entry level gaming machine

bruce wayne

Hi guys,

My nephew is looking for a PC and the following parts have been recommended

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/ZnBYqp

CPU: Intel Core i5-7400 3 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£70.00)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition 57.3 CFM CPU Cooler (£36.95 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI B150M GRENADE Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£76.72 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£74.20 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£46.94 @ Box Limited)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB DUAL Video Card (£150.00)
Case: NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case (£74.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA BQ 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£63.48 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £593.27

He’s having some difficulty locating the video card, any recommendations for an alternative or anything else on the list worth swapping out? He wants to use it as an entry level gaming machine. Will most likely be sourcing from amazon.de

Thanks, B

ED E

Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB DUAL Video Card (£150.00)

Hahaha, ha, yeah, you wish. I wish.

slipperyox

I recently bought a dell G5 laptop, that has no issues with modern games.

All in at €670.

Direct from dell outlet.

Confused11811

The GPU market is a complete mesh at the moment. You'd probably pay close to €250, €300 euro for a 2nd hand one on adverts or ebay. It's a sellers market.

purifol0

Eh bruce wayne I dont know who recommeded that spec to you, but its beyond bad, in fact its absolutely nuts.

You dont need a massive heatsink & fan for a low power intel i3. At all. It comes with one in the box.

2TB spinning hard drive and no SSD??? Mental

You'll need to tell us how much you are prepared to spend, and if you are willing to go to second hand ESPECIALLY on a graphics card.

Your not going to get a good deal from any E-tailer right now. Literally your best bet is people ditching or upgrading their old gaming machines.

minitrue

As others have pointed out it's an absolute nightmare to find any graphics cards for the last while. Things may start improving as Chinese New Year brings everything back online to where it was coupled with nvidia releasing some old chips to manufacturers but it's still not likely to be good for quite a while.

The i5-7400 is an older chip and 2 generations back in terms of motherboards. For a little under €20 more you could get a i3-10100F (8 thread, quad core, better than the i7-7700 let alone i5-7400) and a cheap H410 board though another €30 on top of that for a i5-10400F would be much better again (12 thread, hex core) and the one to go for (or plain i5-10400, see below). Drop the cooler for starters and you are only €5 more for the i5-10400F and cheap board.

You can't run ram that fast without a more expensive motherboard so you can save there. I ended up sticking in 3000CL15 in the list below cause of the pricing but it will only run at 2666 (but should probably do CL14 or maybe even CL13 at that speed).

The case is a huge part of the expense (to me) for such a cheap system, I'd cut back as much as sanely possible there to free up more money.

You really want an SSD in there. Trying to work with the presumed budget here you can either go for a small SSD (240GB) and large hard disk or just a 500GB or 1TB SSD. I've put a 1TB below but a 240GB and 3TB would only be about €10 more (2TB being less than €10 cheaper so bad value).

The budget is key but the problem is you won't find a graphics card new easily anywhere without paying a massively inflated price What you had listed with the made up prices for cpu and gpu was about €685 (and ebuyer and box won't ship here still now as far as I know). What I'm going to list would be about €500 from Amazon Germany leaving about €200 for you to try and find a gpu with.

6 months ago that €200 would nearly have got you a 1660 and have left you lots of spare cash if you got a RX580 8GB, now you'll have to jump on something second hand to get anything sane or catch someone like Amazon putting up cards themselves at the normal old MSRP! A quick look on adverts shows a 1660 that went for €250 recently and a couple of 4GB 570/580 cards for €200, rough but I think close to as good as you'll get without knowing someone willing to charge a normal price or jumping instantly on something put up by someone who doesn't know the state of the market.

Dell have a few options (i5-10400) starting at €757 with 8GB, 240GB+1TB and a 1650 Super: https://www.dell.com/en-ie/shop/desktops-and-all-in-ones/new-inspiron-small-desktop/spd/inspiron-3881-desktop/cd388101 I'm guessing that's already hitting the budget limits? There's a few more choices from them up to around €1000. It's not great but if you want it all new and now you probably can't beat them cause of the gpu problems.

The €500-ish without a graphics card would be:

CPU: Intel Core i5-10400 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor (€159.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME H410M-E Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard (€71.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL15 Memory (€72.98 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (€89.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case (€51.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: be quiet! System Power 9 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (€57.18 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €502.95 (+ shipping, I didn't check everything is Prime eligible but it might be in which case that's €5 if you have it or can take the free trial)

You could save another €15 and get the i5-10400F if you have found a graphics card, with the plain i5-10400 though at least the machine will work until you have a gpu though it's going to be very very entry level gaming like that! You could drop to a 480/500GB ssd, go even cheaper on the case if you needed to fit more gpu budget in for whatever you could find (and shave a little more off the cpu as mentioned and even the power supply, I stuck with 600W as it's not stupid money and should make sure you can drop in any gpu you are likely to get).

Inquiring of any PC gaming friends if they have an old card could be your sanest hope, even just to tide it over until you can find a newer/better card more easily to upgrade to in a few months (hopefully). If you have any wiggle room in the budget after you've found a graphics card you might want to put a little more into the motherboard, that's literally the cheapest option but it would work ok.

Actually right this second CEX have a 570 4GB for €145 https://ie.webuy.com/search?inStockOnline=1&categoryIds=892&view=list&inStock=1 They could grab that if it's not gone by the time you see this or keep an eye on them also!

bruce wayne

minitrue, thanks a million for that. I think he's going to give some serious consideration to the Dell you've linked, it may be his best option based on the various limitations (budget & availability) I honestly never thought a pre built from Dell would have been a consideration.

minitrue

It's a shambles. You can see that the Dell isn't exactly a great price but the alternative is waiting and hunting either for a second hand gpu or catching a new one appearing somewhere at a price which fits into whatever budget they have.

Pre Brexit there were some UK sellers who would be recommended around here before Dell for prebuilts but as of now we are pretty royally screwed until someone finds a sane EU vendor! FTR https://www.dell.com/en-ie/shop/gaming-and-games/new-g5-gaming-desktop/spd/g-series-5000-desktop/cd500001 has been recommended around here a few times and if the budget was there it probably just about justifies the price increase but for "entry level gaming" the cheaper one should be ok. There also appears to be some Alienwares in the outlet but they are roughly €1000. https://www.dell.com/en-ie/outlet/SystemsStockRoomDetails?~ck=mn&lob=Alienware%20Desktops&seg=DFH&cyid=7&type=S&brand=Desktop%20%26%20All-in-Ones&pid=2

slipperyox

Nobody listened did they?

You need Dell outlet UK. (scratch damaged etc)
Get posted to NI.
But you need to keep looking on this site daily, then order.

Otherwise, go round the merry go round looking for parts, or dig deep.