£350 'Gaming' Build

[jordanpp]

Approximate Purchase Date: Between now and end of August

Budget Range: £350

System Usage from Most to Least Important: University - light gaming (low-medium graphics smoothly on things like Farcry 3) then there's just general web surfing and word processing.

Parts Not Required: Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor (1280x1024), Windows 8 Pro Student

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: eBuyer (linked)

Country: UK - England

Parts Preferences: MicroATX to make it smaller and easier to transport?

Overclocking: Maybe

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe

Additional Comments: I've made this build (based on http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/build-your-own-budget-amd-pc,review-32961-8.html build) but due to different items etc I'm wondering if mine works and is good enough for what I want

Obviously for this price I'm not expecting really good gaming, but want it comparable to me and my brother's shared laptop - 7670m (intel HD 4000 dual graphics), 6 GB ram, i5-3230m @ 2.6GHz. This can play most games on Low-medium when the dual graphics doesn't cause problems

http://www.ebuyer.com/lists/list/362983 = £325

 

[grav varma]

with that money you should go AMD Kavari, and pair that up with an AMD R9 250 which is about £60. this setup is the best price to performance because it allows the AMD integrated graphics to crossfire with the AMD, can play BF4 on low - medium very well, here check out this build:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWans5FU4cU

 

[TechyInAZ]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dqXt99

No go with AMD richland, it's equal to kaveri in gaming and a lot cheaper.

And dual graphics is terrible, even though it yields a lot more fps, it brings with it a lot of latency.

 

[sarcophagus_macabre]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: AMD Athlon X4 760K 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor (£57.31 @ Scan.co.uk) CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Evo 43.1 CFM CPU Cooler (£16.55 @ Aria PC) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard (£44.53 @ Amazon UK) Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£59.60 @ Ebuyer) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£36.00 @ Aria PC) Video Card: Asus Radeon R7 260 1GB DirectCU II Video Card (£74.99 @ Ebuyer) Case: Zalman ZM-T3 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£22.19 @ CCL Computers) Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£44.09 @ More Computers) Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer (£11.09 @ Aria PC) Total: £366.35 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-24 19:38 BST+0100

You had a terrible AM3+ motherboard for an socket FM2 CPU. Also, never, *ever* go cheap on a power supply! Could go out and take your system with it!

 

[jordanpp]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: AMD Athlon X4 760K 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor (£57.31 @ Scan.co.uk) CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Evo 43.1 CFM CPU Cooler (£16.55 @ Aria PC) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard (£44.53 @ Amazon UK) Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£59.60 @ Ebuyer) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£36.00 @ Aria PC) Video Card: Asus Radeon R7 260 1GB DirectCU II Video Card (£74.99 @ Ebuyer) Case: Zalman ZM-T3 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£22.19 @ CCL Computers) Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£44.09 @ More Computers) Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer (£11.09 @ Aria PC) Total: £366.35 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-24 19:38 BST+0100

You had a terrible AM3+ motherboard for an socket FM2 CPU. Also, never, *ever* go cheap on a power supply! Could go out and take your system with it!

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/v6zwyc

Thanks for your help btw. Is this better then? Totals £364 incl Scan's delivery charge. Do I need a CPU cooler? I read that you can OC the CPU on stock - if I wanted to do that anyway

edit: changes I made to yours

CPU - same
CPU cooler - I removed - is it worth £17 extra on a budget build?
Mobo - same
RAM - saved 36p and got 2133 instead of 1866
HDD - changed to make it cheaper (del. charges)
GPU - spent extra £8.12 to make 2GB and 260X
Case - same
PSU - save £10.65 and get an EVGA instead? (only 500w compared to your 550w)
optical drive - just changed it to what works out cheaper when delivery is included

 

[sarcophagus_macabre]

All your changes are fine. You only really need aftemarket cpu cooler if you plan to overclock your processor, and is easy to add then.