New PC

Going to be building a new PC soon as this one is dying. It will be for general computing but I want the option of adding a GFX card at a later date and making it into a budget gaming rig.

This is what I am thinking of...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (£92.91 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI H110M PRO-D Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£45.97 @ More Computers)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£32.59 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: A-Data Premier SP550 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£37.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (£34.99 @ Novatech)
Total: £244.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-21 20:50 BST+0100

Any thoughts/advice ? want it to be under £300

I assume you'll be using your existing hdd for storage?

I'd go for a minimum 500w psu if I was building it.

Yes will be using a old HDD for storage.

Is that amount needed for say a geforce 1060 or radeon 480 or below? wouldn't be going for anything high end.

My 380 wanted a 600W. It can't hurt to oversize slightly if you're buying a Bronze PSU.

Ok. Well only £8 more for a 600W supply so may as well build in some redundancy.

I would also go for a 500w PSU but you wont need much higher.

You havent said what resolution you would be gaming at it which is crucial for reccomending a GPU.

But I will assume its 1080p in which case I reckon a 6gig gtx 1060 or a 8gig rx480 is a good bet, depending if you prefer better DX12 or better DX9/11 performance.

I hope you meant under £300 for the GPU not the PC total as you wont get a useable GPU for £60.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 24-Oct-16 12:57:10)

if theres a chance of gaming on it you should push for a quad core

£300 or under without the the GPU is what I was aiming for. Not yet sure if I will game on it or not but wanted the option of putting in a GPU at a later date. Yes it will be in 1080p, got a nice 27" monitor and happy with it so won't be changing anytime soon.

This is my latest configuration -

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (£92.91 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus H110M-K Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£47.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£32.59 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: A-Data Premier SP550 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£35.63 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£29.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£49.99 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer (£12.40 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £301.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-24 15:32 BST+0100

I dont claim to know a lot about PC gaming but an i3 opposed to a i7 ?

Think quad core is out of reach on intel. Would a quad core AMD CPU for a similar price to the 6100 be better?

Well it would be a budget gaming machine.. I don't have timey money

its got a decent 3.7ghz clock, I would have a dual core i3 over a quad core AMD any day.

yeah then either a 8gig rx480 or 6 gig gtx1060 will go nicely with it.

the 1060 will be better for dx9/11/opengl
rx480 better for vulkan/dx12

In reply to a post by time2die:

I dont claim to know a lot about PC gaming but an i3 opposed to a i7 ?

An i7 at retail prices would be the entire budget. However, not sure how well games will run on an i3 - as long as happy with lower res and frame rates then should be usable.

Most games will be ok, but occasional games buck the trend such as gta5 (with high population density set in options) and project cars. However those two games both can be managed by adjusting options.

Thanks, yeah I think that i3 is the right choice. seems very popular in budget gaming builds.

yes my monitor is only 1080p anyway and I am realistic about what it will handle. I am perfectly happy with the standard PS4 but would like to possibly have this as another gaming device not as something necessarily superior.

Ok how much you wanna Borrow

So that's what you do for a living... next thing I know I'll have broken knee caps

Edited by astateoftrance (Mon 24-Oct-16 21:19:02)

can you lend me 10k on 50 year no interest terms?

In reply to a post by astateoftrance:

Think quad core is out of reach on intel. Would a quad core AMD CPU for a similar price to the 6100 be better?

Yes. Unequivocally.

An AMD APU outperforms the 6100 for the same money and has better on board graphics. You get four cores which going forward is essential. I could flog you my R9 390 [if I still have it by then!] for a 100 quid, and you would have an excellent 1080p machine that plays most current games on Ultra/60fps. My i5 4690k is running at stock 3.5 and I don't have any issues. Under utilised to be honest.

A10 7860k

Or for an extra few quid:

A10 7870k

I bought a Lenovo laptop last month for my teenage daughter with an A10 in it and it performs really nicely. I asked the guy if the HP i3 version at slightly higher money was better, and without hesitation he recommended the A10 as faster.

See what Jay says.
http://youtu.be/Cv57qDXpEPU

Thanks, that is interesting. I am definitely open to going for AMD, all my desktops I have bought/built so far have used their chips.

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

My i5 4690k is running at stock 3.5 and I don't have any issues. Under utilised to be honest.

Same chip as mine

In reply to a post by Lt_Swan:

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

My i5 4690k is running at stock 3.5 and I don't have any issues. Under utilised to be honest.

Same chip as mine

Mine too

In reply to a post by Lt_Swan:

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

My i5 4690k is running at stock 3.5 and I don't have any issues. Under utilised to be honest.

