Might be classed as a very cheeky stealth ad so delete if I’m breaking any rules, but I gave my son the PC I built up during Covid so his old one is currently gathering dust in a corner:

Ryzen 5 3400G Processor w/AMD cooler (Wraith RGB iirc)

ASUS A320m AM4 motherboard

16Gb (2 x 8) 3200 MHz DDR RAM

GTX970 GPU

Lots of case cooling fans

Various storage (I can’t remember exactly but I think 256Gb SSD for windows install and then a 1TB HDD, although it’s a SLOW one repurposed from an old laptop)

Wifi card

RGB keyboard & mouse

It played stuff like Fortnite, Roblox, War Thunder, etc. no problem at 1080p

Might be worth around £400 at the moment, but would give a decent base and a sizeable amount of change from your £1500 budget to upgrade motherboard/CPU/GPU/storage?

Thanks for the offer, but would rather get one built up so we have any support if something goes wrong.

I’ve come up with this build now based on help from here (thanks!) and my own research:

Intel Core i5 12400F Alder Lake-S CPU
Kingston FURY Beast 16GB (2x 8GB) 3600MHz DDR4 RAM
Gigabyte B660M DS3H AX DDR4 Intel Socket 1700 Motherboard
Be Quiet! Pure Rock 2 Air Tower CPU Cooler
CCL Choice GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GPU
Montech Air 100 ARGB Mid Tower Gaming Case – White
Gigabyte P650B 650W 80+ Bronze PSU
Microsoft Windows 11 Home 64-bit, DVD, OEM Licence
3 Year On-Site Warranty Upgrade (UK Mainland only)
Samsung 980 1TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD
Cooler Master SK652 Mechanical Keyboard, USB, RGB, Red TTC Switch, Gunmetal Grey
Logitech G305 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse, Black

Price is £1478.45

Take a look at scan.co.uk. I’ve used them for years and service and warranty are spot on.

For example this pc listed below has a rtx3070 card for £1250

Scan pc

I’ll take a look, thanks

Edit: That seems a good deal too

Just to note, pre-built systems you’ll probably pay about £90-£100 for a windows licence..
Better tick the ‘no operating system’ box and buy a grey market key code for a tenner if you’re comfortable doing that. – you’ll have to make a windows bootable usb stick, but you can download windows itself for free direct from microsoft, just you won’t have a key for it.

I’m happy to pay for a Windows 11 license and its £120 on the MS site anyway, so getting it installed on the build is fine. I will be using it for some business use too so would rather stay legit.

I’m not sure if the scan.co.uk build up there ^^ has any RGB case fans in the case or a CPU cooler? Are they essential to the build?

I’m not sure if the scan.co.uk build up there ^^ has any RGB case fans in the case or a CPU cooler? Are they essential to the build?

Personally I think RGB fans etc. are pointless unless you want fancy colour changing case lighting… I just go with non-illuminated decent quality fans/cooling, but each to thier own.

RGB basically just means the fan (or whatever) has built in LED lights that can change colour, pulse along to music, etc..

Although my mate has an RGB motherboard that will change colour according to CPU temperature, so its normally green, but goes to yellow – orange and finally red if it gets to hot. Kinda cool I guess but not at all nessesary.

Thanks, I understood the RGB thing, and I think my lad would like that (a bit of “bling” to show his mates), was just concerned about how the decreased ventilation would effect performance if I left it standard.

Kind of a moot point – RGB just means it’s got lights on it, it doesn’t affect performance, you can buy crappy RGB fans/cpu coolers or good quality ones, equally you can buy crappy un-lit ‘normal’ ones or good quality ones.

In my experience I wouldn’t go crazy on fans to start with, they are reletivley cheap and you can allways add more or upgrade the existing ones if you need to.

Unless I misunderstood and your asking if they’ll supply the build with no fans at all?

They won’t.. It’ll just come with generic case fan(s) as supplied with the case and the cpu cooler in the case of AMD cpu’s I’d imagine it will come with the standard AMD wraith cooler, etc.

It might be that a particular model of case comes with RGB fans as standard anyway.

The pc from scan or any other reputable seller will come setup with correct airflow for the spec of the pc so ‘standard’ will be fine unless you start overclocking.
If you’re not 100% sure you can give scan a call or if you’re nearby go and have a look at the showroom and chat with the guys there. They’re very helpful.

To be honest, that Scan build looks decent. It also looks like it comes with RGB fans and, if wants more, he should be able to add them.

I’m happy to pay for a Windows 11 license and its £120 on the MS site anyway, so getting it installed on the build is fine. I will be using it for some business use too so would rather stay legit.

It’s the same ‘windows’, you download the OS from Microsoft directly, get all the updates etc. It’s not like buying a chinese smartphone where the CCP are filtering everything you type and security updates end as soon as it’s no longer sold.

All that’s different is where the license key comes from. I’ve no idea where, I guess off the back of scrapped/returned laptops or something. Either way they work fine and save £100+.

Office/365 on the other hand ….. grey licenses are a PITA. Although my current one seems to be working fine, and at the end of the day they cost less than a couple of months subscription and the vaguely reputable sites re-supply them if they don’t work.

memory is shit and it is only in single channel. You want two sticks of ram or you loose performance. The M/T of the ram is slow and the timings will probably be crap as well.

CPU and GPU are good.

Case looks ok

Cooler looks shit

Buy the stuff and build it yourself.

After much faffing and going down many rabbit holes of benchmark tests and PC specifications for hours, I finally went with the scan.co.uk build + a Corsair keyboard, mouse, mat and headset bundle. He should be happy with that, thanks everyone!

I’m sure he’ll be happy with it.
Give us an update once you get it.
I was going to post this mouse mat earlier as he likes RGB

Corsair MM800

Good to hear you made a decision, even with all the “help” we gave! I’m still having a hard time speccing one.

Although superfluous at this point in this thread and to the OP, another thing I think Alienware systems beats the rest hands down is they come in neat cases. Most PC’s, by which I mean 99.9% are big square clunky boxes.

My X51 has sat under the TV on a shelf no more than150mm high, as the case itself is 95mm thick, and unlike the standard box can lay on it’s side. It’s even got my blueray player sat on top of it.

I know they are pricey for what they are, and you can do better on a custom made system money for spec wise, but the systems are built for gaming only, with that being its primary use.

I’ve haad standard PC’s in the past and even built one of them myself, but if I had the choice again and the funds I’d buy another Alienware system. I’ve had the current for at least 8 years and its never failed me on anything, and I think that all I need to do to run current games in 4k or whatever is update the gpu and install some more ram.

@dyna-ti

Alienware systems are utter and complete trash.