[Technology] Help please...Building a budget gaming computer

[1066familyman]

Is it possible to build a half decent gaming computer for around £300 ?

Games to be played are mainly Minecraft and Roblox.

After recommendations for the following that will all work together:

Tower case -

Graphics Card -

CPU -

Ram -

Power Supply -

Memory - 500gb SSD possibly?

Anything else I'll need? Peripherals all sorted.

Thanks.

Oh and does, say a 450w power supply, actually use 450w of energy? Bit concerned about the ever increasing electricity bill.

 

[happypig]

Is it possible to build a half decent gaming computer for around £300 ?

Games to be played are mainly Minecraft and Roblox.

After recommendations for the following that will all work together:

Tower case -

Graphics Card -

CPU -

Ram -

Power Supply -

Memory - 500gb SSD possibly?

Anything else I'll need? Peripherals all sorted.

Thanks.

Oh and does, say a 450w power supply, actually use 450w of energy? Bit concerned about the ever increasing electricity bill.

Have you considered second hand ? I would think £300 would get you a machine with a couple of years old spec.

Power supplies should be over-specced, not run at max, so a 450w psu should supply a machine drawing about 300w. Electricity costs about 15p kWh so a machine drawing 300w will cost about 5p an hour to run (plus the monitor/speakers)

 

[beorhthelm]

dont think you need much to run Minecraft. think £300 might be tight, have a look at Nova and Scan for their budget game setups for components (then build self for less).

top advice on PSU, dont skimp, and the cost to run is the same regardless of the power rating.

 

[BBassic]

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ is a really good resource.

You can pick from Intel / AMD - for those games listed I'd probably plump for Intel personally. Then you can narrow it down to budget. Once it's churned out a budget spec for you, you can then go and search for those parts elsewhere on the internet and see if there's deals to be had.

However, doing it through PC Specialist means it'll come built for you as well.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Five minute job

 

[Papak]

I think you are confusing memory and hard disk capacity.

 

[deletebeepbeepbeep]

At that price range your best bang for buck would be buying second hand, or a Dell Optiplex and getting the best video card you can fitted into it. The only issue will be ensuring the videocard physically fits and can be driven by the power supply.

Currently all prices are a premium due to Coronavirus, recent release of new game consoles, games, and videocards/processors that have driven demand to crazy levels.

 

[1066familyman]

I think you are confusing memory and hard disk capacity.

Yes, sorry, meant to say Ram (memory) as in possibly 8gb. And storage as in possibly a 500gb SSD. If rather go SSD for storage than HDD.


Thanks all for the advice so far. I'll check out the links etc.

 

[1066familyman]

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ is a really good resource.

You can pick from Intel / AMD - for those games listed I'd probably plump for Intel personally. Then you can narrow it down to budget. Once it's churned out a budget spec for you, you can then go and search for those parts elsewhere on the internet and see if there's deals to be had.

However, doing it through PC Specialist means it'll come built for you as well.

That's an excellent link, thanks

Perfect for seeing what will go with what and will fit into my budget.

I want to build it ourself as a project with the jnr 1066 in question.

 

[happypig]

Yes, sorry, meant to say Ram (memory) as in possibly 8gb. And storage as in possibly a 500gb SSD. If rather go SSD for storage than HDD.


Thanks all for the advice so far. I'll check out the links etc.

I think the advised practice these days is a smallish SSD for OS and swap and a larger spinning disk for data. I have a SSD in an older laptop and it boots remarkably fast.

 

[neilbard]

Is it possible to build a half decent gaming computer for around £300 ?

Games to be played are mainly Minecraft and Roblox.

After recommendations for the following that will all work together:

Tower case -

Graphics Card -

CPU -

Ram -

Power Supply -

Memory - 500gb SSD possibly?

Anything else I'll need? Peripherals all sorted.

Thanks.

Oh and does, say a 450w power supply, actually use 450w of energy? Bit concerned about the ever increasing electricity bill.

Don't waste your money, you will only have to keep turning it off and on again...

 

[schmunk]

If this is just for playing games, would you not be better off buying an Xbox / PS4 (or 5)?

I get the desire to build it, but frankly PC gaming is generally a lot more of a faff than a console, and if you're starting from scratch that budget is incredibly tight.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

Apart from being much faster I/O, SSDs also use less power as it has no continuously running motor to spin a disk like HDD do.
I bought a 500Gb SSD from Amazon a few weeks back for £60

8Gb RAM should be your minimum, go for 16Gb if you can afford to.
CPU - so many options - I've always been an Intel man and would never touch AMD - but your choice.

As others have said, the power rating on the power supply is the max grunt [wattage/amperage] it can push out - too much is not an issue as the kit will only draw the power it needs, but too low and things in the PC will stop working, usually causing a system failure [crash].

 

[BrianWade4]

Most boring thread ever posted on NSC?

 

[neilbard]

Most boring thread ever posted on NSC?

The Brexit thread was rather tedious.

 

[BrianWade4]

The Brexit thread was rather tedious.

True. But at least it got a reaction and inspired emotion in some people. Generally one has a strong view on Brexit either way. This though....

Surely VAR has taught us to stay away from computers.

 

[schmunk]

Most boring thread ever posted on NSC?

I note that in your time you've started at least 3 threads which each had no replies.

So, err, no.

 

[zefarelly]

I'm not into computers or gaming, but my son is, we bartered a deal earlier this year for him to upgrade my PC and he built a minecraft server for himself and his mates.

£300 was the budget ( I use solidworks, hungry cad package)

so my suggestion is, possibly, buy a cheap 2nd hand PC and upgrade.

although from scratch isn't that expensive. agree re PSU's as has been said, my lad saif the same. make it upgradables so you can improive as budget allows.

 

[BrianWade4]

I note that in your time you've started at least 3 threads which each had no replies.

So, err, no.

Fair point. Well made.

 

[That Penalty Miss]

Can't help you regarding which parts to use but use https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/

It highlights if the parts selected are compatible and gives you its power usage so you can leave a bit of headroom per the comments above.