Budget gaming build for £600

[RSKeogh96]

So I have been an avid pc gamer for a long time and already have a rather powerful rig (cost me about (£2100). My girlfriend on the other hand does not. She used to play a lot of pc games during her childhood before eventually stopping. However after letting her sit down and hammer through a few games (doom, saints row 4, battlefield etc.) and so on, she has decided she wants to get back into pc gaming and has decided to start saving for one. She wants to make it a project for the two of us to do together which I am more than enthusiastic about

Now I have never been amazing at creating a pc build from scratch, so I would like to see some of you lovely folk could provide me with some decent builds for around the £600 mark? As far as AMD or NVidia is concerned I am not bothered, I am purely looking for the most bang for the buck. This build will of course be primarily used for gaming.

Thanks all!

 

[Dustybin]

Do you need a monitor, keyboard/mouse, windows licence etc in that £600?

 

[RSKeogh96]

I have a keyboard and I have a cheap mouse that will do for the moment. The monitor that she has is less than ideal but will do. So we wont need any of them in the £600. As far as the windows license goes ill help with buying that so should be fine.

 

[Hlsgsz]

This is teh best you can get for around that. Wait for a non-reference RX 480:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (£98.99 @ Novatech)
Motherboard: *Asus B150M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£54.05 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: *Kingston FURY 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£29.99 @ Novatech)
Storage: PNY CS1311 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£34.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£41.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: BitFenix Nova ATX Mid Tower Case (£23.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 620W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£61.75 @ CCL Computers)
Other: AMD RX 480 8GB (£250.00)
Total: £595.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-05 12:59 BST+0100

EDIT: I revised the build as is was too overbudget with the parts that hadn't teh price listed.

 

[RSKeogh96]

Nice build. I would probably look into getting a second hand rx 480 which should be available by the time the money has been put together and using the spare cash to get an i5 Would an amd processer be significantly cheaper or would it still hang around the same price?

 

[Dustybin]

I agree with Hlsgsz the combination of an i5 and an RX480 would be the current sweet spot around your budget. If you start off with that combo it is unlikely you'll feel the need to upgrade any core parts soon. You could add an SSD down the line and with 16gb of RAM you're unlikely to need more in the lifetime of this system.

Don't buy any current AMD CPU's, you can make a saving but the FX series is based on a dying socket and actually performs worse than an i3 due to its poor single thread performance. If you're looking at Q1 2017 then Zen might have been released and may make a tempting alternative to Intel in your price range.

 

[RSKeogh96]

Ah right. My knowledge on amd CPU's is pretty sparse so that's good to know. I defo want to push for an i5 and I agree that the ssd is not an necessity. thinking black Friday/cyber Monday will be a great time to try and snag a few deals on some of these mid range components.

 

[Dustybin]

You won't make a huge saving on Intel CPU's even in sales, they are the only show in town currently so there isn't a great deal of need to discount, even the previous gen Intel CPU's don't drop as they don't want to compete with themselves. You might be able to find a Motherboard/RAM/CPU bundle offer around that time and the downwards pressure of the 1080/1070/1060 dropping in price as availability increases will probably have knocked the RX480 under £200.

 

[RSKeogh96]

Makes sense. But yeah any saving is going to help got the most out of this build. If I does end up going over £600 then ill just make up the difference

 

[Dustybin]

Good luck, it shouldn't need to go much over that for what you'll need. It will be a good start and stuff like the SSD, better monitor, headphones etc can be slowly added down the line.

 

[Hlsgsz]

I dont' think you'll find many SH RX 480 anytime soon, but the price/perf as they are new is excellent anyway.
Don't make a huge effort to get an i5, and don;t even think about downgrading the GPU for that. As of today, the difference between the i3 and an i5 is marginal in most games. this will change at some point in the future(1-2 years), but, by then you can just stick a SH i7 in there and prolongue the life of the build another 4 years or so.
As stated above, a MB + CPU + RAM combo is your best bet. If you run into a good one, snatch it, as there's not much that's gonna change very soon in this regard.
I would also strive to get an SSD in there, as it changes the computing experience for the better completly. Sure, it doesn;t improve FPS, but nobody really uses their build strictly for games, do they?
Also, as repeated above, AMD is no-go these days until teh release of Zen.

 

[WiiUMasterGman]

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/PR4yf8

This is a great build to be honest. The RX480 will get cheaper but you will have to wait

 

[RSKeogh96]

Yeah I know for sure not to go for amd cpus as it is for sure not just you guys saying that. Also that second build in particular looks really nice price wise. by the time the money is together I imagine a couple of parts may be changed but these are both really great starting points for the pc. thanks all

 

[Hlsgsz]

I stand by my recommendation. That second build ha a misleading price for the RX 480(a non-reference 8GB model will not be just £219.99), it lacks an SSD and, contrary to what one might believe, an i3 6100 will outperform an i5 6400 in many if not most of today's games. An i5 6500 would be another story though, so, if you and up going for an i5, pay the extra for it as it's really worth it for the extra 500Mhz.

 

[RSKeogh96]

For sure the second build lacks a lot of the first build. I will most likely swing to the first build for the simple reason that the actual compromise on the parts is minimal. The cpu is my biggest issue with the second build simply for the reason that 2.7 Ghz just isn't ideal nowadays and the 3.7 is far more appealing. Of course if the better i5 is within budget that will be a go to choice. All depends on the pricing at the time and the best value

 

[Hlsgsz]

For sure the second build lacks a lot of the first build. I will most likely swing to the first build for the simple reason that the actual compromise on the parts is minimal. The cpu is my biggest issue with the second build simply for the reason that 2.7 Ghz just isn't ideal nowadays and the 3.7 is far more appealing. Of course if the better i5 is within budget that will be a go to choice. All depends on the pricing at the time and the best value

Exactly. Even if it's a true quad core, the 6400 lacks in fqeuency and therefore in single threded performace, which matters immensly in most of todays games. The 6400 is a no-go as far as i'm concearned. Either the 6500 or the i3 6100.
Regardless, the best value is definitely the i3, and the price difference is much better spent on a GPU liek i said in my previous post.

 

[WiiUMasterGman]

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Y64Fd6