Hi all,
My sister and her partner have asked me to build a PC for my nephew for Christmas this year. They've set a budget of around £400, with a little wiggle room if required, which considering this'll be the nippers first gaming PC isn't too bad budget wise if you ask me. Anyway, so far I've picked up a GPU, CPU and chassis, them being the EVGA GTX 970 SC, AMD Ryzen 5 1600X and the SaharaGaming P35 respectively.
The chassis cost £50 (Absolute bargain, picking one up for my own upgrade soon) on Amazon and comes with 4 120mm RGB fans along with a controller, so I'm pleased with that purchase.
The 1600X I found knocking about on Ebay for £100 including an Arctic Alpine 64 Pro, which I thought was reasonable. Originally I was going to opt for a 2600, which would have been around £125 and would obviously have included the stock cooler. But after finding the 1600X/Alpine 64 combo on Ebay I thought that the overall performance difference was pretty negligible considering the price difference. Plus for a first gaming PC I'm pretty certain the 1600X will be more than ample for years to come. I mean heck, I'm still using an FX 8350 for my daily driver, and while she's showing her age she's by no means slow. Ha ha.
The GPU is being taken from my boyfriends old rig and he only wants 70 quid for it, which going off current Ebay prices is about right. Again, while the 970 wouldn't be the first choice for a modern gaming rig, considering the price and the fact it'll be my nephews first rig I'd say it's more than adequate to get him going. Obviously I could have opted for a 1650 or something like that, but it would have cost much more and not really been any more powerful.
Any, on to the meat of the subject. In total that little lot comes to £220, over half of the original budget. So with that in mind here's what I've managed to come up with for the rest of the build:
Mobo: ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0 (£55)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8gb (£33)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1tb (£35)
SSD(Boot): Crucial BX500 240gb (£35)
PSU: Corsair VS450 (£40)
In total that lot comes to around £200, putting the final total at £420. Right on target. Now to address the issues some of you will undoubtedly point out.
I realise that Vengeance LPX is less than preferable for modern Ryzen, however after some amount of research online I've found no evidence to suggest using such memory will be terribly detrimental so a 1600X. If you have other views however please feel free to air them below? I'm more than willing to listen.
8gb is definitely not optimal for a gaming system these days, however given the budget (and yes, I will once again point out that this is my nephews first gaming rig) I'd say it's ample to get him going, plus I've already told my sister that they can always simply pick up another DIMM at some point in the future when they've got the money and throw it in, so I'd like to think this particular issue is only temporary.
A 450W PSU is right on the edge of what such a configuration needs, however I can't currently find any 500-550W PSU's going for the right kind of price at the moment. This may change in a couple months time when it comes round to buying these components, but for now that's what I'm stuck with it seems.
WiFi capability has been deliberately omitted as Ethernet will be being used.
So, what are your thoughts? As a first gaming rig would you be happy? Do you have any suggestions? I'm all ears. I thank you in advance for any replies!
My sister and her partner have asked me to build a PC for my nephew for Christmas this year. They've set a budget of around £400, with a little wiggle room if required, which considering this'll be the nippers first gaming PC isn't too bad budget wise if you ask me. Anyway, so far I've picked up a GPU, CPU and chassis, them being the EVGA GTX 970 SC, AMD Ryzen 5 1600X and the SaharaGaming P35 respectively.
The chassis cost £50 (Absolute bargain, picking one up for my own upgrade soon) on Amazon and comes with 4 120mm RGB fans along with a controller, so I'm pleased with that purchase.
The 1600X I found knocking about on Ebay for £100 including an Arctic Alpine 64 Pro, which I thought was reasonable. Originally I was going to opt for a 2600, which would have been around £125 and would obviously have included the stock cooler. But after finding the 1600X/Alpine 64 combo on Ebay I thought that the overall performance difference was pretty negligible considering the price difference. Plus for a first gaming PC I'm pretty certain the 1600X will be more than ample for years to come. I mean heck, I'm still using an FX 8350 for my daily driver, and while she's showing her age she's by no means slow. Ha ha.
The GPU is being taken from my boyfriends old rig and he only wants 70 quid for it, which going off current Ebay prices is about right. Again, while the 970 wouldn't be the first choice for a modern gaming rig, considering the price and the fact it'll be my nephews first rig I'd say it's more than adequate to get him going. Obviously I could have opted for a 1650 or something like that, but it would have cost much more and not really been any more powerful.
Any, on to the meat of the subject. In total that little lot comes to £220, over half of the original budget. So with that in mind here's what I've managed to come up with for the rest of the build:
Mobo: ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0 (£55)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8gb (£33)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1tb (£35)
SSD(Boot): Crucial BX500 240gb (£35)
PSU: Corsair VS450 (£40)
In total that lot comes to around £200, putting the final total at £420. Right on target. Now to address the issues some of you will undoubtedly point out.
I realise that Vengeance LPX is less than preferable for modern Ryzen, however after some amount of research online I've found no evidence to suggest using such memory will be terribly detrimental so a 1600X. If you have other views however please feel free to air them below? I'm more than willing to listen.
8gb is definitely not optimal for a gaming system these days, however given the budget (and yes, I will once again point out that this is my nephews first gaming rig) I'd say it's ample to get him going, plus I've already told my sister that they can always simply pick up another DIMM at some point in the future when they've got the money and throw it in, so I'd like to think this particular issue is only temporary.
A 450W PSU is right on the edge of what such a configuration needs, however I can't currently find any 500-550W PSU's going for the right kind of price at the moment. This may change in a couple months time when it comes round to buying these components, but for now that's what I'm stuck with it seems.
WiFi capability has been deliberately omitted as Ethernet will be being used.
So, what are your thoughts? As a first gaming rig would you be happy? Do you have any suggestions? I'm all ears. I thank you in advance for any replies!