First Gaming PC for my mates spoilt 15 year old! new or old...

alexx · 17 Oct 2018 at 10:25

My mates kid has asked his parents for a gaming PC for christmas and sent over the spec for £1000 worth of parts not including an operating system or monitor!

That sounds far too much for something he may not even use next to his xbox and playstation and plethora of games!

Can anyone recommend me the cheapest spec that would be suitable either new or second hand that would run Fortnight?

Is Intel still the best bet or AMD?
Has much happened recently with CPU's or are the ones from a few years ago still good?

Thanks

orbitalwalsh · 17 Oct 2018 at 10:39

@alexx , does he need a monitor ? does he happen to have xbox one x etc ?

PiKe · 17 Oct 2018 at 10:46

AMD for that kind of budget, Intel is far too expensive right now.

£1000 isn't actually a lot these days.

StarShock · 17 Oct 2018 at 13:31

If you're looking at new you can just about get away with an AMD 2400G build for fortnite medium settings, and can throw in a better GPU a year down the line if they still interested.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Gigabyte B450M-DS3H AMD B450 (Socket AM4) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £69.95
1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD48G3000= £62.99
1 x Kingston A400 120GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Hard Drive - (SA400S37/120G)= £22.99
1 x Toshiba 1TB P300 7200RPM Performance Hard Drive (HDWD110UZSVA)= £36.95
1 x Cougar VTX 450W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply - Black= £41.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 2400G VEGA Graphics AM4 CPU w/ Wraith Stealth Cooler= £139.99
1 x Kolink KLM-001 Micro-ATX Case - Black= £24.95

Total: £411.51 (includes shipping: £11.70)

As an alternative, you can grab a 2nd hand i5 system and throw in a 1050 or some such.

alexx · 17 Oct 2018 at 17:04

Sadly he needs a monitor as he doesn't want to play on the 40" tv he has in his room... I believe he's got the latest consoles but some of his mates only have PC which I guess is why he wants it. I've got a 24" dell monitor he can use for now so just price for a build. Starshock thats very kind thank you!

I haven't looked at an AMD for many years - whats made Intel go so expensive?

StarShock · 18 Oct 2018 at 08:13

alexx said:
whats made Intel go so expensive?

Mostly its the chaos with their 10nm process or lack there of. They started to move to 10 nm at the start of the year intending to be in full production by now but apparently its not worked very well, so have had to move their new processors onto the older 14nm ,along with the older cpus, chipsets and a huge order from apple for modems in the new iPhone. So the 14nm is way over capacity. So they aren't able to make enough chips to keep up with all their orders. Its a whole mess.

Jamin280672 · 18 Oct 2018 at 09:42

alexx said:
Sadly he needs a monitor as he doesn't want to play on the 40" tv he has in his room... I believe he's got the latest consoles but some of his mates only have PC which I guess is why he wants it. I've got a 24" dell monitor he can use for now so just price for a build. Starshock thats very kind thank you!

I haven't looked at an AMD for many years - whats made Intel go so expensive?

This is what I came up with, it would be a tiny little machine, built in wifi into the motherboard so no having to run cables to get onto the internet, with the left over funds, you could always upgrade the CPU to something like a RyZen 2600 and get a dedicated graphics card, that would make it a pretty powerful machine, however, if you choose to use the 2400G (which is a great CPU) I would defo recommend getting 16gb of RAM as the GPU will want a piece of that, as for the OS, download the ISO from Microsoft and grab a key off ebay for £5.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x MSI B450I GAMING PLUS AC (Socket AM4) Mini-ITX Motherboard= £124.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 2400G VEGA Graphics AM4 CPU w/ Wraith Stealth Cooler= £139.99
1 x Cougar LX 500W 80 Plus Bronze Full Modular Power Supply= £58.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Predator 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX432C16PB3K2/16)= £149.99
1 x Samsung 500GB 860 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 64 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-76E500B/EU)= £88.99
1 x WD 1TB Blue 7200rpm 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (WD10EZEX)= £38.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX Mini-ITX Chassis with Window - Black= £66.95

Total: £681.19 (includes shipping: £12.30)

alexx · 18 Oct 2018 at 10:36

Great thanks for all this knowledge guys - really appreciated.

1 last question - Am I right in thinking the CPU has a built in GPU like intel does? But in this case it sounds like the built in GPU's in the AMD's are much better than those that come in Intels as I thought they were pretty much only good to drive monitors and not games?

Thanks

StarShock · 18 Oct 2018 at 10:59

yeah the AMD "G" CPUs have build in graphics. The VEGA 11 in the 2400G is roughly on par with an NVidia GT 1030 in terms of gaming performance. Not going to break any records but enough oomf to play most games at low to medium settings

orbitalwalsh · 18 Oct 2018 at 13:14

alexx said:
Sadly he needs a monitor as he doesn't want to play on the 40" tv he has in his room... I believe he's got the latest consoles but some of his mates only have PC which I guess is why he wants it. I've got a 24" dell monitor he can use for now so just price for a build. Starshock thats very kind thank you!

I haven't looked at an AMD for many years - whats made Intel go so expensive?

CODE
My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Gigabyte B450M-DS3H AMD B450 (Socket AM4) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £69.95
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 Quad Core 1400 3.40GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £112.99
1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD48G3000= £64.99
1 x MSI Radeon RX 570 ARMOR OC 8192MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £179.99
1 x Bitfenix Formula Series 450W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply= £59.99
1 x Kingston A400 480GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Hard Drive - (SA400S37/480G)= £59.99
1 x Antec P6 Micro-ATX Case - Black Window= £54.95
1 x AOC G2460VQ6 24" 1920x1080 TN FREESYNC 1ms Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red= £139.99

Total: £757.54 (includes shipping: £14.70)

75hz freesync monitor- link up xbox or future playstation if needs be . rx570 will be better then current Gen consoles and should give them the edge in gaming