# Calling all Techies



## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Hi all,

I know DW is full of all sorts of knowledge.

I'm looking to help my brother out with finance on a new gaming PC. The budget we agreed on was around £800. Needs to be suitable for running decent games on no issues and suitable for me to store all my spotify music and photos, daily social use etc.

I have came across this but cannot find many details about it.

http://m.ebuyer.com/718809

Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5Ghz
8GB RAM + 120GB SSD
DVDRW + 1TB HDD
NVIDIA GTX 970
Windows 10 Home Edition 64-bit

£859.99

Preferably needs to be available from ebuyer/scan/pcworld.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

Jacob


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Any reason it needs to be from those places?


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

As long as it's readily got finance available they were just some of the sites I saw had it.


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Ah right, take a look at pc specialist, I got mine built for me about 7 yrs ago and found the service excellent and you can build your PC up how you want and they do finance. I paid £2200 for mine which is expensive but the only upgrades I have done since is a bit more memory and HD space, looking at a new graphics card now.


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Ah I did take a look at that site yesterday. The finance was a joke on it though at 30%. Times like this I wish I had got a 0% credit card


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Ah right, finance was good when I got mine, had 12 months interest free to pay for it then went on to monthly payments which i only paid an extra £200 over 3yrs.


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Well just took a plunge and applied for a 0% so any suggestions are welcome!!


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

You get 12months to pay on PC specialist I noticed before interest kicks in, scan was also %29.9. Wouldn't buy from PC world to be honest


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## HarryHedgehog (Aug 13, 2013)

Choppy said:


> You get 12months to pay on PC specialist I noticed before interest kicks in, scan was also %29.9. Wouldn't buy from PC world to be honest


Can't agree more with Choppy - avoid PC World, I used to work for them years ago... Find a good local independent, who will understand exactly what your looking for, - far superior for post sales service most likely as well. Put it this way, when I wanted a new machine, I didn't go to PC World....


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Haha cheers guys. Still after a reasonable spec as I'm not that tech savy when it comes to PC's. So need some recommendations really


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Would this have to include keyboard, monitor etc?


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Depends really. The ones I have looked at haven't included it. The one I linked seemed to have a solid spec but couldn't find any reviews whatsoever about it


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Will have a look later for one, so you'll be looking at about £1000 in total including monitor and keyboard mouse and speakers


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Choppy said:


> Will have a look later for one, so you'll be looking at about £1000 in total including monitor and keyboard mouse and speakers


Sounds about right! Cheers fella much appreciated


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## James_R (Jun 28, 2007)

These guys have just built my gaming pc I bought my lad.

How about this one?
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/intel-4690...03-computer-nvidia-gtx-960-2gb-gaming-pc.html
Just add the SSD in the options box.

I just bought this.
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-x4-860...case-nvidia-gtx-960-2gb-gaming-pc-system.html

Get 60fps+ on GTAV with most details on high with the GTX960
Nice machine, Ordered it Sunday, got it on Tuesday


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## James_R (Jun 28, 2007)

And I bought a keyboard mouse and gaming headset from them for £35.
And a Samsung 24" 1080p screen from Currys for £149


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

James_R said:


> These guys have just built my gaming pc I bought my lad.
> 
> How about this one?
> 
> ...


Top man I shall look into these in more detail tonight with my brother! Cheers!


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## cadmunkey (Jun 8, 2015)

I've bought a few systems over the years from Scan for friends and family and can recommend them. I usually buy all my I.T. parts there.
Your budgets a bit tight for a gaming system but if you can bump it a little more I'd go for the base 3XS Gamer 15i system but swap the 960 for a 970 to give you a bit more gaming power, total cost £872.
http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/custom-gaming-pc-uk-3xsgamer15i


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

cadmunkey said:


> I've bought a few systems over the years from Scan for friends and family and can recommend them. I usually buy all my I.T. parts there.
> Your budgets a bit tight for a gaming system but if you can bump it a little more I'd go for the base 3XS Gamer 15i system but swap the 960 for a 970 to give you a bit more gaming power, total cost £872.
> http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/custom-gaming-pc-uk-3xsgamer15i


I only gave that rough figure due to the average finance apr but I'd rather pay more for something that lasts longer. Did you take a look at the one I linked on ebuyer?


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## HarryHedgehog (Aug 13, 2013)

Think also about the future.. Some components you need to 'bin' others you can add to, eg the processor - buy the best you can, assuming a decent motherboard, you can add extra memory later, also add an additional hard disk, ssd pricey compared to trad hd, but superb performance and reliability. Do you have an old mini hifi or something of the sorts? Use it for speakers - and replace if you so desire at a later date. 

Spend your budget on priorities, add extras upgrades etc later if and as required. Just a few thoughts.


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## PugIain (Jun 28, 2006)

I built my own, I really enjoyed it. Came to around £1000 although it is now about 3 years old.
It's got an I5 2500k clocked to 4.4ghz, cpu water cooler, 8gb Corsair Vengeance blue ram, AMD/Radeon 2gb 7870 card, Samsung 840 120gb ssd as a boot drive and 2x 600gb WD mechanical hard drives (they were cheap!), built on a Gigabyte mobo. In an Antec 1100 case with upgraded fans. An aerocool fan speed controller, blueray drive and a dvd burner.
Asus vs248h monitor, Roccat Isku keyboard and Roccat Lua mouse, and Edifier 2.1 speakers.

Runs pretty much anything I play on full (the card is clocked a bit too). GTA 5, Elite dangerous, Skyrim (hi res textures obviously, standard Skyrim looks like it was made by Stevie Wonder  )

I'm starting to get itchy feet with it now, and fancy a new build. Maybe in a BitFenix case.


