Buying or building a gaming PC

littlethoughts

I'm thinking of buying or building a gaming PC. What are peoples thoughts of the websites that build them for you? or any recommendations for suppliers with deals on this black friday weekend?

digitalscream

I always prefer to build them myself, because I don't trust other people to do it right. Then again, I've been doing it for 25 years, so it doesn't take me as long to put a machine together as it might for somebody who's never done it before.

One interesting fact which may affect your decision - if you buy the bits to do it yourself and the power supply fails and damages the motherboard (or other components), the warranty will only cover the power supply and anything else that went up in smoke is a write-off. If the same happens when you bought the machine pre-built, the warranty will cover everything.

I only mention this because I've had a number of PSUs fail over the years. The moral of this story is to always spend a decent amount of money on a good PSU that's less likely to fail; don't cheap out on it...for a gaming machine, expect to spend at least £50.

littlethoughts

@digitalscream thanks for the tips! I'm leaning towards self build... but what you describe is the one thing putting me off.

Hertz32

I'be advised a mate to go with a site called Palicomp. They built mine a few years ago with no issues and they warranty the PC which is useful for exactly the reasons Digi mentioned. 

sinbaadi

Build yourself, with parts you trust.  If you are worried about a domino effect self-destruction event then you could always insure the thing.

Axe_meister

Foto pcpartpicker.com to spec up your own.

Heartfeltdawn

digitalscream said:

I always prefer to build them myself, because I don't trust other people to do it right. Then again, I've been doing it for 25 years, so it doesn't take me as long to put a machine together as it might for somebody who's never done it before.

One interesting fact which may affect your decision - if you buy the bits to do it yourself and the power supply fails and damages the motherboard (or other components), the warranty will only cover the power supply and anything else that went up in smoke is a write-off. If the same happens when you bought the machine pre-built, the warranty will cover everything.

I only mention this because I've had a number of PSUs fail over the years. The moral of this story is to always spend a decent amount of money on a good PSU that's less likely to fail; don't cheap out on it...for a gaming machine, expect to spend at least £50.

I haven't used it myself but would something like Scansure offer suitable protection if things do go pop? 

https://www.scan.co.uk/info/scansure

I've built my PCs for years and never had a problem. 

Budgie

I built one myself with absolutely no previous experience of building before. It was actually really easy and there is a lot of advice and demos on YouTube and plenty of resources to ensure compatibility etc. I'd definitely recommend it, it's really satisfying.

littlethoughts

Thanks everyone. I've been pointed toward a few useful websites so I will take a look at what my money can get me...

strtdv

I have a Palicomp that I bought over 6 years ago now. It wasn't top of the range but had decent spec for the time, ASUS P67 Pro motherboard, Intel 2600k processor, ATI 6870 1GB graphics card, the whole build was about £900 at the time, I think including a 24" monitor.
It had a 3 year warranty but everything was fine with it.
The PSU failed last year and I replaced it with a modular EVGA one that was on special offer.

Only other change I've made over the years has been as SSD for the primary drive, using the old 7200rpm drive as a secondary drive for photos etc, and have an external hard drive as a backup of that one.

Recently the computer has started freezing randomly at times, usually when using the internet, but I think that's a Windows 10 issue rather than a hardware issue. I'll do a clean install when I can be bothered (system restore didn't help and a couple of other fixes have so far made no difference)

If I was buying now I'd go for 16GB RAM and a GTX 1080 or last gen Titan

fretmeister

I got a Chillblast. Runs Elitr Dangerous at full settings and is awesome.

MattBanshee

Build over buy, easily. Buy the best graphics card you can possibly afford.

MattBanshee

Oh, and buy a much more powerful PSU than you actually need, as otherwise you'll need to replace that too whenever you go to upgrade anything.

speshul91

This thread reminded me i need more ram. 

olafgarten

I've had prebuilt computers from both Scan 3XS and PC Specialist, would prefer to go with Scan next time. Pc specialist tend to use cheaper components and the build was a bit messy. 

On the other hand, I built my most recent PC myself, and it worked perfectly, building isn't complicated if you can handle a screwdriver and plugging in some cables. 

digitalscream

Heartfeltdawn said:

digitalscream said:

I always prefer to build them myself, because I don't trust other people to do it right. Then again, I've been doing it for 25 years, so it doesn't take me as long to put a machine together as it might for somebody who's never done it before.

One interesting fact which may affect your decision - if you buy the bits to do it yourself and the power supply fails and damages the motherboard (or other components), the warranty will only cover the power supply and anything else that went up in smoke is a write-off. If the same happens when you bought the machine pre-built, the warranty will cover everything.

I only mention this because I've had a number of PSUs fail over the years. The moral of this story is to always spend a decent amount of money on a good PSU that's less likely to fail; don't cheap out on it...for a gaming machine, expect to spend at least £50.

I haven't used it myself but would something like Scansure offer suitable protection if things do go pop? 

https://www.scan.co.uk/info/scansure

I've built my PCs for years and never had a problem. 

Yes, good point - I'd forgotten about that (I rarely use it).

crunchman

MattBanshee said:

Oh, and buy a much more powerful PSU than you actually need, as otherwise you'll need to replace that too whenever you go to upgrade anything.

Newer stuff actually uses less energy.  If I'm reading this correctly, without overclocking, the GTX 1080 uses a maximum of just under 180W.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-pascal,review-33557-10.html

If you look at cards from 5 years ago some of them were over 600W:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/3D-Power-Draw,2678.html

Newer processors use less power than old ones as well.  A 6th gen i7 (6700K) has a maximum power consumption listed at 95W.  The first gen i7 was 130W.  I think the 7th gen desktop processors are due in January and will probably knock a few more watts off of that.

You want a good quality power supply but it won't need to be as high capacity as it would have been a few years ago.

speshul91

On the subject of psu's if you've got a case you can see inside modular is the way to go to keep it looking tidy. 

digitalscream

speshul91 said:

On the subject of psu's if you've got a case you can see inside modular is the way to go to keep it looking tidy. 

There's a much better reason for keeping it tidy - airflow. Messy cabling screws up the airflow and almost always results in higher ambient temperatures.

ThePrettyDamned

I've considered it but I'm too scared.  

I spec'd up a pc with a z170 a motherboard, i7 6700, 32gb 3000mhz ddr4 ram, 500gb ssd, a 2tb hard drive and a be quiet! Dark rock pro 3. Came to about a grand. 

Add on a last gen graphics chip from the used market and it'd be a beast for photo and video editing and play games if I wanted it to. It would also have an M.2 slot so I can get mad Pci-e speeds in the future. 

In fact, although it's not amazing, the Intel 600p is about the same price as a normal ssd but offers more performance still (not like the Samsung 950 pro though). So you could probably squeeze one of those in as main drive. 

Mad. I still feel too scared. Especially as I'd use it for work. 

Myranda

digitalscream said:

speshul91 said:

On the subject of psu's if you've got a case you can see inside modular is the way to go to keep it looking tidy. 

There's a much better reason for keeping it tidy - airflow. Messy cabling screws up the airflow and almost always results in higher ambient temperatures.

Recently disproved by Linus Tech Tips... they actually packed sweaters into the case to totally kill airflow and still didn't see scary temp rises. Seems modern pcs just don't need the amount of air flow we all assumed.

Best reason for tidy cables (other than aesthetics) is for when you want to upgrade anything you're not wading through a jungle of cables every time.