Desktop build needed to play Football Manager 2015 and Civ: Beyond Earth

DenisIrwin · Oct 23, 2014

Hi there,

My laptop has died and I've decided to replace it with a self-built desktop in order to get more bang for my buck.

I've tried messing around with PC Part Picker, but I'm already getting a bit lost due to my lack of knowledge.

I want to spec up a desktop build able to breeze through the processing of big Football Manager 2015, with lots of leagues loaded and decent enough graphics to enjoy the 3D match engine. The game has it's own in-built system rating feature. I have no idea how useful/accurate it is, but I'd like to be able to ensure my new rig can keep going at 5 star even with a very large database loaded. I also plan to play Civilisation 5, Civ: Beyond Earth and maybe some of the Total War and AirLandSea games, but they're not a priority. I'd happily play them with reduced settings. FM is the focus!

My budget is currently £350max. I'd like to try and spend less than that if possible though. Please let me know if what I want is even feasible on that kind of budget. I'm assuming FM isn't going to need the most cutting-edge components, and since laptops are all the rage now I was hoping I'd be able to get something really great for quite cheap.

Suggestions for monitors wouldn't go amiss either!

Thank you for any help or suggestions.

James Mason · Oct 23, 2014

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor (£47.98 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£30.97 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£56.83 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.38 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB WINDFORCE Video Card (£103.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£25.98 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£35.09 @ Aria PC)
Total: £340.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-23 22:59 BST+0100

This should be able to do it, you can see a comparable performing build here: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/wxccCJ
I'll be able to get you some FM2014 specs later today as well. (since 2015 isn't out yet)

If you could do $400 you'd be a bit better off, 350 is just barely scrapping by.

This is my monitor recommendation: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-monitor-vs228hr
(but you never gave a budget for the monitor)

DenisIrwin · Oct 23, 2014

Fantastic. Thanks James.

If I did find the cash to up my budget to £400, how much extra do you reckon I could get for that?

Also, Sports Interactive have announced FM2015's system specs. They are as follows:

MINIMUM:
OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8
Processor: Intel Pentium 4, Intel Core, AMD Athlon - XP: 1.6GHz+ V/7/8: 2.2GHz+
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: NVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, ATI Radeon 9800, Intel GMA X3100 - 128MB VRAM
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 3 GB available space

Thanks again for your quick response and any other help you or other members can offer.

James Mason · Oct 23, 2014

Alright so with this build: http://pcpartpicker.com/b/wxccCJ
I get a 5 star system performance & 5 stars of game speed in FM2014, and can have 5 nations selected before losing any stars from game speed. (well some nations are more intensive then others)
(unfortunately FM2014 won't let me print screen so I can't take any screenshots.)

It recommends I run it at very high graphics settings, with full commentary as well.

The minimum specs are fairly low as well.

For the extra money you can get a much better CPU, and this game seems to be more CPU focused (keep track of all the players) than GPU focused, so you can get a better CPU than even I have.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4360 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (£108.40 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£30.97 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£56.83 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.38 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB WINDFORCE Video Card (£103.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£25.98 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£35.09 @ Aria PC)
Total: £400.64
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-24 02:26 BST+0100

DenisIrwin · Oct 24, 2014

Thanks again, James. Looks great!

So if I were to go further again, it should be focused on the CPU? I'm wondering if it's wiser for me to find the money for an i5 quad core processor in order to deal with more intensive strategy games/multi-tasking when working?

James Mason · Oct 24, 2014

An i5 will probably make a noticeable improvement in FM, you'd have to make sacrifices elsewhere though, like on the graphics card. (because you;re already building a very low budget system)
But one of the advantages of the i3-4360 is that it has hyper threading, so it still performs very efficiently in multi-core applications because it makes itself into a quad-core processor. (2 physical cores, 2 virtual cores)

Football manager does appear to make good use of multi-core systems though.

And difference between an i5 and i3 is very little except in multi-core applications, otherwise in single core applications (see most applications) they perform basically the same (the i3 can beat the i5 at times but really only by like 0.01%), but in multicore applications an i5 will perform roughly 25-30% better. An i5 costs 35-40% more than an i3 though.

whiteknights · Oct 24, 2014

i'm waiting for FM 2015, when will it be released ?

James Mason · Oct 24, 2014

next month i think.

DenisIrwin · Oct 25, 2014

Ah, ok. So in my position i5 would be a bit of a luxury given that the cost increase isn't entirely matched by the likely performance boost. Makes sense.

Final question(s) James, I promise!

Will the £400 build above be good for multi-tab browsing and multi-tasking audio, video, documents and web browsing as well as deal with FM?

Back to FM: I'll probably want to load more than 5 league to be honest. I'm one of those guys who takes it a bit too far and ends up trying to simulate most of Europe, South America, MLS and maybe even some of Asia. I obviously don't expect any computer to get a 5* rating for dealing with saves of that size, but should this build have the necessary grunt to power through?

And also, where would you recommend I look for tutorials on how to put this whole thing together? Starting from nothing here but eager to learn.

Thanks again for all your help. Truly is appreciated.

James Mason · Oct 25, 2014

Well, here's the issue, if you ONLY wanted to play FM2015, you could probably drop the graphics card and just get a CPU (cause FM doesn't appear to have any 3d graphics). Multi tab and multi taksing audio and video are all stuff you can do easily on a $63 dollar cpu. But you did mention you wanted to play Civ:BE and that WILL use your graphics card quite a bit, even on lower settings. If you don't care too much about Civ:BE you could drop the GPU and get an i5/7 that will

Here's a written guide on building a computer: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-pc,2601.html
Here's a video on putting one together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_56kyib-Ls
And here's installing the OS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxaVBsXEiok

Here, as along as you don't care to much about 3d graphics performance, this should run 3d games @1080P at their lowest settings at around 40FPS. And you get a much stronger CPU to control a bunch of teams with.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£162.18 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£30.97 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£56.83 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.38 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GT 640 1GB Video Card (£55.97 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£25.98 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£35.09 @ Aria PC)
Total: £406.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-25 19:23 BST+0100

DenisIrwin · Oct 25, 2014

Once again James, thank you for your time and insights into all this. I think dropping the graphics for a better CPU sounds like the smarter idea. My focus is definitely on building a budget FM powerhouse I can also work on rather than a full-on if modest gaming rig.

After all, I can always save up for something better graphics wise in the future which who knows might coincide with a Civ:BE Steam sale discount...

Thanks again!

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