It’s that time again. I’m gonna try and keep this simple and easy to read. I’m going to build online an affordable, decent gaming PC. This means that I’ll be choosing appropriate parts and explain on the way. I’m not going to go into whether or not PC gaming is cheaper than console gaming. The truth is there’s not much difference at the end of it all. Anyway, lets crack on. I’m going to be basing this all from a single website so that at the end I can use a basket to show the total easily and clearly. If you are buying a PC though, shop around and buy the cheapest.
I’ll try to cut the confusion out so this is simple. Feel free to ask for advice if you are buying and want to change bits around though.
At the bottom of this page is a quick glossary of terms and acronyms. If I should add any please say.
Case – £43.00
First things first, we’ll need a chassis/case to house everything in.
Now, you can spend up to about £300 on a case if you felt so inclined, but I’d suggest around the £50 mark. You can pick them up for £30, but these tend to be fairly poor build quality and difficult to work with. If you’re a first time building, spending a little bit more on getting a well thought out case by a named/specialised company such as Xclio or Thermaltake etc. will make everything just that much nicer in the long run.
I’ve gone with the Thermaltake Dokker. Cases very much depend on preference, so feel free to choose your own but there’s some key features here that you should look out for on cases with a gaming capacity in mind:
- Toolless design – this essentially means you can put in the Harddrive(s) and DVD drives without needing to faff about with screws. Believe me, it makes all the difference.
- Size – make sure it can take bigger cards. Some of the graphics cards out now are huge, and you’ll really want the space to play with for installing them. Cheap unnamed cases may not allocate for this
- Cooling – plenty of fan space for the summer days when you’re giving the PC a good running.
Optional extras that are always good (that this case has):
- Dustguards – makes cleaning the fans out much easier and means your PC will run quieter/cooler/smoothly
- Anti-vibration – HardDrives, being mechanical, vibrate a lot. If they’re left loose in the case they make tons of noise, and some companies use rubber mats and screw fittings to dampen the noise. It’s these little touches that may not make the difference to you, but reassure you that the case is well made.
If you’re really on a budget something like the Coolermaster Elite 430 (£32) wouldn’t be a bad choice – tooless design, decent ventilation and decent space. The branding means that it’ll be well thought out too.
Power supply – £45
One thing I always forget about so will get it out of the way now. Important fact : More wattage doesn’t mean a PSU is better. Again, go with a a quality make and you’ll be in much safer hands and won’t have a smoking, rubbery wreck at the end of it.
The things to pay attention to in a PSU are simple: Wattage and Ampage. (12v rail). I’ll explain this bit below.
However, my suggestion is this: Corsair 500W builder. Again, corsair are a quality brand within the whole range of PC bits and bobs, and you can’t really go wrong. Risk you take with a cheap PSU that it’ll burn up quickly as it can’t handle the PC when it’s under load (in-game) or it’ll short out your other components trying to save itself. With decent makes, they’re build to cut out if they detect any sign of danger and will protect your more expensive components (such as graphics card which can go up to £500). 500Watts should be enough to power everything we’re putting in and a bit more. There’s various tools and estimators on the internet and Corsairs website that help guide you in the right direction. Plus you’ll know you’ll get all the right connectors for the PC and not have to Molex-hunt.
Feel free to skip past this bit now, may get a bit nerdy.
My comment about the 12v rail is this. I’ve seen some PSUs that have plenty of wattage, but when you look at their 12v rail it’s a measly 12 or 18 Amps. Really, for any decent graphics card you’ll want it to be able to handle at least 18Amps. The above is 28A and will be enough to support a powerful graphics card. Often it’s worth checking the graphics card specs to see what it recommends. There’s a 600W gaming PSU also by corsair designed with this in mind that can support 48A on a single rail, though this is designed for SLI use – something I’ll be avoiding currently.
That’s that over, it’s safe.
Next up, Motherboard. I’m going to skip out most of the technical detail on this. There’s various small print that you have to watch out for and is only really worthwhile if you’re interested in PC hardware. For now, trust me and get in touch if you need help. The key details currently are that Intel are best currently with their CPUs, and these only work on certain motherboards. This also affects the RAM. I’ve dealt with all of this below.
