My teenage son would like a gaming PC and to be fair he has done a fair bit of research on where to get refurbished ones to keep cost sub 200 quid which I cant complain about.

Does the STW massif have any words of wisdom of what and where to get said entry level PC? Because I really don’t have a scoobie 😕

£200 will get you the graphics card…
Does he want a monitor, keyboard and mouse too?

Self build, there are a few how to’s out there on budget gaming pcs

http://www.ramcomputersystems.co.uk/category/gaming_pcs

some slightly over budget, what games is he looking to play?

Was reading an article on Toms Hardware this morning “$350 Bonus Entry Level PC” that’s got some benchmarks for various games for that build.

What I got in summary from it, is that you go for an AMD CPU(APU) build as the built in graphics is superior to the Intel CPU’s at a similar price point which will then get you going and then add in a dedicated graphics card at a later date (when pocket money has been saved)

Google Scan, chuck a good graphic card in and it’s pretty cheap. Nothing for £200 though

I hate to say it, but 200 quid is not enough for a decent PC. You’ll be looking closer to 500 as an entry level.

As much as i love my PC, i’ll have to recommend an Xbox or similar.

Have a look at this video

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh455l3348s[/video]

I didn’t go the whole hog for my son, but bought a used (but not ancient) intel motherboard PC from ebay for £90, and added an £80 7770 graphics card. Seems to be working good enough for him.

It might be worth looking at second hand options. My PC is a few years old now and was fairly middle of the road when I bought it back then but still seems to run games like Skyrim at full HD and ultra graphics settings.

It’s a first generation i5 with an ATI 6890 graphics card.

pick the game he wants to run and get a comp to at least the minimum spec required. If it were me I’d be buying a 2nd hand machine off of ebay and then stick a better graphics card in.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
http://www.ebuyer.com/

Ooh, sorry to hijack slightly, but this has potential for xmas for my son. I’m still stuck in the days when dual core was considered fancy. What would be a reasonable budget PC spec to achieve what the OP is looking for nowadays?

You can easily build a competent PC for gaming for around £450.

It’s important to remember a PC is more than a tool for gaming – so try not to put too much cost to just playing games – for your £450 you get infinitely more value than a £350 PS3.

Here is a great starting point for $500 dollars – which is like £300 quid currently – which quite frankly is hilarious for the power you’re getting here. (in a good way, as in, lots of power, little price)

[Build Ready] $500 gaming compter from buildapc

Funnily enough we have an older PC which is non functional due to serious virus issue and slow processor. So these self build vids are very interesting and attractive. New mother board ram graphics and hard drive could result in some heavy weight power for a modest budget! 🙂