w

I've priced this at under £400, is this a good buy?

All recommendations appreciated.

Don't forget an optical drive & hard drive (either mechanical and/or SSD), aside from that looks OK.

 

[McrRed]

Aria is OK but microdirect tend to be cheaper, like for like... Much prefer them.
Did you mention a case (and psu) ?

Sent from my F9S using Tapatalk HD

 

[oneman]

Aria is OK but microdirect tend to be cheaper, like for like... Much prefer them.
Did you mention a case (and psu) ?

Sent from my F9S using Tapatalk HD

I get free postage with aria and I've had a bad experience with microdirect with a hard drive return so I steer clear of them now. OP has mention PSU but no case.

 

[McrRed]

Without wanting to turn it into a fanboy match up I had the same with aria so don't go near them now.

I suppose it's horses for courses

Sent from my ZTE-BLADE using Tapatalk 2

 

[Skynhead]

I shopped around but ended up buying most of my kit from ARIA, the rest I bought from a local shop in Glasgow.

My new machine is...

CPU - AMD FX 8350 - overclock to almost 5Ghz
Motherboard - Gigabyte 990A UD3
Ram - 8Gb Mushkin DDR3 1866Mhz
GFX - Nvidia GTX 650 Ti

I'm still using my old 1Gb 7200rpm HDD but I'm going to upgrade to a 64Gb SSD.
I've got it connected to a 50" Panasonic Smart Viera @1080p

My CPU and RAM achieve 7.9 on the Windows Index Rating, GFX scores 7.6 and my HDD scores only 5.9.

I'm very happy with it, I can play practically everything on MAX settings

 

[Mick]

Can't use laptops anymore, not for all the stuff I do in them, to much fiddling around

Bought a nice desktop just before Xmas and not looked back


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