Same chip as mine

Only they not talking about Mccains Oven chips

Buying AMD right now is dead end for the AM3+ platform

Either wait for the new AMD CPU socket (AM4) which is due in mid january or go Intel as every current gen AMD cpu is lackluster.

Edited by epyon (Tue 25-Oct-16 19:51:31)

I am still sticking with the i3 suggestion, per core performance means more than # of cores in my opinion.

However if you do go AMD, then wait, it is a very bad time to buy an AMD cpu right now as they about to release a new architecture, at that point you will have a choice between zen which has much improved IPC closer to modern intel chips or the existing models which will likely get discounted post zen release.

You seen the 1050ti reviews? Impressive little card that!!

Edited by jorkila (Tue 25-Oct-16 21:17:11)

nice card but crazy pricing. As usual greed has kicked in with also what looks like more artificial supply problems.

Also the price jacking is on some older cards as well e.g. ocuk selling 950s for £200 a pop. (I paid £230 for my 970 2 years back, £200 for a 950 is insane). Presumably to make the 100 series card pricing look attractive.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 26-Oct-16 00:42:35)

Yeah that's normally the case!!

I wouldn't mind doing a full upgrade next year but the fact that this rig still doe's everything I ask of it and the fact that i do game more on my consoles is leaving me reluctant to do so!!

In reply to a post by epyon:

every current gen AMD cpu is lackluster.

Not in terms of gaming they aren't. The on board graphics of the AMD will easily outperform the i3 6100.

If he doesn't want to buy a discrete GPU straight off, the APU is a far more sensible bet. Waiting for Zen will likely not fit his budget either. It's a £300 budget...

http://www.pcmag.com/review/344884/intel-core-i3-6100

In reply to a post by astateoftrance:

Thanks, that is interesting. I am definitely open to going for AMD, all my desktops I have bought/built so far have used their chips.

Excellent comparisons here, utilising the on board graphics, and after the addition of a discrete card.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10543/the-skylake-core...

The on board performance is leagues ahead with the AMD graphics cores. Once you add a GPU the i3 does better, but not as significantly.

So if you want good visuals from the outset, and don't mind being (just) in second place if you upgrade to discrete, AMD is by far the better bang for buck, particularly on your specified budget. I suppose you have to ask yourself, when would you be looking to upgrade CPU after that?

If sooner rather than later, waiting for Zen or for an i5 price drop would be your best bet, but not in line with your budget trance!

I think its a fair assumption he will be using a discrete GPU.

The idea to wait for zen is sound, zen looks like it will be a good improvement and its very likely it will be noticebly cheaper than what intel offers. So to say it will be unaffordable I think is odd as there has been no speculation on pricing. But even if he still goes with older gen AMD post zen release it is probable it will be cheaper than it is now.

I still say he should go with the i3, but the second choice would be waiting for zen.

If I had an AMD chip then I would be suffering from cpu bottleneck in some games.

GTA5 - already bottlenecks my 4.3ghz haswell in cities when I have max population set.
Project cars hits circa 80-85% usage and is known to slow down and bottleneck on AMD systems.
FPS games do much better, and tend to not be so reliant on IPC.
JRPG's are the worst, they tend to have very poor or non existant multi core capabilities so is usual to have one core heavily loaded with the rest idle.

Our different views are now probably confusing the poor guy But I think if not set on intel its wise to wait for ZEN to be released.

Our different views are now probably confusing the poor guy

He doesn't strike me as some shrinking violet. I'm sure he'll cope and not just take what he reads here as gospel!

From the link I posted:

GTA V 1080p very high settings A10 7890k discrete 290X, concedes only 5 frames to the i3 6100

In the meantime whilst running on integrated graphics (as he quite clearly states he intends to do) the i3 6100 posts 30fps to the 7890k's 55fps.

As both are running mid forties at 1080p very high settings with a discrete GPU, 5fps is not going to be that noticeable. 25fps is a huge difference whilst running on integrated.

I think you need to accept that he's not spending enough money for Intel to force home any really palpable advantage. Some games will favour the i3, some won't. If he had £600 to spend I would agree with you without hesitation.

As for Zen, it certainly won't be cheaper than the 7890k, and the mobo will likely cost a bit more too.

I did some playtesting on gta5 today as the first time I ran it on my gtx 1070. Boy this game is demanding. It is the first game where my 1070 cannot play at ease 1440p maxed out. Also some info here which may help others when considering antialiasing vs higher resolutions. I made a similar post regarding AA vs pixel count on ocuk when discussing 4k on ps4.

