i thought i’d get a gaming PC for the down times when i am not riding/working/out but its seems a real maze of suppliers out there:ebay,amazon, chillblast – any recommendations?

Know what you want? What is the specs for the games you want to play.

Try scan.co.uk’s 3XS division for a gaming PC.

Spec-wise, it’s down to what you’re playing but an i5 CPU with 8gb of RAM will be sufficient. Graphics card-wise you’ll find some great deals out there, an Nvidia GTX750 would be a great starting point.

I’ve a two year old i5 3570K CPU and Z77 motherboard with 8gb. I’ve replaced my old 660Ti card with an Nvidia 780 and it’ll play anything I want in 1080p at full detail.

We used Chiliblast PCs for a festival last year; not sure what model but they were good and dependable.

A few games programmers I’ve known swear by https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk . Even if you don’t get one from them, it’s a good site for poking around with specs and prices.

Heard nothing but good things about PC Specialist next to sourcing every bit yourself and taking the time to build it and such.

As said i5 is sufficient – there are very few games that can take advantage of the multi-threading offered by i7’s so save your money. FWIW I’m still running a Core2 Extreme (QX6850) which runs stuff at 1080p with high-ultra settings (GPU is a Sapphire HD7850 or something, can’t remember but it wasn’t exactly [arse]bleeding-edge when I got it last year) from a vanilla ASUS board with 8GB of RAM.

Have just been having a squizz at PC Specialist…blimey, they’re good value.

Overclockers always been good for me. Good overclocked MB bundles also.

and most importantly, very good customer service.

Another vote for PC Specialist

Their system builder works well.. Got a quad core i7 and Gtx 780 for rocket jr last year. It plays strategy games at 4k no probs but struggles with some of the more demanding FPS/driving games. Plays fine at 1080p though

Thanks for the PC specialist shop – quite intuitive build menus.

I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of years, so I’m not sure of the different model numbers et cetera. However, it’s usually much cheaper to buy the parts individually and build the machine yourself (the opposite is true with bikes). I can recommend Scan for parts.

As above, a top level I5 will serve you well. RAM costs next to nothing, so knock yourself out (although you’ll need to check whether your OS can utilise more than 4gb). You can save quite a bit of money by using a decent graphics card from the pervious generation, which will give you an upgrade path should you want it. Also, I’d strongly recommend installing your OS onto an SSD.

All in all, you should be able to build a top quality PC for around £600 or much less if you’re willing to make intelligent sacrifices.