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I'm tasked with finding a gaming PC for a mates sons birthday at the end of April (he's 10) and between us we can afford to spend a max of £300, is it possible on such a small budget?, i'm not fussed if its a refurbished model or 2nd hand but i have absolutely no idea what is good/bad or even where to start looking.
Any tips on where to look and what to look for would be gratefully acknowledged
Why a PC for a 10 year old?
Surely a XBOX1 or PS4 would be more powerful for that money and also more likely that his mates would be using one of those platforms than a PC?
Sorry for such a typical STW reply, not much help at all!
should be able to find something cheap enough. an rx 460 would be a minimum for a graphics card. I picked one up for £70 from CEX.
Depends on the game. Latest edition of top games, no. Minecraft, yes.
What does he want to play on it, is the big question. If it's big new blocbuster titles then iy's a stretch
I got a refurbed Win 7 PC with 8GB of RAM and a decent graphics card (for Solidworks work stuff, obvs...) for about £220 that happens to be good enough to play loads of recent-ish games. I'm not into shooty or drivey stuff, but it can run Lego games and Retroarch arcade stuff fine. Here's an ebay search for you-
Depends on the game. Latest edition of top games, no. Minecraft, yes.
kids are playing resident evil 2 on the rx460 upstairs. Sure it isn't on max settings but still great graphics and fps in the 50-60s.
If you put it together yourself with parts you have sourced it is very easy to get a decent gaming PC for £300, but buying one already built is trickier
It's doable...
I picked up a refurb HP Z230 Tower (you don't want the mini form factor) with an i7-4790 processor and 16GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD recently for £160. I picked up a nearly new Gigabyte 1060Ti 6GB gfx card for £150 it and it'll play virtually anything at high frame rates at 1080p! It'll play many games at decent frame rates at higher resolutions than that, but will struggle with the latest games on 4K... But it's a staggeringly powerful machine for just over £300!
In fact, I only really picked it up on a whim, don't really use it at all. My GF's lad is big into PC gaming and I thought I'd have a go again, have switched it on maybe 3 times in the last 3 months! Drop me a line if it's of interest...
Just for reference, it scored a geekbench score of 13364, scored approx 750 in Cinebench CPU test, and scored just shy of 100fps in Cinebench 3d gfx test... OK these numbers wouldn't worry a current i7 machine with dual 1080's in, but for £300 it's lightning fast!
Cheers for replies folks, he's already got an xbox1, at the moment he's playing call of duty ww2 and is really interested in the history of the war (also ww1) to the point that he is also avidly listening to an audiobook i gave him by Max Hastings - All Hell Let Loose so it's not all about the shooting and violence, i guess he's also wanting it for browsing online and stuff.
As for building one myself that's out of the question, i've nae idea as to how to go about doing that as my last pc was a 386 with a 1.2gb hd back in the 1990's, been mac since 1999 for myself and never touched nor used a windows operating system since.
mboy, could very well be interested if you would be willing to post, i'll speak to his mum later.
Totally. Built my 10&12 boys 60fps+ fortnite pcs at Christmas. Dell optiplex 790 8Gb, core i5. Added a cheap ssd and a 750ti, total came to £180 per machine. Quad core, 8gb and check the gfx card benchmarks.
Built a similar machine, similar cost with Radeon 460 that goes even quicker.
Best I can do..
Caveats.. it's mining motherboard so its cheap but it has 1 x16 PCIe slot, and the CPU is a pentium duel core but it has 4 threads and performs camparetivley to i3
ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ Intel Socket 1151 Motherboard
£42.50
Intel Pentium Gold G5400 3.7GHz Dual Core (4 thread)
£62.14
Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (1x 8GB) 3000MHz DDR4 RAM
£39.98
Promo 2 free games ASRock Radeon RX 570 4GB Graphics Card
£124.99
Kingston A400 240GB 2.5" SATA III SSD
£26.99
CiT Mini Falcon Mid Tower Case - Black
£14.49
Kolink Core Series 500W 80+ PSU
£26.21
Item Total:
£337.30
Free Delivery
Or as above, butcher and older 2nd hand i5 or i7 office machine, add a cheap case, SSD, GPU and PSU, and you have a nice machine.
As for building one myself that’s out of the question,
It's very easy. Much simpler than setting up some gears or bleeding brakes.
I'm sure it is easy (if you've got any experience) but what mattyfez posted above makes absolutely no sense to me in the slightest and as for how it goes together with regard to drivers/compatibility issues and even the act of loading windows is out of my capability, as i said earlier the last time i switched on a pc or even used one was well over 20 years ago.
It is good to know that building/buying something pretty decent for £300 is possible though so i'm very grateful for the info.
I’m sure it is easy (if you’ve got any experience) but what mattyfez posted above makes absolutely no sense to me in the slightest
Doesn't have to make sense. Just click 'buy' then plug it all together when it comes.
Where are you? Non stealth ad:
I've got a i5 4590, 8 or 16gb Corsair vengeance (can't remember), gtx 960, coolermaster elite mini itx case, gigabyte h97n that's been gathering dust for years other than occasional social pro evolution soccer. Still got most of the boxes somewhere..
Budget wise this is without doubt the best out there, decent upgrade path to faster i5/i7 CPU's and a decent gfx card that'll easily handle 1080p gaming.. Get it NOW do not wait as that's a blummin bargain for the spec
THIS!!
blummin bargain for the spec
Not much use unless the OP lives in Leeds!
Collection only Ebay bargains are great but are getting fewer and fewer.
Doesn’t have to make sense. Just click ‘buy’ then plug it all together when it comes.
Agree with this. Honestly it really is very easy. Basically lego. Watch a video for roughly where everything goes. You cant plug anything in wrong as the connectors are all specific.
Windows install is as simple as downloading it from microsoft onto a usb stick. Turn pc on and click install. Can get a key to validate later.
Drivers... Just go to the motherboard and GPU websites. Click on the model. Click dowload drivers. Done.