On the settings I was using on my gtx 970 (which for many of the settings was one below maximum, grass on medium) The card was at about 90% utilisation in the most demanding areas and sustaining 60fps when cpu was not bottlenecking. I then disabled the extra draw distance in advanced graphics setting (they hurt the cpu badly) and I could just about sustain 60fps in city areas with max population density and traffic still enabled. cpu cores were hovering 80-85% in city.

However I got annoyed with all the shimmering affects on edges, which I think is a problem that gets worse at higher resolutions, sure enough when I dropped to 720p most of shimmering disappeared albeit replaced with fuzzyness and not so sharp graphics. e.g. things like cable's will be thinner on a higher resolution screen so jagged edges and so forth will be more apparent. The problm is when in motion e.g. when driving things like cables can appear to be disappearing due to the shimmer affect and edges of buildings and even cars in front of you have a weird affect, I tried downsampling to no avail, FXAA near useless, MSAA worked, but MSAA on top of 1440p = ouch. I could only get it satisfactory with MSAA 4x, 2X helps but not enough for my liking. But my 1070 cannot keep up at 60fps with 1440p and MSAA 4x. So I then enabled nvidia's MFAA and now I get 4xMSAA quality with the setting at 2x. With 2xMSAA setting tho the card is very close to its limits typically 85%+ and will go over 95% in most demanding areas, but just about holds on. This is still without ultra asettings, most stuff one below the highest. Although I now set shadows and tessellation to max as I was getting annoying pop ins. This overloaded the card again so I dropped to 1200p. The card at 1200p with the settings now never goes above 80% and is usually close to 65%. At 1200p it looks very good still and definitely better than 1440p with no MSAA. So it shows at least in my view pixel count is inferior to other options when a choice has to be made.

Another game I play tales of zesteria, I play at 1440p with 4xSGSSAA, I tried 4k downsampling alongside no antialiasing, again 1440p with 4xSGSSAA beats 4k, even 1080p with 4xSGSSAA beats 4k.

If he is using integrated GPU then yeah go for AMD. Although I would only consider that a stop gap measure.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 27-Oct-16 08:08:47)

Thanks for all the advice and links guys, I lot of great information there to think about

It might be a while before I get a GPU (if I do that is) but I wouldn't necessarily want to be playing any games before then. I just wanted the option of turning it into a gaming PC.
Don't think I can wait for the new ZEN CPU's as my current PC is dying. So the choice is between current AMD and Intel.

Another option I am mulling over is sticking with my current case, HDD and pushing the budget to a i5-6400 which are £158 on Amazon.

Just upgrade and get a Playstation Pro ...Far easier ,i once pondered in getting a PC again but within a week or so when i thought about the likely amount i would spend i quickly came to my senses based on been sort of an idle gamer who likes simplicity.

I wouldn't be happy with a budget PC and i dare say i would have spent a small fortune on a very decent high end gaming PC,and possibly within a few weeks it would be sitting on the office desk while i much preferred to sit in my living room playing either my Xbox One S or my Playstation Pro,playing games like The Last Guardian ,Watchdogs 2 and a host of others.

Edited by time2die (Thu 27-Oct-16 09:22:43)

My gaming PC is an i7 with 16GB RAM and dual SSD in raid configuration with a large spinning disk for storage. I haven't turned it on in ages. Did play Skyrim on it for a while last winter but got bored - and haven't played the playstation much either (you won't be surprised to hear that I got bored with No Man's Sky).

Yeah No Mans Sky the least said the better, possibly the most over hyped ,over rated game in a very long time,i literally gave up within 30 minutes never to load the so called game again which has been quickly chucked into a darkened container to get traded for more than likely peanuts when i get the chance to visit the dreaded Game shop when I'm in the town.

What a awful game it is and what a complete and utter bore, doing the same thing over and over again, never been this disappointed since Duke Puke Em Forever

Hoping I might get into some games over the winter. I have been busy just lately with lots of training so just haven't got around to turning on to play games. But, after next week I can knock back the training a bit and hopefully have more energy to play instead...

You have spent more on console hardware in last 3 years than I have on my PC.

PC gaming is cheaper not the other way round.

You didn't read what i said really now did you,im not on about the cost of consoles but the fact you have to download install drivers, patches this and that, update this ,update that ?

Yes we have patches on the consoles but they install automatically, and if the playstation Pro had not reared its ugly head you wouldn't be saying that either.

