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As you may know, I'm saving for a new graphics card and I'm looking at the GTX 960 as a good card for the money that also works well with a standard 500w PSU.
But....what if I saved a bit more and bought a new PC? My CPU is not great, it's an A8 APU and it's struggling at times, the motherboard is creaky and only an FM2 and won't take anything other than the APUs due to the wonderful knobbling HP do on their Bios. So I'm thinking here's a challenge, find me a PC (on Amazon as I have vouchers making up some of my money towards it, or take £150-£200 off the maximum price) that will; a) run all the latest games at high settings or thereabouts (not necessarily ultra), b) costs less than or around £500 and c) looks pretty.
This is the best I've come up with so far:
Go!
But....what if I saved a bit more and bought a new PC? My CPU is not great, it's an A8 APU and it's struggling at times, the motherboard is creaky and only an FM2 and won't take anything other than the APUs due to the wonderful knobbling HP do on their Bios. So I'm thinking here's a challenge, find me a PC (on Amazon as I have vouchers making up some of my money towards it, or take £150-£200 off the maximum price) that will; a) run all the latest games at high settings or thereabouts (not necessarily ultra), b) costs less than or around £500 and c) looks pretty.
This is the best I've come up with so far:
Go!
Page:
chasfh wrote:
pb wrote:
[i]chasfh wrote:
[i]FX4300 CPU (£60)
M5A-97 motherboard (£58)
8Gb RAM (16 if you're feeling flush! 16Gb makes a huge difference.) (£50 to £120 depending on breed/size of modules)
Any 300 series AMD Graphics card ('cos you can get one of those for less than my one costs now, and they're even better). (£130 up, depending on model)
I assume you'd be able to re-use your HDD and peripherals, so you'd be looking at around £450 tops....
Of course, you'd need to have at least a little faith in what I say about my PC...
If I was going with AMD then surely I'd go with a FX 6300.
In which case I could just get This one. [/i]
That PC looks like a reasonable deal on the face of it. Guess it depends on the quality of the HDD, quality of RAM, reliability of the motherboard (not a great lover of Gigabyte myself).
The 380 is a good GPU, bear in mind however that the FX6300 is actually a 3.5Ghz processor, NOT 4.1GHz as stated on Amazon. The FX4300 is actually 3.8Ghz, with turbo set at 4.2... Speed over cores is a bit of a trade-off, but as most games won't play happily with more than 4 cores, I'd still be tempted to go for the 4300.
And pre-builds tend to cut corners on RAM quality. Generic, unbranded RAM is significantly less performance-oriented than, say, Corsair. Timings are always a bit off the mark compared to branded RAM, generally with higher latency. This can make a fairly major difference to a gaming PC.
You'd be infinitely better served keeping what you can from your existing PC, buying the bits to assemble yourself and spending the extra money on 16Gb of branded RAM.[/i]
Even looking at single core, the 6300 seems to perform better in all tests, though.
That company uses Corsair ram and PSUs and the parts are listed below the description, so it's all good. It's £140 cheaper than a faster i5 and GTX970 but performance is the trade off there.
pb wrote:
[i]chasfh wrote:
[i]FX4300 CPU (£60)
M5A-97 motherboard (£58)
8Gb RAM (16 if you're feeling flush! 16Gb makes a huge difference.) (£50 to £120 depending on breed/size of modules)
Any 300 series AMD Graphics card ('cos you can get one of those for less than my one costs now, and they're even better). (£130 up, depending on model)
I assume you'd be able to re-use your HDD and peripherals, so you'd be looking at around £450 tops....
Of course, you'd need to have at least a little faith in what I say about my PC...
If I was going with AMD then surely I'd go with a FX 6300.
In which case I could just get This one. [/i]
That PC looks like a reasonable deal on the face of it. Guess it depends on the quality of the HDD, quality of RAM, reliability of the motherboard (not a great lover of Gigabyte myself).
The 380 is a good GPU, bear in mind however that the FX6300 is actually a 3.5Ghz processor, NOT 4.1GHz as stated on Amazon. The FX4300 is actually 3.8Ghz, with turbo set at 4.2... Speed over cores is a bit of a trade-off, but as most games won't play happily with more than 4 cores, I'd still be tempted to go for the 4300.
And pre-builds tend to cut corners on RAM quality. Generic, unbranded RAM is significantly less performance-oriented than, say, Corsair. Timings are always a bit off the mark compared to branded RAM, generally with higher latency. This can make a fairly major difference to a gaming PC.
You'd be infinitely better served keeping what you can from your existing PC, buying the bits to assemble yourself and spending the extra money on 16Gb of branded RAM.[/i]
Even looking at single core, the 6300 seems to perform better in all tests, though.
That company uses Corsair ram and PSUs and the parts are listed below the description, so it's all good. It's £140 cheaper than a faster i5 and GTX970 but performance is the trade off there.
pb wrote:
chasfh wrote:
[i]FX4300 CPU (£60)
M5A-97 motherboard (£58)
8Gb RAM (16 if you're feeling flush! 16Gb makes a huge difference.) (£50 to £120 depending on breed/size of modules)
Any 300 series AMD Graphics card ('cos you can get one of those for less than my one costs now, and they're even better). (£130 up, depending on model)
I assume you'd be able to re-use your HDD and peripherals, so you'd be looking at around £450 tops....
Of course, you'd need to have at least a little faith in what I say about my PC...
If I was going with AMD then surely I'd go with a FX 6300.
In which case I could just get This one. [/i]
That PC looks like a reasonable deal on the face of it. Guess it depends on the quality of the HDD, quality of RAM, reliability of the motherboard (not a great lover of Gigabyte myself).
The 380 is a good GPU, bear in mind however that the FX6300 is actually a 3.5Ghz processor, NOT 4.1GHz as stated on Amazon. The FX4300 is actually 3.8Ghz, with turbo set at 4.2... Speed over cores is a bit of a trade-off, but as most games won't play happily with more than 4 cores, I'd still be tempted to go for the 4300.
And pre-builds tend to cut corners on RAM quality. Generic, unbranded RAM is significantly less performance-oriented than, say, Corsair. Timings are always a bit off the mark compared to branded RAM, generally with higher latency. This can make a fairly major difference to a gaming PC.
You'd be infinitely better served keeping what you can from your existing PC, buying the bits to assemble yourself and spending the extra money on 16Gb of branded RAM.
chasfh wrote:
[i]FX4300 CPU (£60)
M5A-97 motherboard (£58)
8Gb RAM (16 if you're feeling flush! 16Gb makes a huge difference.) (£50 to £120 depending on breed/size of modules)
Any 300 series AMD Graphics card ('cos you can get one of those for less than my one costs now, and they're even better). (£130 up, depending on model)
I assume you'd be able to re-use your HDD and peripherals, so you'd be looking at around £450 tops....
Of course, you'd need to have at least a little faith in what I say about my PC...
If I was going with AMD then surely I'd go with a FX 6300.
In which case I could just get This one. [/i]
That PC looks like a reasonable deal on the face of it. Guess it depends on the quality of the HDD, quality of RAM, reliability of the motherboard (not a great lover of Gigabyte myself).
The 380 is a good GPU, bear in mind however that the FX6300 is actually a 3.5Ghz processor, NOT 4.1GHz as stated on Amazon. The FX4300 is actually 3.8Ghz, with turbo set at 4.2... Speed over cores is a bit of a trade-off, but as most games won't play happily with more than 4 cores, I'd still be tempted to go for the 4300.
And pre-builds tend to cut corners on RAM quality. Generic, unbranded RAM is significantly less performance-oriented than, say, Corsair. Timings are always a bit off the mark compared to branded RAM, generally with higher latency. This can make a fairly major difference to a gaming PC.
You'd be infinitely better served keeping what you can from your existing PC, buying the bits to assemble yourself and spending the extra money on 16Gb of branded RAM.
chasfh wrote:
FX4300 CPU (£60)
M5A-97 motherboard (£58)
8Gb RAM (16 if you're feeling flush! 16Gb makes a huge difference.) (£50 to £120 depending on breed/size of modules)
Any 300 series AMD Graphics card ('cos you can get one of those for less than my one costs now, and they're even better). (£130 up, depending on model)
I assume you'd be able to re-use your HDD and peripherals, so you'd be looking at around £450 tops....
Of course, you'd need to have at least a little faith in what I say about my PC...
If I was going with AMD then surely I'd go with a FX 6300.
In which case I could just get This one.
FX4300 CPU (£60)
M5A-97 motherboard (£58)
8Gb RAM (16 if you're feeling flush! 16Gb makes a huge difference.) (£50 to £120 depending on breed/size of modules)
Any 300 series AMD Graphics card ('cos you can get one of those for less than my one costs now, and they're even better). (£130 up, depending on model)
I assume you'd be able to re-use your HDD and peripherals, so you'd be looking at around £450 tops....
Of course, you'd need to have at least a little faith in what I say about my PC...
If I was going with AMD then surely I'd go with a FX 6300.
In which case I could just get This one.
FX4300 CPU (£60)
M5A-97 motherboard (£58)
8Gb RAM (16 if you're feeling flush! 16Gb makes a huge difference.) (£50 to £120 depending on breed/size of modules)
Any 300 series AMD Graphics card ('cos you can get one of those for less than my one costs now, and they're even better). (£130 up, depending on model)
I assume you'd be able to re-use your HDD and peripherals, so you'd be looking at around £450 tops....
Of course, you'd need to have at least a little faith in what I say about my PC...
M5A-97 motherboard (£58)
8Gb RAM (16 if you're feeling flush! 16Gb makes a huge difference.) (£50 to £120 depending on breed/size of modules)
Any 300 series AMD Graphics card ('cos you can get one of those for less than my one costs now, and they're even better). (£130 up, depending on model)
I assume you'd be able to re-use your HDD and peripherals, so you'd be looking at around £450 tops....
Of course, you'd need to have at least a little faith in what I say about my PC...
As you may know, I'm saving for a new graphics card and I'm looking at the GTX 960 as a good card for the money that also works well with a standard 500w PSU.
But....what if I saved a bit more and bought a new PC? My CPU is not great, it's an A8 APU and it's struggling at times, the motherboard is creaky and only an FM2 and won't take anything other than the APUs due to the wonderful knobbling HP do on their Bios. So I'm thinking here's a challenge, find me a PC (on Amazon as I have vouchers making up some of my money towards it, or take £150-£200 off the maximum price) that will; a) run all the latest games at high settings or thereabouts (not necessarily ultra), b) costs less than or around £500 and c) looks pretty.
This is the best I've come up with so far:
Go!
But....what if I saved a bit more and bought a new PC? My CPU is not great, it's an A8 APU and it's struggling at times, the motherboard is creaky and only an FM2 and won't take anything other than the APUs due to the wonderful knobbling HP do on their Bios. So I'm thinking here's a challenge, find me a PC (on Amazon as I have vouchers making up some of my money towards it, or take £150-£200 off the maximum price) that will; a) run all the latest games at high settings or thereabouts (not necessarily ultra), b) costs less than or around £500 and c) looks pretty.
This is the best I've come up with so far:
Go!
Page: