Advice on a gaming pc please.

zeb

zeb

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My grandson wants to buy a gaming pc he’s hopes to save about £900 and has been saving every penny he gets and is now close to his target, He has gone without some xmas presents so he could have the cash and he is still a bit short so I’m thinking about giving him a top up.

As Novatech is just up the road he has been looking at this:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/range/novatechblacknti158.html

Anyone have any thoughts on the specs of this machine and to it being a bit future proof for the new games.
 
16GB RAM was standard on a gaming PC 6 -7 years ago. For future proofing 32 or 64GB Ram would be required.
 
Gaming is all about the GPU, I have 16gb in my monster and it's fine, the 6gb graphics card is what's doing the work.

The machine your looking at is not a bad spec, graphics card could be better.
 
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Also note that it does not include an operating system.

I personally would not buy at that price, instead I would use the money to source all the part's and build it myself
 
Keith W said:
Also note that it does not include an operating system.

I personally would not buy at that price, instead I would use the money to source all the part's and build it myself
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:plus1:

+ it's a lot of fun too :)
 
That particular model comes with no CPU cooling other than the stock cooler, an unbranded SSD, an unbranded power supply and unbranded RAM. For that amount of money I'd be expecting a bit more - especially in the power supply department. Also, +1 on working out what sort of gaming is being done. If it's graphics intensive, it can be better to spend more on a video card and less on a CPU. MMOs for example are much more graphically forgiving than FPS, and strategy games can tax the CPU more than the video card.

Self-build is great if you have the time and the inclination - and sites like PC Part Picker are really good for getting bits that all fit together. It ends up being like very expensive lego... Another benefit for me, is that I've known (and had the confidence to tackle) how to replace a faulty motherboard, add SDDs, replace a CPU fan and add a USB3 PCI card over the years without having to resort to paying someone else to do it.

This build for example (sorted just by looking at your price range) https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/guide/XrRscf/1300-gaming-build
Has a better video card, & CPU as well as branded everything ("Better" in terms of PassMark results here: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html) but the motherboard is an older socket type.

In terms of future proofing - technology is a lot slower to advance than it was 10 years ago. My i5-2500 with 12Gb RAM & GTX660 was built in 2011 and still plays everything I throw at it - although some high performance games do need to have the graphics toned down. I can live with that. As long as you can continue to add the latest parts to the motherboard, you'll be OK. Once you hit the limit of the board's memory capability (in your case 64Gb), or want to upgrade to a CPU that won't fit, it'll get expensive again as you'll need a new motherboard on top of everything else. Stuff not "directly" connected to the mobo - power supply, SSDs, fans, coolers, cases, optical drives, etc all tend to have universal connections that will allow them to be upgraded/replaced no matter what. The Gigabyte motherboard in your choice is actually pretty future proof (as long as you stick with Intel processors) I'd guess for at least 5 years.

That's my tuppence.
 
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As others have said I would look elsewhere.

There are lots of 'gaming' systems with the headline 6th Gen i7 chip but its always married to sub std components like a poor power supply, poor cooling solution etc.

Anyway a desktop i3 chip is all you need for gaming as long as you have a beefy GPU! The 960 isn't a great card. The 970 is infinitly better. The 980 better again but law of diminishing returns kicks in.

Focus on
A good branded power supply
A GTX 970 or greater (pref factory overclocked with a good cooler design)
Aftermarket cooling solutions for CPU

If it were me I'd spend £400 on two used GTX780 TI's run them in SLI and add an I5 4670k cpu plus a corsair 1000w and it will have about 4 x the gaming capabilities for the same cost!
 
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redsnappa said:
16GB RAM was standard on a gaming PC 6 -7 years ago. For future proofing 32 or 64GB Ram would be required.
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Couldn't disagree more, running gta v ultra 1080p 60+ fps with Web browsers open and I don't even come close to using 8gb of ram. You only need more for photo/video editing.

I would definitely build it myself L, it's a lot easier than it looks, and will get a much better pc for the money. And there are tons of YouTube videos showing you how!