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Do you mind the idea of building yourself or do you want pre-built only?
Also, do you have any plans on overclocking?


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Hereisphilly said:


> Do you mind the idea of building yourself or do you want pre-built only?
> Also, do you have any plans on overclocking?


To tell you the honest truth my technical capabilities with a PC are very minimal. My step dad on the other has build a couple of PC's clocked a few as he was explaining last night. It seems to me many pre built ones were better value for money than building one.

I was recommended the http://m.ebuyer.com/718809 by a lad from work but it doesn't seemed to have stirred much of a fuss. Sorry to be so vague


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

JacobDuBois said:


> To tell you the honest truth my technical capabilities with a PC are very minimal. My step dad on the other has build a couple of PC's clocked a few as he was explaining last night. It seems to me many pre built ones were better value for money than building one.
> 
> I was recommended the http://m.ebuyer.com/718809 by a lad from work but it doesn't seemed to have stirred much of a fuss. Sorry to be so vague


Prebuilts get you alot of components for the money, but they do scrimp in some areas, such as case quality, type of motherboard and psu. (really does depend where you but from). A good test is if you get the full component list or just the highlights

If you are very particular about component selection, then building yourself is the only way to go.

Years ago you could save a bit of money by building yourself, but now the prices are very similar, the only big advantage to self build now is being able to choose exactly what you want and how it fits together

If you don't want to overclock and/or have no plans to, then you can save a packet on the motherboard and cpu.
Buying a Z97 board and K processor and then not using the overclocking is a big waster of money.

That ebuyer one looks good, some areas would be a bit suspect, but cyberpower are a good company. Have you checked their website direct?


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

If you fancy trying the build yourself, this system should do you good
I haven't added a monitor or keyboard/mouse as its personal preference, but there are plenty on scan to choose from
You're right on launch of Skylake which are Intel's new processors and platform, but they command quite a big price premium for not much performance over Haswell

Unlocked i5 processor if you want to overclock, nvidia 970 is the best card in the price range, PSU and motherboard to handle adding another 970 down the line if you want, windows 10, 8gb ram, 250gb ssd, standard corsair case, job done


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## PugIain (Jun 28, 2006)

As said, Pre builts can use crap power supplies. Which isn't good. Mine has an OCZ 700 in it, and it hasn't missed a beat.


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

If I got rid of mine I'd try and build one myself next but still seems to have plenty of life left in it and still good for the odd upgrade


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

I understand where people are coming from, another issue would be warranty for individual parts j quite like the warranty on the pre builts. Why is there so much to chose from


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Alot of the components will have 3 year warrranties, if not then it will be a standard 1 year. TBH there arent too many issues with components dying these days providing it works when you take it out of the box and you dont break it when you put it together


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Ah fair enough. Just looking for best value for money in so indecisive when there's such a vast selection but people's opinions definitely help with the research


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

JacobDuBois said:


> Ah fair enough. Just looking for best value for money in so indecisive when there's such a vast selection but people's opinions definitely help with the research


Where are you based mate? Don't mind doing the build for you if you're local if that helps things


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Hereisphilly said:


> Where are you based mate? Don't mind doing the build for you if you're local if that helps things


That's very kind of you to offer fella. I'm in Exeter Devon not many seem to live this way haha


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

JacobDuBois said:


> That's very kind of you to offer fella. I'm in Exeter Devon not many seem to live this way haha


Ah, literally other side of the country, sorry man


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Anymore for anymore? This can't be all DW has to offer


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Every time I do a package up it comes to nearly £1000 lol


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

This is what I would go for myself but might be way out the budget
http://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Gamin...E+MGS+THE+PHANTOM+PAIN+GAME!+?productId=64483


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Choppy said:


> This is what I would go for myself but might be way out the budget
> http://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Gamin...E+MGS+THE+PHANTOM+PAIN+GAME!+?productId=64483


That is very nice new processor aswell. I don't know if I could quite justify it once monitor etc is added haha


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Yeah I agree, if you want a decent overclocked i5 system with a 970, you will be easily pushing £1000 when you get a monitor and OS


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Other than the features that skylake motherboards bring, the cost premium over haswell really isn't worth it for the small performance gain you get IMO


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Maybe worth looking at an AMD system instead of Intel?


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Think you might have to either lose the ssd or go for an alternative graphics card to keep the costs down?


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Yeah the ebuyer one has all that but then it's been mentioned it may have poor non listed specifications. I'm happy with a i5 8gb ram will a 96o be okay? Pref a ssd


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## James_R (Jun 28, 2007)

960 is a good card

Good fast frame rates from our AWD machine that I linked in the first page.
Plus with the 4690 you are thinking about, you may have a performance increase over ours.

Though our X4 860k runs at 4ghz


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Im sure it will, my GPU is what I need to upgrade next as I'm still running 2×2gb gtx285 cards which are very old but can still play games at decent settings


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Right so I need to find a realistic spec perhaps if I could get a pre build that has been overclocked, what has ready been suggested I know but I think it's clearer now.


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

You've always got the potential to upgrade things in the future as well


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

Yes that seems like most logical approach now it would seem! Just need to grab a few together now more realistic price!


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## Choppy (Aug 8, 2013)

Something a bit different? £769 for the build


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

What's your top budget? 
If you need to lower the cost, and your main aim for the PC is gaming, then you need to keep that 970
Loosing the overclocked i5 would be my first choice and going for a standard i5. Still easy enough performance


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Choppy said:


> Something a bit different? £769 for the build


Same price as above, in component form I know, but it gets you a 970, ssd and and i5


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## JacobDuBois (Sep 22, 2014)

That's a nice spec from what I see still under the impression a pre built would be better for me as I don't trust myself to put it all together


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