PC Spec Advice Needed

J

JJ_Young

Bronze Level Poster
Hi

My nephew is wanting a PC for his xmas and im trying to configure one that will be good enough to last a few years.

He will be using it mainly for Minecraft, tekkit, Dragon age games, DC Universe, rift and skyrim etc

I had a look at the pre built PCs and the Cyclone V looked ok so I used that as a starting point and changed 1 or 2 things and came up with this -


Case COOLERMASTER ELITE 430 BLACK CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570 (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® P8Z77-M: MICRO-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPERX GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1866MHz X.M.P(2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660 - DVI, HDMI, VGA - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply 450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling INTEL SOCKET LGA1155 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card Asus Xonar DG 5.1 SoundCard & Headphone AMP (Award Winner) (£22)
Network Facilities 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Total Order Price £785.00

What do you think of this? was trying for £600 to £700 so im over my intended budget. would this be ok to handle those games and manage newer ones over the next few years?

is there anything that I should change? I wasnt sure about the graphics card or processor.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks

JJ
 
Grinder

Grinder

Enthusiast
This would make a great pc and should have no problems with up coming games as the cpu and gfx are very good :)
 
J

JJ_Young

Bronze Level Poster
Thanks,

I thought I would have a look at the AMD options and came up with this -

Case COOLERMASTER ELITE 430 BLACK CASE
Processor (CPU) AMD BULLDOZER QUAD CORE FX-4170 (4.20GHz/4MB CACHE/AM3+)
Motherboard ASUS® M5A97 R2.0 (DDR3, USB3.0, 6Gb/s, Windows 8 Ready!)
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 650 - DVI, HDMI, VGA - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply 450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card Asus Xonar DG 5.1 SoundCard & Headphone AMP (Award Winner) (£22)

Total Price £586.00

is there much difference in this compared to the first spec as its at least £200 cheaper? would it still last a few years and play newish games, was thinking the extra money could go towards a monitor.

ta

JJ
 
Last edited:
M

moorw003

Active member
I would go down the AMD route, the chips are much cheaper and the reality is they offer enough performance for your money, when gaming wise any bottleneck will be in the graphics.

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/view/Fusion-650-gaming-pc/

I'd start here and work out a configuration from that. Get the best graphics card you can afford, but don't go overboard and if you can upgrade to the M5A99X motherboard, that will offer more gaming possibilities going forward.
 
keynes

keynes

Multiverse Poster
is there much difference in this compared to the first spec as its at least £200 cheaper? would it still last a few years and play newish games, was thinking the extra money could go towards a monitor.
Click to expand...

For Skyrim you will notice a significant difference between the FX-4170 with the GTX 650 and the i5-3570 with the GTX 660. If you are on a tight budget I'd forget about the soundcard, have only 4gb memory ram for now and try to get the best gpu you can afford.
 
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