In case it's useful to anyone, a co-worker's son wanted to get into PC gaming and I heeded the call. This is the spec / info I gave him, perhaps a little out of date now. Those of you in America get to feel awesome about having access to cheap components. Intel Pentium Dual Core G860 LGA1155 3.0GHz 3MB – apparently CPU makes not too much difference. This CPU isn't too far off an I5-2500K, beats out all the AMD, costs very little. http://www.dabs.com/products/intel-pentium-dual-core-g860-lga1155-3-0ghz-3mb-7P8C.html?src=3 £70 XFX ATI Radeon 6870 900MHz 1GB PCI-Express HDMI – on par with the 560s, a slight step down from 6950 – but a significant cost saving at £130. http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-ati-radeon-6870-900mhz-1gb-pci-express-hdmi-7QFX.html?src=3 The rest Hitachi 500GB Deskstar 7K1000.C SATA-300 7200rpm 16mb http://www.dabs.com/products/hitach...W9.html?refs=42730000-56330000-52450000&src=3 - £55 Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1333MHz DIMM 240-pin CL9 http://www.dabs.com/products/kingston-8gb--2-x-4gb--ddr3-1333mhz-dimm-240-pin-cl9-7FS5.html?src=2 - £35 Gigabyte H61M-D3V S1155 Intel H61 DDR3 ATX http://www.dabs.com/products/gigaby...-atx-7Y3Q.html?q=Gigabyte GA-H61MA-D3V&src=16 - £45 Corsair Memory 600W Builder Series CX V2 ATX PSU http://www.dabs.com/products/corsair-memory-600w-builder-series-cx-v2-atx-psu-7JSQ.html?src=2 - £50 Antec 300 Three Hundred Case Black http://www.dabs.com/products/antec-300-three-hundred-case-black-6252.html?src=3 - £45 Sony 24x DVD-RW SATA Black Bare Internal Drive http://www.dabs.com/products/sony-24x-dvd-rw-sata-black-bare-internal-drive-7QC0.html?src=3 - £15 Sub-total cost: £445 Monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers. BenQ G2420HDBL 24" 1920 x 1080 5MS DVI-D VGA Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black - £120 http://www.dabs.com/products/benq-g...?refs=376750000-42940000&q=1920 x 1080&src=16 Logitech Optical Gaming Mouse G400 - Optical - 8 button(s) - wired – USB - £25 http://www.dabs.com/products/logite...----wired---usb-7KBF.html?refs=41970000&src=3 Microsoft Wired Keyboard 600 Black - £10 http://www.dabs.com/products/microsoft-wired-keyboard-600-black-5GCQ.html?refs=42410000&src=3 Logitech S-220 - 2.1-channel PC multimedia speaker system - 17 Watt (Total) - £20 http://www.dabs.com/products/logite...aker-system---17-watt--total--4L6M.html?src=3 Sub-total cost: £170 Total cost: £615 If you want to save cost... You can't really get cheaper speakers as anything less will sound terrible. You could save £25 by getting a generic keyboard + mouse, but having a good mouse is crucial to PC gaming (keyboard is less important, hence the price difference). http://www.dabs.com/products/cherry-entry-level-keyboad-blk-usb-43QG.html?src=3 http://www.dabs.com/products/logitech-b110-optical-usb-mouse-5L9T.html?src=3 You could save around £20 getting a smaller monitor http://www.dabs.com/products/lg-ele...---vga---black-7RP5.html?q=1920 x 1080&src=16 – the difference will be more noticeable than the 20% price reduction. You could get a cheaper graphics card http://www.dabs.com/products/sapphi...-pci-express-3-0-hdmi-7YHM.html?q=7750&src=16 saving £50, though the ~35% drop in performance is significant You could save £15 on the RAM http://www.dabs.com/products/kingst...non-ecc-cl9-dimm--kit--741T.html?q=4gb&src=16 but again it's a significant drop. You could save £20 on the PSU http://www.dabs.com/products/ocz-technology-500w-corexstream-series-power-supply-8174.html?src=3 – this is probably the only one I'd recommend actually. Generic PSU's are to be avoided for reliability reasons. The other components cannot go any cheaper without suffering a massive reduction in quality. Cheaper cases overheat components, RAM and DVD drives are already at minimum price, £130 less is £485 total (but it's really quite a significant difference to the look/feel for £130) --- Probably the best bet to bring it in under £600 is to go for the OCZ power supply, meaning the total cost is £595. If you can get peripherals from anywhere for free, go for it and let him upgrade to the stuff listed here if he chooses with pocket money... I had a look for laptops, there don't seem to be any that are suitable (on the net). For comparison, this is the only cheap gaming laptop I can find http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/Acer_As..._NX.RV3EK.001/version.asp?refsource=adfroogle (by definition, it requires a graphics card to be for gaming). It is £500, but is very weak in comparison with the desktop above (even the cut down version). The 630 will allow it to run games, but not really play them... the laptop equivalent of that PC I specced out would be about £1300. Other differences are that you'd be playing on a tiny screen, need to buy a separate mouse / keyboard / speakers anyway... easily taking the cost past £535 just to be usable. -- -- If you are interested; Graphics - http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/benchmarks,135.html is the GPU scores (basicallly, increase price until performance doesn't increase relative - the £70 card scores 2000 on the 1st test, the £90 scores 4000, and the £130 scores 6000) CPU - http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,review-32368-3.html in large single player CPU heavy games, it's about 65% the performance of the I5-2500k (a very good CPU), and in multiplayer FPS it makes almost no difference http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,review-32368-4.html - whereas the price is 40% of the I5-2500k. Looking at the benchmarks / reviews, you'll notice that it is the graphics card that is the most essential component and worth spending extra on.
Me and Chris did a LOT of Amazon and other website crawling during the middle of the night. However, the downside to my rig is when I want to upgrade anything significant, like CPU, I may have to get a new CPU AND Motherboard considering F1 only supports quad core at the moment. With the holidays coming up, I expect there to be tons of sales on computer parts though, so maybe we can utilize a thread with all the best deals.