And i might promote what i buy on here but you don't so we will never know exactly how much you spend

I understood what you meant by easy in that respect yes, with a console you just plug it in and its setup for the most part.

For my PC I brought a gtx1070 with about 2/3 of the cost offset by selling my 970, that is pretty much it in the past 3 years. Approx net cost of £140
Within the 3 years my 970 was purchased also but I managed to fully fund it when selling my gtx 760. So was a zero cost purchase.

The monitor was brought for work reasons so not included it, likewise you can exclude your new tv

My cpu/board was purchased just outside of the 3 years

Ok actually I lie there is 2 keyboards circa £10 each and a usb headphone amp which was £8. So another £28.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 27-Oct-16 18:14:34)

You know I may well end up just sticking to the PS4, I don't have a lot of time for gaming and often don't have the enthusiasm either. All I was really thinking was to build a PC that would give me the option of sticking in a GPU at a later date if I decided to.

Other than puffing a bit in such a small case, my 390X will max just about everything, because I play on a TV.

Not worrying about resolutions above 1080p, and only needing to achieve 60fps, means I get to try and push anti-aliasing to individual games highest settings. Jaggies be gone!

But I am curious to see what it could output on a 4K screen, medium settings with all the bells and whistles turned off. Just to see to what extent all those extra pixels negate the need for aliasing.

well I only play on 1440p now because I wanted the extra desktop space for multitasking.

But as proven with gta5 if I have to I will drop the resolution, I think anything at around 1080p upwards should be good enough for modern gaming deoending on the game been played. Some games like mario probably will be fine at 720p.

What some people dont realise is if the core image is aliased, then no amount of resolution increasing will fix it, it can only be fixed by MSAA or post processing. One reason why I think the hype for 4k etc. has gone way overboard.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 28-Oct-16 02:06:08)

nice video here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6qAoDquTgo

Cheers, he has some interesting vids

some info here

i3 beating amd's best cpu in BF1

https://youtu.be/MSkpyuLgsoI?t=2m59s

also in skyrim the i3 beats amds best cpu as well. The problem AMD have got is they not just worse on per core performance, they are a 'lot' worse, and its too much for extra cores to bridge. This is why a couple of us advised you to wait for zen.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 07-Nov-16 16:21:35)

Thanks. Yes think I will go with the i3 6100, should give good performance coupled with a half decent GFX card and gives me a upgrade path if I want to go for a i5 in the future.

found this video very informative

This is why a couple of us advised you to wait for zen.

Which was silly based on the stated budget. The quad Zen equivalent would likely cost him £225. That's blown 3/4 of his £300 budget already.

Also your link didn't even cover the i3 he mentioned in his specification; and those results were based on a GTX 1080 and a 480X. Well outside of the budget too.

Gaming Nexus is always biased towards higher end builds; that's not what was asked for in the OP. If he'd had a few more quid to spend I'd have recommended the i5 4690k immediately, as would "a couple of us here".

It's fine for the thread to evolve into something higher spec, but that's not what he asked for so your gloating is daft. It's not a competition.

It is if I'm buying a PC

They run hot
They use nearly double the electricity
Their "quadcores" are getting beat by dual core i3s with HT

What isn't lackluster?

and before you go "but but DX12!!!"

Like 3-4 games use that and not well either.

compared to 100000s of games that don't

From the OP

In reply to a post by astateoftrance:

Any thoughts/advice ? want it to be under £300

Question:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I hope you meant under £300 for the GPU not the PC total smile as you wont get a useable GPU for £60.

Clarification:

In reply to a post by astateoftrance:

£300 or under without the the GPU is what I was aiming for. Not yet sure if I will game on it or not

Go find better [brand new] performance at that price point, or insist to the poster that he must increase his budget. It's pointless coming out with the usual anti AMD bias to me.

I have an i5 4690K and a 390X that run games maxed out beautifully, though a little blowy when things get hectic. A little more blowy than a 970, but no jet engine as some of you like to make out. My PS4 gets louder. 40 million gamers seem to manage?

Not having £300 to spend on a GPU is the norm. AMD is relevant to the majority of gamers. Lacklustre is disingenuous, particularly with relation to this OP, and as I said, it's ok for the budget to evolve throughout the thread, but none of you are on spec. Beating the enthusiast builder drum doesn't properly inform a budget builder.

Really, he needs at least £400 to go [entry level] discrete.

nelly its not bias its based on simple facts. Intel is ahead in "relevant" performance, temps and power consumption. The only win for AMD is the better integrated gpu.

