Hello all. I've not been active on the forums for a several months now, real life has calmed down a lot now so I hope to be more active. I hope everyone is doing well here. I was hoping some of you could help me with buying a gaming PC for my Daughter for Christmas, the regular PC i bought her a few years ago is lagging a lot on the games she likes already so the plan is for me to have her current one (it works fine with the type of games I mostly play) and I'm going to buy her a gaming PC, I've looked at a few and to be honest I'm out of my depth as I don't understand any of the jargon or which feature is worth paying higher for. I have a budget of about £900 (but could go slightly higher if needed) and as I'm going to set her old one up to the TV in the living room I'd only need the tower. Any help would be greatly appreciated, if you know of a great gaming PC within my budget or if you can just give me pointers on minimum specs I need to look for I'd be really really greatful. I know a quad core is better than dual core, but graphics cards etc I have no clue about. I'm hoping that by the time games start to lag again I'll have taught myself how to replace components and just upgrade over time (or am I being naive) I've also missed a lot of mobile games so if there's any must haves since about Feb this year I'd love to hear those, I've been playing a lot of junk jack X since the new update and fancy something new Thanks for any help you can give.
I take the approach of just buying the most expensive one in my budget which probably isn't helpful but it's served me ok generally, I think it's almost impossible to keep up with what's the best cards/cpu combo's at what price ranges. I have read a few times https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk is generally good value and reliable for prebuilt systems in the UK although I think if you asked the same question on one of Reddits PC subs you'd get a thousand replys to build one yourself unless it's a laptop. Best thing is probably just googling every component listed and trying to work out if they are good or not that way.
Thank you slam. Hope you and you're family are doing well. The gaming PC is def a one off, we usually spend half that at most and I still think that's a lot. Every year I tally up the bits and bobs and I always say "when I was a kid........." It's just pure luck that we have the money at the right time of year to buy one. Adults will be getting poundland shower gel mind
haha - poundland showergel - comes with a free portion of psoriasis. Good to see you back, Cloudpuff. Magic stuff.
for CPU, you can go with the cheapest i5 6400, most of games aren't very hard on CPU, and I think the i5 6400 is more than enough for a few years, also get a cpu cooler like the hyper 212 evo or noctua nh-d14/d15 depend on your budget. Mainboard, you need a Z170 mainboard, personally I will go with a mid-range premium mainboard like the asus z170-a, but you can choose a cheaper mainboard. GPU, the GTX 1060 can play most of games max setting at 1080p, if you don't play 1440 or 4K then no reason to choose the GTX1070/1080 storage, go with samsung evo 850/850 pro 256GB SSD, it's get a lot of recommend on hardware sites, also get a 1-2TB HDD for data PSU, a evga supernova 650 g2 is more than enough for any single gpu build. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/X96Z9W Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor $174.99 Noctua NH-D15S 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler $79.88 Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB WINDFORCE OC 6G Video Card $249.99 Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard $153.89 Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory $92.99 Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive $94.75 Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $49.78 EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply $89.99 Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case $84.99 Total $1071.25 $1000 PC build without monitor, keyboard/mouse may over your budget, if it's the case, you can scale down on mainboard (choose a $100 one), cpu cooler (Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO $25), PSU, Case and sorry for my english
That build looks okay, just curious as to why you would use an $80 CPU cooler on a non-k CPU where the stock cooler would do just fine. Also, an RX 480 is probably a better choice for this build.
Thank you for all the help. Would anyone be so kind and have a quick look at this one and see if it's ok? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Freshtech-Z170-HD3P-Motherboard-Vengeance-Performance/dp/B015TBAVN0/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8&th=1 There doesn't seem to be a wifi card in and the next their that includes wifi and a minister puts the price up by over £100, is it worth going into the higher their for that or would buying a wifi adapter be enough. I'm pissing about too much and worrying I'll buy a tower with a crappy component that I'm going to end up with noting being delivered. Thanks again everyone.
Hey, Cloudpuff! Good to have you back here! Been awhile!! Hope all is good with you and your family! Sorry I don't have anything to add in terms of your PC question. Never been a computer gamer, just all the consoles and hand helds over the years, and now, of course, mobile gaming on both IOS and Android! Good luck with your choice though. I'm sure folks here can help point you in the right direction! Happy Holidays!
