How much to spend on a Gaming PC?

I'm probably going to buy a desktop gaming PC for summer. I'll build it myself and I already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, all that stuff. How much is an optimum amount to spend for a PC that will run current top end games on high settings smoothly, and will last a little before having to upgrade parts? I don't want to go overkill, just buy a solid gaming PC. Sorry if this is the wrong forum wasn't quite sure where to put it!

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Reply 1

SaiDuc

I would say you can make anything work if you're smart and manage to build one for around £500 but I think you could get away with even less than that. It will certainly run latest games well although you may find yourself having to tone it down on the graphics options in a year or two but then you can think about overclocking instead of buying new parts!

Reply 2

Chr0n

Ah I remember back in the day when I built mine and 4 gb of ram were 400 quid :P.
I reckon 500 is a good amount to spend. If you build it yourself you can get the more or less best stuff that's currently available (maybe not THE top-end one that's just marginally better). If you don't need all the parts (like you have a motherboard, etc. then prolly even less)

Reply 3

Iqbal007

Original post by RobertWhite

What games are you thinking?
what kind of future upgrades are you thinking?
what kind of settings and frames per second are you looking at? (settings low, med, high, ultra, ultra 4xx +everything :colone:

)

Another thing is that currently speaking I can't give you any parts........the new haswell chips are coming out soon with a new chipset(new socket) and the new Nvidia gtx7xx is slowly being released and AMD is going to follow suit soon.

In the current market, excluding OS you could make a good system, i5, 8gb of ram and probably a gtx660 / 7870 under £600 which will certainly play quite a lot of games at ultra currently at least 30fps+.

Reply 4

Lucien23

https://www.aria.co.uk/myAria/ShoppingBasket im assuming you had no operating system so with the operating system it costs £568 without around £500. 4gb of ram is enough for gaming you can always by some more this year. the fx 6300 is a great processor and overclocks very well, I wouldn't suggest intel on this budget otherwise you couldn't get a great gpu. am3+ is staying around longer so upgradebility is much better with this build as steamroller comes out next year and will be on am3+. the 7870 is a great card and this one comes with tomb raider farcry 3 farcry blooddragona and bioshock infinite so its an absolute steal, if you want to save a bit more money just swap it for a 7850, but I higly recommend the hd 7870, its worth saving for. you'll be running most games on high settings at 1080p at 50-60fps, ultra around 40-55fps.

Reply 5

Lucien23

ps, ram prices are a little bit high right now you can also, obtain windows by other means if you catch my drift

Reply 6

Lucien23

https://www.aria.co.uk/myAria/ShoppingBasket this one is a lil bit cheaper but its still very capable and the gpu overclocks very well

Reply 7

Lucien23

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a9VjD8p2hTs here is a video showing the 650ti boosts performance on crysis3 and it handles it very well

Reply 8

HypErTwisT

what kinda specs are you guys looking at for 500? I *think* planetside 2 is currently one of the most demanding games currently, so Ive been looking for a computer based around that, but it seems to be more in the 6-700 area. Do any of you know a good place to buy? and recommended specs?

Reply 9

Iqbal007

Original post by HypErTwisT

aria for graphics card or pixmania, randomly there are very good deals...........apart from that stick to the known sites ebuyer, scan,novatech, amazon in my opinion

Reply 10

Lucien23

Original post by HypErTwisT

crisis 3 is the most demanding game, build a pc its very easy and much cheaper to do, and I highly recommend aria pc

Reply 11

Lucien23

Original post by Iqbal007

aria for graphics card or pixmania, randomly there are very good deals...........apart from that stick to the known sites ebuyer, scan,novatech, amazon in my opinion

+1 for amazon uk, ram is the cheapest there

Reply 12

Sarcastic Goats

I'd say £600-700 however like people have said if you don't care about devalue and want a GPU that's future proof you'll be looking to spend £300-400 on the GPU itself.

Reply 13

HitmewithKnowledge

Original post by RobertWhite

Depends what settings you want to run on and what fps. If you want high/max settings apart from AA with 60 ish fps

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£164.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£123.50 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£53.00 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£47.94 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 XT 2GB Video Card (£199.40 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply (£49.98 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £638.81 These are just examples, there will be better deals e.g. amazon don't do the Never Settle reloaded bundle whereas others do etc...

Also consider adding an ssd but they're quite expensive, can always be added in the future
EDIT: Forgot to include CPU cooler CM Hyper 212 Evo roughly £23 and a quality yet relatively cheap case is the Corsair 200R for under £50

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 14

Lucien23

it works out cheaper getting a mid end gpu than splashing out loads of money on the high end ones, also id go with the fx 8350 instead of i5 as more games are optimized for amd now as consoles are based on the amd chipset, the fx 8350 is better in newer games such as criysis 3 battlefield 3 and farcry 3. get the 7870 from aria pc as its 180 pounds and comes with 4 games

Reply 15

Lucien23

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2LKAgEko3SATlBMWjhqVUlZWlk/edit fx 8350 vs i5 choose which one you want dependant on the games u wanna play

Reply 16

HitmewithKnowledge

Original post by Lucien23

get the 7870 from aria pc as its 180 pounds and comes with 4 games

Make sure it's the XT or LE version though rather than GHz or just normal. Almost same price yet much better

Reply 17

Lucien23

Original post by HitmewithKnowledge

Make sure it's the XT or LE version though rather than GHz or just normal. Almost same price yet much better

ghz is higher clock speed and better oc'ing

Reply 18

Namige

Definitely wait for the intel haswell cpus before making a decision. The graphics on that chip are apparently 2x better than the previous generation(which means you won't need a separate graphics card which can be expensive) as well as much better power management. So if you're looking for a solid gaming system with good battery life(laptop) which is cheap, I'd suggest you wait at least a few months.

Reply 19

Iqbal007

Original post by Namige

OP's talking about a desktop, and also a gaming pc, integrated graphics wont match the performance of a dedicated gaming type of graphics card :smile: