Building my first PC.

[GreatGig]

As you may have guessed I am hoping to build my first PC. I've been on the fence about it but the recent news regarding GTA has convinced me. I've been advised to ask you folks so here I am.

 

I'm looking for a build that'll run GTAV comfortably (based on assumed specs). I'll be buying one part each month until I have them all (I'm rubbish at saving so this is easier for me) so my budget isn't really limited but I'd like to aim for around the £400 mark. The only restriction I have is that I'd like the case to look quite nice, possibly minimal, because it's going to be hooked up to my TV in the living room and used as my main media source.

 

I know the basics of computing but not enough to be able to assemble one from scratch so I really appreciate any help I can get. Many thanks in advance.

[Stinky12]

Buying one component every month is not the best way to build a PC because as time goes by, price changes and newer parts may come out.

Set a budget and save up on it, once you get to that point, then start building your PC.

For building your very own PC, there are lots of tutorials on it, and Youtube has plenty of them.

 

For case, both of these may be a good choice for your setup. I got the BitFenix in Red because the AeroCool wasn't even release at that time. Both comes different colors for you to choose from. The AeroCool supports both MicroATX and ITX, BitFenix only supports ITX. The Prodigy M version supports MicroATX

 

 

Edited June 11, 2014 by Stinky12

[GreatGig]

Well, as I mentioned, I'm terrible at saving my money so it'd work out better for me to buy the hardware thus "saving" it in a physical form. I get your point though, that prices and hardware will change, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make otherwise I'll never get the PC done. If I buy a case one month, it'll give me enough motivation to follow up the following months.

 

As for the case above, the BitFenix Prodigy, that's exactly what I'm after. Bloody gorgeous. I had read up on the InWin 901 but the price tag and a few bad reviews put me off.

[AHelmi88]

Why instead of buying of new part, Save your money away?

 

You don't display your age but, If you are young, put the money with your mother/father, or If adult, put it in the Bank, You will profits too

[TheMcSame]

As you may have guessed I am hoping to build my first PC. I've been on the fence about it but the recent news regarding GTA has convinced me. I've been advised to ask you folks so here I am.

 

I'm looking for a build that'll run GTAV comfortably (based on assumed specs). I'll be buying one part each month until I have them all (I'm rubbish at saving so this is easier for me) so my budget isn't really limited but I'd like to aim for around the £400 mark. The only restriction I have is that I'd like the case to look quite nice, possibly minimal, because it's going to be hooked up to my TV in the living room and used as my main media source.

 

I know the basics of computing but not enough to be able to assemble one from scratch so I really appreciate any help I can get. Many thanks in advance.

Any links that might be helpful I'll put in a spoiler at the end.

 

£400? Ouch. Unless you've got a spare HDD with an OS installed about £100 is gone on buying Windows, if you're going for windows or actually buying it.

 

Cheap PC are usually better off pre built. Building your own is better for higher budget PC. Also, Keep in mind you can go for a different CPU than the one I mention but make sure the mobo has the correct socket for the CPU you buy.

 

Anyway, if you can raise the budget slightly get a mobo with a LGA 1150 socket that supports multi gpu gaming (SLI and crossfire setups) and overclocking. You will want to buy a graphics card that supports crossfire (AMD GPU) or SLI (NVIDIA GPU). While this will raise the cost it makes it better for future upgrades.

 

So why did I say get one that supports overclocking? The CPU is the reason. While this is your first PC I'd assume you wouldn't be comfortable overclocking so you might want to get a friend or a professional to overclock and overvolt it for you. The CPU is an Intel Pentium G3258, Part number: BX80646G3258. This is a dual core CPU with a LGA 1150 socket. It's a rather new CPU and it is one of the first dual core intel CPUs to be unlocked meaning you can overclock it and overvolt it for better performance. You only need 2 cores to game regardless of what people say. Games are only just starting to take advantage of 4 cores, even those can still run well with a dual core CPU, with very few taking advantage of 6 cores (Mainly games running on EA's Frostbite I believe) The G3258, when overclocked is comparable to another rather new, high performance CPU, the intel i7 4790k. The difference of FPS in games is very little when you overclock the G3258 compared to the 4790k. The Pentium costs about £50 so getting performance similar to a £214 CPU is pretty crazy.

 

The only problem with this is that you WILL need to buy a cpu cooler as the stock cooler WILL NOT be good enough to cool an overclocked CPU (you'll also need some thermal paste if you don't use the stock cooler)

 

 

 

About 4:30 for the comparison.

 

Pentium G3258: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646g3258

 

This should help you pick out parts as cheap as possible: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

 

This should help you to build your PC.

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2014 by TheMcSame

[sivispacem]

Yeah, I wouldn't bother spending ~£80 on a decent premium 1150 board to overclock a £50 dual-core Pentium, especially in a small form factor case. Quite aside from the fact you'll have to spend another £30 on cooling. At the £400 price point the last thing you want to be worrying about is overclocking performance.

 

£400 is a fairly tall order for anything capable of high quality gaming performance, but you could probably scrape an i3 + cheap motherboard, 8gb of fairly decent DDR3 and something like a 2GB GTX750. Cases are expensive and with such a low budget you have bigger things to be worrying about, like a power supply that isn't utterly shocking.

 

i3 4130- £80.98

Gigabyte B85M HD3- £44.77

Gigabyte GTX750Ti 2GB- £109.99

Crucial BLS 8Gb- £56.83

Corsair CX430- £31.99

Seagate Barracuda 1TB- £41.90

 

That gives you circa £40 to find a case and assumes you don't need a CD drive or Windows. All prices from Amazon.

 

Get something like a Cooler Master Elite 344 and you'll have enough left over for a cheap DVD drive.