Need Some Advice With Getting A New PC

[KRC]

Well the time has come, I've finally raised some cash and have decided to get a new PC setup, I just needed a few pointers on what to go for as I'm no PC expert.

I have a budget of £300 - £350 (roughly $500), I basically want everything that can be emulated to be present on my new PC, and also play modern PC games without a hitch.

Its not really a setup thats needed, just the tower as it will run through my HD TV.

Any ideas guys?

[Draco1962]

I'd hit New Egg and build my own. The nice thing if you go the tower route is that you can start moderate and advance as you can afford. I'd probably go with something Asus for the mobo that would support an i5 or i7 chip. Win 7 x64 with at least 8GB of RAM. Integrated sound is fine, but you will probably want to go with a higher-end GPU with at least 1GB of DDR3 RAM on the card. You will want to have Dv-i and HDMI graphics and sound support through the GPU. You will also want to be able to play Bluray Discs so a player would be a good thing as well.

[hansolo77]

For emulation, you don't really need anything great. MAME and a lot of consoles up till the 2000's all work great with minimal system requirements. Some of the more recent consoles require a workhorse system to be able to emulate at any playable speed, but for the most part I'd say even a Pentium 4 would be sufficient. If you want PC games, it's gonna come down to what games you want to play. The nice thing about PC games is there is a minimum system spec on the package, so you can build your system to spec for that game. All-in-all, if you just want to build a dedicated console/MAME/"old" PC system, you should be safe with anything like a Pentium 4, Core2Duo or AMD Athlon system. For more high end use like Blu-Ray/HD video playback, current-gen console emulation, or new PC games, you're gonna be spending a lot more money on systems.

I agree with Draco about NewEgg. They tend to have the better prices when comparing identical parts with TigerDirect or even Amazon. However, if you're not comfortable building your own by selecting individual parts, there's always prebuilt systems at stores like Best Buy. However, I would HIGHLY recommend staying away from that because they price gouge you like crazy. The only benefit to buying prebuilt is that you know all the hardware is compatible. It's better to go piece by piece, but if you want a high-end system, $500 might not cut it.

I will say though, that for my current system, I can play emulators up to the Nintendo GameCube with no problem. My current build is out of date, but it works so I haven't bothered to upgrade it. I have a Core2Duo E6600 processor @2.4ghz, 6gb RAM, and Win7 64-bit. For video I'm using an EVGA Brand nVidia GeForce GTS 250.

[Tom Speirs]

In the UK Scan.co.uk or dabs.co.uk generally have the best prices for build your own. If you want prebuilt overclockers.co.uk. Its also worth checking amazon.co.uk on prices. In regards to the performance any modern processor is decent enough and the bottleneck is hard disk for office type workload these days. Unless you are talking PS2 or full fps etc. you don't need a special graphics card either relative to modern cards available.

[nullPointer]

I'd definitely back Draco's comments as well as some of Han's. Unfortunately as awesome as Newegg is, I don't believe it's available in the UK (from what I understand - not sure though?). So Tom hit the nail on the head with the initial question; do you plan to build your own, or go pre-built? Like Han I'd recommend going BYO if you feel confident in doing so. It's pretty easy to build your own computer in this day and age (although I freely admit that I still get a jolt of adrenaline when applying thermal paste ).

In a BYO setup, the first component you'll want to consider will be the CPU (IMO). Nearly every other component will follow from that decision. I feel like Intel is currently ruling that roost (although that's nearly always up for debate). Ivy Bridge is the new(ish) hotness from Intel, but something from the Sandy Bridge line would still be perfectly serviceable(and likely cheaper).

If you've never checked it out, Tom's Hardware, is a great source of computer hardware news and information (likewise Newegg is a great source of information even if you aren't able to actually purchase anything from the site).

[DazzleHP]

Hi KRC,

I just recently (4 weeks ago) built a budget rig with £400 and you can get some nice grunt if you take your time and find the right hadrware.

I second Tom's Scan.co.uk but I'd also highly recommend Novatech.co.uk - i've been with them for years and have had zero problems with them! And believe me i've bought a LOT of kit off them

If you want to be able to play modern games it's perfectly doable on that budget! Although obviously you'll most likely have to use the medium settings in most games but i'm guessing graphics aren't a big deal for you, otherwise that £350 would be going on a GPU alone ^^

I can run most games on medium settings or higher with a constant 60fps =)

You can check my channel for some 1080p footage (software captured!) to see how it performs if you like - i was pleasantly surprised myself at what a budget rig can do!

May i also advise that, and many overlook this, if you plan on making this a rolling upgrade (ie constantly upgrading over time) that you invest in a decent case - you will thank yourself in the long run =)

-EDIT- ninja'd by null! ^^ i second his statement that intel are the way to go currently, and for what it's worth a quad-core probably won't be very useful at this present time.

Edited October 6, 2012 by DazzleHP

[KRC]

Thanks for the input guys , very much appreciated, I think I'm gonna save a little more and wait it out a little longer and get something better.

After a little look into what I wanted, I've decided on a decent i5 on Asus. Probably looking more towards £450-£500.

Again thanks guys for the input and the website mentions.

[Stu1983]

I've recently built a mini HTPC, I was reusing an old motherboard board and a spare GTX 460 so that kept my price down.

The motherboard I had meant that I couldn't go for one of the newer i5 or i7s but I managed to grab the older 'i5 760' from overclockers.co.uk for £105 in one of the end of line sales (at the time the best price I had found elsewhere was £170).

With the i5 760 and the GTX 460 I am playing most Wii and PS2 games full speed. There are exceptions though like Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are just shy of full speed (though I still haven't tried the latest Dolphin build which is claimed to offer an extra 5% performance.

I've also been playing modern PC games on this system with no problems. I find for emulators CPU is key but for PC games the GPU is more important.

Something you should consider is the size of this system. Personally I wanted my new build to fit nicely below the TV. So I didn't want a full tower.

For me the case had the following requirements:

• Room for a full height + full length GPU
  
• Room for 2 hard drives (SSD for OS and 3TB Sata for emulators + games)
  
• Powerful enough PSU to run a good GPU
  
• As small as possible
  

It took a lot of looking but I found the perfect case

https://www.overcloc...rodid=CA-151-SV

Luckily my existing motherboard was a mini ITX so it fits perfect

I'm really pleased with the build but ideally I would've like a newer i5 or i7 so I could max out Wii games

[Draco1962]

Glad you were able to get one thrown together and at a great price! I have found that when straddling the border between speed and overall performance, the choice in hard disk can also cause some issues in playback speeds. This will be more noticeable in large and slow HDDs (ex. 1.5 TB WD Green 5200 RPM vs 1.5 TB Seagate Barricuda 7200RPM) when dealing with an older CPU or GPU that requires more frequent cache reads/writes. If going with an SSD you should be golden, but be sure you have a good SSD management utility. The caveat to the faster HDDs is noise although less so now than in years past.