Looking to get into PC gaming on a budget

TeflonRon

Hey guys, I'm looking for advice for a new PC, always owned laptops/playstations but looking for something which is powerful enough to play games (GTA V, Fallout 4, BF4,Skyrim) at 1080p with Medium/High Settings, handle Photoshop well and maybe some light video editing, on a tight budget as I'm in college atm.

One idea I have is to buy the following tower (which can be bought for €270 refurbished for a good company I've dealt with before;

i3-6100 3.7ghz skylake (2 cores, 4 threads, 5000ish CPU score)
8gb ram
1 TB 7200rpm HD
PSU is only 180w
No monitor.
HD 530 Built in graphics
2 year warranty

.....then pickup a GTX950 with a low power draw and perhaps a 22-24" monitor. This 'build' for lack of a better word, costs roughly under €500 with a GPU and monitor.

Is this a daft idea or are there better options out there on the budget? Total budget would be max €400-500.

Any help appreciated! Thanks

K.O.Kiki

Buying that machine would be a false economy; your power draw with a dedicated GPU would exceed 250W so that would need to be replaced straight away.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (€118.89 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: ASRock H110M-DGS Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€55.49 @ Mindfactory)
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (€34.14 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€54.10 @ Mindfactory)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 380 2GB Video Card (€147.95 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Xigmatek Aeos MicroATX Mid Tower Case (€30.53 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: XFX TS 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (€43.86 @ Mindfactory)
Total: €484.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-25 22:43 CEST+0200

Would be my preferred recommendation.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor (€109.48 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (€43.26 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (€32.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€54.10 @ Mindfactory)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 380 2GB Video Card (€147.95 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Zalman ZM-T1 PLUS MicroATX Mini Tower Case (€25.13 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: XFX TS 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (€43.86 @ Mindfactory)
Total: €456.77
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-25 22:45 CEST+0200

Would be a step down (and also would require a full CPU & motherboard replacement in future).

Buy a 2nd-hand monitor and/or ask around for a freebie.

justsomebloke

does windows come with the machine? If it is does and alternatively you were building a new system would you need a windows licence for that?

TeflonRon

justsomebloke wrote: »

does windows come with the machine? If it is does and alternatively you were building a new system would you need a windows licence for that?

Yes forgot to mention the machine listed comes with Windows 10, and if I were to go down the building route I would definitely need Windows to run Office programs.

K.O.Kiki

TeflonRon wrote: »

Yes forgot to mention the machine listed comes with Windows 10, and if I were to go down the building route I would definitely need Windows to run Office programs.

http://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key-to-install-and-use-windows-10/

Worked for me since 7-8 months.