I've decided to buy myself a gaming PC but dont know where to start, whats bad, whats good & what to have put in it.

Any of you guys know anything about gaming PC's?

Have a budget of £1000 - £1500

Any help would be appreiciated guys

 

I could build one for you buddy, depending how good you want it spec wise etc got budgets from 400-1000. around 700-800 quid could make you a nice i5 or i7 cpu sandy ridge, 4gig ram dual sli cards and a good board and psu. and cool master case

Normally easier to build yourself but let me know

 

That would be awsome but.....you live a few miles too far fella.

A good friend of mine is trying to guide me through this but he has never built one, but has a far greater understanding than I do as he's been a PC gamer for 10+ years.

Is there any chance you could tell me exactly what I would be buying on a budget of £700-£800?

What kind of cpu, motherboard, graphics card etc?

Big thanks

 

With regards to building, it's piss easy, as most plugs will only go in one socket, or are labelled...

 

all depends on what your going to be playing tbh .. some games require a very top end pc ..
but yeah 700-800 will see a competent machine that will do most ..
just a quick look at a barebones system ..
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...504GN.html#sp8

2 x http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...h/57701GB.html

would work ok . add an optical drive and operating system and off you go ...

 

Have a look here m8, might be of some use

http://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Gaming+Range/

 

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...d=1444&subcat=

 

If you have an existing PC you might be able to bastardise some of hte parts like DVD drive to save a bit of cash £800 should get you a fairly decent spec machine on a home build!
If you need the whole package it shames me to say its probably easier to buy it all as monitors and speakers and gaming mice etc can start upping the cost a lot.

 

Always buy the best for your budget.
For gaming you will be best suited at an Intel i5 platform.
i7 is for number crunching really and the benefits are not seen when playing the majority of games out these days. I would concentrate on graphics card(s) with the money saved on i5 over i7.
Make sure you get a 64bit version of Win7.

Solid State Drives are beneficial if you can afford it. A smallish one for installing games onto is a wise idea.

Go onto overclockers forum and scout around and you can pick up on the latest, best value equipment pretty quickly.
Sites such as Toms Hardware are "usually" up to date and give a rough idea of where to start.

 

Then buy the bits off Ebuyer if you want decent customer service. OcUK will never get my custom again! Robbing bastards.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. Have got alot to look into.

If it was your money you were spending what would you get? forget about the monitor, mouse etc. Just the PC. What would you want inside it?

 

ive been building my own gaming rigs for around 10 years now and its much better to build your own than to pay somewhere to either build to your spec or supply a pre built tower as generally the later will have some budget - mid spec parts in there.

Do you need everything inc monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers etc in your budget or do you only require the tower ????.

At the moment i5 is ample for gaming as you dont need a hyper threading cpu like the i7 as no games that im aware of utilise it, but having a i7 cpu means you can use tri channel memory. Sandybridge motherboards have had teething problems i think so im not sure if its best to go down that route currently, someone who has recently gone down that route may be able to confirm if theyve been sorted out. I myself have i7 socket 1366 and its a beast of a system, if you can afford £1500 then get the best components you can mate.........but some parts you can easily buy 2nd hand to cut a few quid off namely the cpu cooler and some other bits.

Actually ive got 2 x 150gb velociraptor hdd`s in the for sale section that im selling which still have just under 3 yrs left of warranty, these two drives installed in raid-0 ( show as one drive ) is probably the fastest you can get without going with an ssd which as a beginner may not be ideal but its entirely up to you mate.

Dave.

 

go for a decent SSD (NOT INTEL - there cack!)

check out cyberpowersystems.co.uk they get real good reviews and are pretty cheap..

i've specced a beast of a laptop on there and it out performs companies like alienware and there alien prices!