£800 Gaming PC

  • £800 budget.
    • Does not need a copy of an OS.
    • Does not include any peripherals (mouse, kb, monitor etc)
  • Solely for gaming purposes.
  • User doesn't intend to overclock.
  • Would appreciate a side panel window
  • Would appreciate a predominantly black colour scheme.
  • Would appreciate a bit of silence although wears headphones the vast majority of the time.
  • The user's new so a case that's easy to cable manage and maybe a semi/fully modular PSU might be handy, or at least a case with a PSU shroud so cables can be hidden away easily.
  • If it wasn't blatantly obvious from my usage of the pound sign and the correct spelling of the word "colour", we're in the UK here, peeps. ;p

This is what came up with my last hairball.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/shQJf8 - £787.32

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£199.97 @ Amazon UK) 
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  (£29.49 @ Ebuyer) 
Motherboard: MSI B150M MORTAR Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£64.46 @ CCL Computers) 
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£37.14 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Crucial BX200 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£58.48 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£45.48 @ Ebuyer) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GB NITRO+ Video Card  (£239.99 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case  (£65.32 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Rosewill 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£46.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £787.32
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-20 14:02 BST+0100

2 Likes

Had a shocking realisation and consequently another hairball.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/VTDYgL - £798.84

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£181.99 @ Amazon UK) 
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  (£29.49 @ Ebuyer) 
Motherboard: MSI B150M MORTAR Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£64.46 @ CCL Computers) 
Memory: Kingston FURY 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  (£66.64 @ CCL Computers) 
Storage: Crucial BX200 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£58.48 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£45.48 @ Ebuyer) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GB NITRO+ Video Card  (£239.99 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case  (£65.32 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Rosewill 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£46.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £798.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-20 14:55 BST+0100

Swapped the 6600 for a 6500 (100MHz difference, whatever). Saved a touch under a tenner.
Was just enough to squidge an extra 8GB of RAM in.

1 Like

You can save another £30 getting rid of the cooler.

3 Likes

I'm aware but having the stock cooler isn't particularly desirable.
Idea was you'd be able to take the fan speeds down quite a bit and it'd be decently quiet.
There's probably some cheaper alternatives though I guess.

Not sure what else that spare £30 could go onto then either.
Go back to 8GB of RAM and replace the 240GB SSD with a 480GB one maybe?

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/fDX8JV

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£181.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: MSI B150M MORTAR Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£64.46 @ CCL Computers) 
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£37.14 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Crucial BX200 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£102.93 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£45.48 @ Ebuyer) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GB NITRO+ Video Card  (£239.99 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case  (£65.32 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Rosewill 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£46.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £784.30
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-20 15:21 BST+0100

I could see that being a reasonable option given the size of certain games nowadays.

Things like new Deus ex recommend more than 8gbs ram now so mebe keep that

1 Like

there might be a need in the future but mostly 8GB suffices for now, i know some may disagree.. but its not a bad choice either way.

Also would try remove that HDD and just go for a larger SSD. A mechanical can be added later on if really necessary and they can be scavenged from older PC's. For backup obviously you might need an SSD but essential files usually fit on a 16gb USB pen

but the original build is pretty good like @noenken said.

Stick to the 16GB. Storage can be added without any problem later on. And the bigger SSDs will drop more in price than a few gigs of ram over the next year or so.

Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with the earlier system. Do that!

2 Likes

I'd want to at least make sure there's roughly 1TB of storage available and getting a 1TB SSD is just out of reach.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/mXNt8K

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£181.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: MSI B150M MORTAR Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£64.46 @ CCL Computers) 
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£37.14 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Sandisk Ultra II 960GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£179.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GB NITRO+ Video Card  (£239.99 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case  (£65.32 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Rosewill 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£46.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £815.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-20 15:35 BST+0100

If you do cut down on RAM, get a single 8GB stick.

2 Likes

I thought the benefits of having multiple sticks nowadays were a bit greater than they used to be. Is that not the case?
If it isn't then I suppose getting a motherboard with less DIMM slots would be acceptable and that'd bring some of the H110 boards into question.

What fans are on the case? Stock CPU cooler from Intel is actually fairly decent. My case fans made most of the noise.

I had the stock cooler on my 4790k for a while, when I got a larger GPU, the airflow that got to the stock cooler dropped dramatically, load temps weren't pleasant. Hence the distaste for the intel stock cooler. I suppose the higher profile RAM I have didn't help that much either. Maybe with a 6500 it wouldn't be much of an issue. Plus that phanteks case probably has better airflow than my 650D.

The fans will just be stock, whatever comes with it. Fans always seem surprisingly pricey to me.

Derpy question but I thought intel didn't do stock coolers on skylake anymore or is that just the K parts

It's just the K parts I believe.

Something I just noticed about a lot of these motherboards is that they have a surprisingly low quantity of fan headers. Need at least 3 besides the CPU fan header ideally (the case only comes with 1 fan and so I'd get two extra to place in the front).

The cheapest motherboard that I could find available in the UK that had three or more system fan headers was fucking horrific.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/NsL7YJ/gigabyte-motherboard-g1sniperb7rev10
That green... whowhatwhenwherewhy did that happen. I'm so lost.

Next cheapest was this (assuming the delivery from amazon is free or else the delivery doesn't make it more expensive than something else)...
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/k27CmG/gigabyte-motherboard-gab150md3h

Compared to the B150 included in the original build, that's way more. Best option in this case seems to be to just get a fan splitter. This still leaves me with that original B150 which (and now I'm finally getting to the point at which all the shit I've just written above relates back to your suggestion of getting a single 8GB stick over a 2x4GB stick) has 4 DIMM slots. Getting a 2x4GB kit is like a quid more (assuming we're only talking about kits that would be acceptable in a windowed case) and a single stick would just look a bit lonely so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What an oversight fans have been here I think I'm going to sit down and cry for a minute. Recommendations for additional fans?


Noctuas, EK Vardars, etc...

I'd rather not resort to having uncontrollable fans.

Get a case with an inbuilt fan controller.

Cough Arc Mini R2 cough

That's just got one of those 3-speed things! Eh. What'd be ideal is control in the BIOS. Going with that MSI B150 board in the original build still just seems like the best option to go with just with a cheapo fan splitter (any case that comes with a decent fan hub is too expensive, standalone fan hubs seem to be also too expensive to be sensible and getting a motherboard that just has more fan headers is way more expensive than just getting a splitter with the MSI B150 MORTAR or whatever), so atm I'm just sat here looking at this wondering what fans are a good idea to stick in the front of this case.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/LhhfPs

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£181.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: MSI B150M MORTAR Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£64.46 @ CCL Computers) 
Memory: Kingston FURY 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  (£69.98 @ Novatech) 
Storage: Crucial BX200 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£57.11 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£45.48 @ Ebuyer) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GB NITRO+ Video Card  (£239.99 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case  (£65.32 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Rosewill 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£46.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Other: PWM fan splitter (£2.99)
Total: £774.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-20 17:59 BST+0100

Dropping the RAM down to be 8GB again is an option if somehow two 120 (or ideally 140mm) fans end up being more than £25.

Be aware that a lot of cheaper motherboard don't support PWM fans other than the main CPU, not only that purely voltage control fans on some motherboards ( like one of my cheapy AMD boards ) don't have a granular voltage control function in the bios usually at best low or high.

You get what you pay for with motherboards.