Motherboard – £87
Again, Intel are a decent make of mobo and it’s all a bit of a muchness when looking. The important thing you need to remember is that it gets very confusing very easily as well as having intimidating product code names that do in fact, unfortunately mean something. This mobo only supports the new Sandybridge i3/5/7 series of CPUs – Socket 1155. The regular first generation (older) i series was 1156. Not sure why they’re going backwards…
CPU – £136
An i5 will suffice – sitting nicely in the middle with good performance and efficiency and being an all round good player. All come in the quad-core variety. Again, lots of detail I could go into but am avoiding.
RAM – £39
The new CPU’s only work with DDR3 memory, as do the motherboards so it’s important to get this right. Also, if you’re upgrading your RAM always make sure it’s the right or same frequency. Anything below 4GB these days is pityful (Sigh, the days when my 4GB was bestowed upon with wonder and amazement) so looks like that’s what we’ll get. The motherboard supports up to 32GB so plenty of upgrade room in the future. We’ll have some Dual Channel Corsair (again, quality and reliable) running at 1600Mhz with Unbuffered CAS 9-9-9-24 timings. Woo unnecessary techspeak.
It’s always a good idea to get Dual-sticks where you can, single stick-RAM setups make some computers complain.
Right, what’ve I missed?
Ah! Harddrive. Always good.
HDD – £37
In recent years the price of storage has collapsed. There really is no excuse not to have at least a TB in your machine. So, I recommend either a Seagate or Western Digital (people have their preferences). Let’s go with a lovely bit of Seagate Barracuda range.
Seagate ST1000DL02 Green Low Power Barracuda
It runs at 5400 rather than 7200rpm, but I can’t imagine there being a noticeable difference.
GPU – £120
Now this is perhaps the major component for a gaming PC. There are two options available – AMD or Nvidia. I prefer the greens (Nvidia) and as such will choose their way as I know their coding systems and range better. My choice would be:
It’s powerful but not too demanding on the system and is quiet. I don’t think there’s much difference in price or power from AMD’s side so it’s entirely up to you. If you’re on more of a budget I’d drop and go to the GTS450 – equally capable card but perhaps not quite good the added umph.
DVD – £13
Drop in a generic DVDR/W drive for £13 and the base unit is done.
Before we look at adding other bits on, lets see where we are total wise.
£540 for the lot including postage. Not bad in my opinion. Of course, if you wanted to you could easily drop £100 or so from this and have a respectable machine for £450. For example, difference case, lower power PSU, i3 instead of i5, less powerful GPU and generally shopping around. But equally I’d suggest saving up and going for the little bit better as it will last you a while. It may sound expensive, but this will do pretty much anything and play pretty much everything on high if not highest that’s on the market currently. It’s not a compromised machine. Indeed, spending much more on it would be somewhat unnecessary. Equate into this the availability and lower cost of PC games and you’ll be well away. Add in the OS and the monitor and expect to pay around £700 for a complete unit. Compare this with somewhere like PC world and you’ll be saving about £500 though.
I realise I’ve omitted an OS and Monitor from this. Many people may already have OS disks or be able to get student discounts so this is very subjective. If not, add £80ish on you won’t go far wrong.
Equally, with a monitor the prices have dropped and a decent 22″ Gaming monitor can be had for £110 or thereabouts, so is easily allocated for but again, people often have them lieing around from previous builds. Though I’d suggest selling and starting entirely from scratch. Gaming Mice+Keyboards are worthwhile, but a few months in to see what you really need from them (i.e FPS or RPG genre speciality).
If you find you have some cash lieing around afterwards that you need to get rid off, see my other article for more detail as to what to add to the build. If you’ve read it then you’ll know you should get an SSD. Then another monitor.
I hope this has helped you in understand that a mid to top end PC won’t cost thousands of pounds. A lot of the items can probably be merged with current systems (graphics card, HDD) and provide ample performance, though unless you have a decent case and CPU already it may be ill-advised. If you have any suggestions or comments please let me know.
Techy Word Breakdown:
PSU – Power Supply Unit
HDD – HardDisk Drive
SSD – Solid State Drive
CPU – Central Processing Unit
GPU – Graphics Processing Unit
Underload – When you’re running a game or lots of powerful programs you’re putting the PC and its componenets under strain. This is more commonly known as ‘load’ in the world of nerdom. Contrary, when you’re just poking people on facebook, it’s known as ‘idle’.
SLI – Having more than 1 graphics card in a system for added perfomance. (Scalable Link Interface)
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