AMD have stagnated in the CPU department for years now. At one point they simply stopped bringing out new cpu tech, Zen is their first update for quite a while.

I would say going for an i3 with an option to swap it out for an i5 or i7 later is a sound choice.

Also evident in the BF1 benches is how small an affect hyperthreading has and the enthusiast intel cpu right at the top which has extra cores also having a small improvement in relation to # of cores.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 08-Nov-16 07:23:25)

I would say going for an i3 with an option to swap it out for an i5 or i7 later is a sound choice.

Agreed, but personally I don't think it's achievable on £300 in the meantime without a discreet GPU. The onboard visuals will look pretty poor.

the impression I get is initially the pc is for non gaming purposes, of which I think i3 is still the better choice, but if he decides to game it seems likely he will get a gpu.

Yes to clarify I do not intend on gaming on the PC without a GPU so the onboard graphics are not all that important as long as they run the basic general computing stuff. If I get a GPU it would probably be a 470.

Was about to order the parts but will probably hold out for black friday now as it just around the corner.

Finally got around to doing the build today went for a i3 6100, single 8 GB DDR4, 128 GB SSD. Kept my old case for now (ancient chieftec dragon w00t!) was going to go for a budget case but then thought thats pointless, this is a solid quality case so I am not changing it for a cheapo one. Kept my existing OCZ 500w PSU and 500 GB seagate HDD. Also stumped £89.99 for a legit Windows copy

Not sure if I will be gaming on it or not, been very happy lying on the couch playing the PS4 recently so don't have the urge to PC game. My daughter wants Sims 4 for Xmas so she is likely to be on it more. If I get a GPU thinking a 1050ti or 470.

good choice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M32crkFtnaw

Well there's always some new technology about to come out and I wanted to upgrade now not wait. I nearly increased the budget and went for a i5 but finally decided to stick to a i3 which in all likelihood will do what I want..and if it doesn't I can always upgrade.

That said if they release a great quad core/i5 equivalent CPU for under £100 then maybe I will regret it!

In reply to a post by astateoftrance:

Well there's always some new technology about to come out and I wanted to upgrade now not wait. I nearly increased the budget and went for a i5 but finally decided to stick to a i3 which in all likelihood will do what I want..and if it doesn't I can always upgrade.

That said if they release a great quad core/i5 equivalent CPU for under £100 then maybe I will regret it!

Thats the difference between you and me if i was interested with PC Gaming as i have floated with the idea as you know.

I would waste literally £1000s as i would want the best, and probably i would regret it 2 weeks later when i find I'm more contented with my consoles.....This is probably one of my wisest decisions as i don't make many these days.

When i say £1000s I'm not really meaning that, i just would not be content with something around £600,but Trance thats not a knock on what you spend mate as i fully understand that if you indeed had a lot more money and budget i doubt you would go down that line .

Im also not claiming i have [loads of Money] Im just stupid when it comes to technology and its my biggest flaw ?

I even pay the stupid early upgrade fees on occasions with a mobile phone i can not wait for....Catch my drift, might be another 6 months before i can upgrade, oh no! Not Timey i want it Today

You are right if I had more money I would have gone for a higher end system...no doubt about that. I also love technology so I can completely understand wanting the latest and best stuff

Edited by astateoftrance (Tue 13-Dec-16 21:45:16)

well this is where amd and intel have massively differed.

intel are releasing new gen cpus every year, but most of the recent one's have only been minor performance improvements, the last big performance improvement was sandy bridge. Although haswell has a moderate performance gain, and also with that said sandy bridge itself is now 30% or so behind on IPC as due to the sheer amount of incremental upgrades stacked up.

amd have been stuck on the same cpu tech for god knows how long, which is why they so uncompetitive, as the cpu's they currently sell are based on tech that is quite a few years old, on the flip side it means zen their next gen cpu will be a large performance jump from their existing tech which is a very bad buy right now.

so not having the latest intel generation of cpu is not a big deal providing you got something released in the last 3 years or so. The bigger changes have been on the chipset, for newer tech like sata3, pci express v3, m.2, ddr4, usb3 etc.

I think AMD's IPC is similar to core2duo chips. Since that gen intel had 2 large gains, from core2duo to the first gen core chips (core i5 750 gen) as that gen introduced on board memory controllers, then another nice jump with sandy bridge as starting that gen intel unlocked turbo mode v2.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 14-Dec-16 03:56:55)

Anyone give me suggestion which PC is the best for gaming I want to buy PC for playing latest games.

Edited by deleted (Mon 27-Mar-17 13:32:10)