Building a good gaming pc for around £400 (read on for further details)

[Pcenthusiast16]

I am as new as you can get when it comes to building a gaming pc, my budget is around £400 but not over £500 (excluding monitor, keyboard, mouse and operating system)im looking for a build that can run the following games smoothly and well in general:
Rome total war 1/2
Medieval 2 total war
Empire total war
Napoleon total war
Arma 2/3
Heroes and generals
War thunder
Skyrim
Gta v
Dark souls 2
Sims 4
Insurgency
Before you call me lazy, i have looked at parts and have created some sort of a build but i am sceptical on a lot of areas
Thanks for the feedback 😉

 

[Karsten75]

Show us the build you have, that way we all learn and some here will provide suggestions for improvement.

 

[superninja12]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£164.34 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£49.99 @ Novatech)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£31.98 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£40.08 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 950 2GB Video Card (£124.03 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£29.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 620W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£59.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £500.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-27 22:41 BST+0100


you can swap the gpu out with ease if u want to play triple a games on ultra, really solid build.

 

[superninja12]

^ karsten has actually a good idea tbh... instead of us spoonfeeding it derp xD

 

[BadActor]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor (£135.86 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI H110M Pro-VD Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£45.99 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£31.98 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£37.98 @ Novatech)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 380 4GB Video Card (£169.99 @ Novatech)
Case: Zalman ZM-T4 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£25.97 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Power Supply: Antec 550W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (£49.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £497.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-27 22:43 BST+0100

 

[lakimens]

This is the best you're gonna get, if you want to lower the price you can reduce down to a 380 or get a crappy PSU(Which I highly disadvise)
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (£96.99 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: MSI H110M Pro-VD Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£45.99 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£28.59 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£40.08 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 380X 4GB Video Card (£198.81 @ Dabs)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£29.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 620W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£59.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £500.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-27 22:44 BST+0100

 

[siviprime]

In my opinion, BadActor has compiled the best choice of components. You'll need a quad-core CPU to future-proof your machine, and for physics/CPU-intensive games like Total War, Arma, Civilization and even GTA (it likes a good CPU). Also, you can overclock the R9 380 to get similar performance to the R9 380X (at least in my case). Remember to swap it for a Sapphire Nitro card (far superior cooling in comparison to other cards). You get a free game with it too!

http://www.ebuyer.com/730576-sapphire-nitro-r9-380-4gb-gddr5-dvi-i-dvi-d-hdmi-displayport-pci-e-graphics-11242-13-20g

 

[superninja12]

i got to be honest too and bacators his build is the best choice, however i would spend a bit more for the seasonic s12ii

 

[Pcenthusiast16]

This is the build i came up with;
Mothrboard- msi 970 gaming amd am3 gbe lan atx
Psu- aerocool intergrator 600w 12cm
Cpu- amd fx 6300 6 core
Ram- hyper x fury series 8 gb ddr3 1866mhz
Gpu-msi amd r9 380 4gb
I need to find a case and some fans, thanks for the feedback

 

[BadActor]

Sorry, but you're going to regret that choice with all the CPU intensive games you're going to play.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

[Pcenthusiast16]

I forgot to mention that i dont need a hdd which will save me a bit of money but one problem i have is making sure if the components all fit together for example looking for the right pins and vga/hdmi etc, i do understand the stuff about form factors and if the cpu fits the motherboard ( im not very good with the terms either so apologies for mixing things up)

 

[Pcenthusiast16]

What cheap cpu do you recommend? I thought about going to the fx 8350 if the fx 6300 is bad

 

[Pcenthusiast16]

Would the fx 6300 be good enough if i overclock it ? @Badactor

 

[siviprime]

The FX 6300 and its platform are outdated. Also, the FX series are known to have 'below-par' single threaded performance (required by the majority of games you mentioned). Their multi-threaded performance is alright, but compared to their Intel Core counterparts, their cores are 'weak'. You'll also require a good cooling solution if you were to overclock that CPU.

Look towards buying a Core i3 or i5 system (until AMD pull themselves back into the race with their Zen CPUs), as well as a solid power supply. By which I mean not a Tier 4 Integrator.

 

[BadActor]

You can use the AMD CPU's if you must, but they will fall quite a bit short of the Intel CPU's above for gaming, even overclocked, and you will have no future upgrade options. The parts lists here are all compatible and you can use PCPartPicker to check for compatibility of any changes you decide to make.

 

[Pcenthusiast16]

Thank you all for the help

 

[Pcenthusiast16]

Any tips about fans, a friend said that i should get controllable fans but i dont lnow how many or what type?

 

[siviprime]

Case fan placement can get a bit complicated. The simplest arrangement is to try and get a neutral pressure in your case, by having equal intake and exhausts. 1 in the front and 1 in the back is fine for less power-hungry builds.

Your friend must've been talking about PWM fans, which use 4 pins (and are controllable, depending on the voltage pulses which accurately manage rotational speeds). For that motherboard, the MSI H110M PRO-VD, you'll need a fan splitter. Here's a perfect example:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Akasa-AK-CBFA04-15-Splitter-Cable-Fans/dp/B005FWXWPS/

The fans have 4 pins (the extra one is for the PWM control). These are the best performing case fans, alongside Noctua's (made by Coolink) and Corsair:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Coolink-SWiF2-120P-Retail-120mm-PWM/dp/B002IG7EH6/

2 of these will give you a super quiet PC and will last you a long time.

 

[Pcenthusiast16]

@siviprime thanks for the help, i will look into it