If you don't want to build it yourself then look at overclockers.Co.uk great service and build quality and reasonably priced
 
Thanks for all the replies, Ian, Mark thank you for the info I will have a look around.
 
SamTD said:
Couldn't disagree more, running gta v ultra 1080p 60+ fps with Web browsers open and I don't even come close to using 8gb of ram. You only need more for photo/video editing.

I would definitely build it myself L, it's a lot easier than it looks, and will get a much better pc for the money. And there are tons of YouTube videos showing you how!

If you don't want to build it yourself then look at overclockers.Co.uk great service and build quality and reasonably priced
Click to expand...

I agree. I've got a very serious gaming system, triple monitor, triple GPU's, water cooled with huge external and Internal rads and pumps and game with everything maxed at 5760x1200 at over 100fps in most games. I rarely see ram exceed 12gb and all my parameters are monitored live on a separate screen. Modern games parse most texture files to the GPU ram, not system ram.

Also note, without a 64bit OS anything more than 4gb is ignored anyway as the OS can't address it.
 
All about the VGA cards, being a gamer for 30 years the Machine you specified is fine bar the VGA card id spend as much as you dare on ramping that up.

Ram wise 32GB is cheap nowadays BUT you wont notice it between 16 and 32 much as you would that VGA upgrade, I run 32 on all mine but I do Virtualization Gaming wise dont see any benefit.so 16gb is fine spend it on the card. My laptop runs a 960 GTX and its ok, but I cant anything decent above 1920x1080 its a 4k screen, Im a bit behind the card front at the moment so not too sure whats out, but I like ATI over Nvidia over the years Nvidia to me have had issues with drivers dropping to desktop and after dealing with there support they often than not pass the buck to Microsoft, where ATI will bend over backwards, I run both 960GTX and ATi R290 and play everything at around 50 to 70 FPS

World of Tanks
Warcraft
and the list goes on.

If you want a comparison try

Chillblast or PC specialist , the latter will have a quotein your inbox in about 5 mins and are very good, Chillblast also but slower but good value for money, My sons 5 year old PC is still holiding its own from Chillblast it runs a core I5 16gb Ram and an ATi 5870....

goodluck and just beef up that card for him :) you could be like STu above and sli or tri them but its a lot but the holygrail
 
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Thank you Rob
He is thinking along the lines of the cheaper Core i5 processor and spending the money saved on a better card he's looking at a gtx 970.
Was looking at Chillblaster and PC specialist in PC gamer mag on the weekend.
 
It's a great time to buy reasonable priced gaming computers. Things haven't really moved on so much in the space besides power efficiency so you can buy stuff which isn't bleeding edge and still have a great experience. I think you'd be fine with 8GB for 90% of stuff and ideally 16GB if you can budget for it. Those Nvidia cards are great. Once you decide on the resolution you want to push then you can choose the choice of card accordingly.
 
i5 is perfect for gaming, and a gtx 970 is a great card for the money.
 
The other thing to think about if you're looking at a CPU intensive application is to consider whether you'll get more bang for your buck from a Xeon processor. The E3 series is supported by some well specified motherboards. I would definitely build your own PC - not worth the cost of having someone else build.
 
zeb said:
Thank you Rob
He is thinking along the lines of the cheaper Core i5 processor and spending the money saved on a better card he's looking at a gtx 970.
Was looking at Chillblaster and PC specialist in PC gamer mag on the weekend.
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Zeb the I5 will be fine, my Lads had his and plays everything at High res. the 970GTX will be good, when you speak to ChillBlast or PC Specialist tell them what you need my money would be invested in VGA Card and as SSD, I'm unsure how computer Savvy you lad is but a 240GB SSD drive would suffice however if he isn't very savvy get the 480GB upwards, it just when they install games they just shove everything on C drive thus the drive soon fills up. If he knows about moving them to D or E drive then good, But anything running on that SSD is fast, so sometimes kids want it all on SSD LOL
 
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