£300-£400 gaming pc - possible?

[theogon01]

Hello everyone. I'm hoping to get my partner his first "gaming" PC. My budget is only £300-400.

I've seen this thread on a £400 pc (https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/threads/400-gaming-pc-is-it-doable.18873927/), but I was wondering if the tech has moved on much in that time?

Is this doable? The games he wants to play are like Cities Skylines, Total War: Napoleon/Rome II Total War, maybe Civ V or VI. I'm happy to put the thing together, and we don't need a screen/mouse/keyboard.

If he sticks with gaming I'd be happy to buy upgrades as future presents if he does want to pay more advanced games.

 

[mickyflinn]

Tech has moved on and so has prices but 8f you shop wisely can make slight improvements.

This has intergrated graphics and can run dome games at 720p

CODE My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey= £62.99
• 1 x MSI B450M Mortar MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 mATX Motherboard= £69.98
• 1 x Corsair CV Series CV550 550W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (CP-9020210-UK)= £44.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 3 3200G Quad Core 4.0GHz (Socket AM4) APU with RX Vega 8 Graphics - Retail= £119.99
• 1 x TeamGroup 512GB Vulcan G SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive= £46.99
• 1 x Kolink Inspire Series K6 ARGB Micro-ATX Case - Black= £24.95

Total: £382.19 (includes shipping: £12.30)
​

 

[Biz.Kid09]

Something like this;
My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x MSI B450M Mortar MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 mATX Motherboard= £69.98
• 1 x Kolink Enclave 500W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply= £47.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey= £62.99
• 1 x TeamGroup 512GB Vulcan G SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive= £46.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 3 3200G Quad Core 4.0GHz (Socket AM4) APU with RX Vega 8 Graphics - Retail= £119.99
• 1 x Kolink Inspire Series K6 ARGB Micro-ATX Case - Black= £24.95

Total: £385.19 (includes shipping: £12.30)
​

The 3200g is available elsewhere for nearly £40 off so say you got the above for £340 ish, if you could get around £100 you can get a half decent second hand graphics card if you didn't mind going down that route.

I would recommend buying motherboard, power supply, ssd and RAM new but if you could find a good deal on a second hand graphics card and CPU that would also work.

EDIT, seems like me and @mickyflinn were very in line, I would say spend the little more for the Kolink power supply as its modular and 80+ gold rated

 

[theogon01]

Thank you guys - so you don't think a dedicated graphics card is necessary then?

 

[MeGaMaN]

Depends entirely on how demanding the games your OH wants to play are and the minimum resolution / detail settings / frames per second he wants to achieve but looking at the games you've listed I don't think they are overly demanding on the GPU so the 3200G would most likely be sufficient.

Ryzen 5 3400G is a slightly more expensive option of CPU with better integrated graphics processor than the Ryzen 3 3200G previously mentioned.