Gaming PC for friends 14 year old son - £700 budget

[skewball]

Hi,

I am trying to find a way of speccing a gaming PC for £700 (with monitor) for some friends who require one for their 14 year old son who is new to gaming PC's. They don't have a huge amount of money so it's already a stretched budget. I would advise he get a new XBox/PS5 but there we go, it is what he wants.

I know from reading here that generally the advice is that £800 is the minimum (and that might even exclude monitor). Now I do get that, but I do have some context for thinking this will be possible, especially as it is all 1080p gaming and I know what he will be using it for - he will be playing his PC with my son and some other friends. They don't tend to play the high demanding games. Although I do think this lad will want to play Call of Duty. One of them is running a 3 year old budget PC

• AMD Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5GHz
• 8GB DDR4 (I have since upgraded to 16gb for him)
• NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti 4GB

and is still pretty much playing all the games they play and still relatively happily (but is creaking a little now). I get no complaints (and I would hear them from the parents!) and I'm surprised he has not needed an upgrade to the GPU yet. He even got a 144hz monitor (which I advised against but there we go). Whether it is actually running the games at 144hz is another matter.

And another friend is running an i5 9400 with 1660super and is having a blast with no limitations for 1080 gaming. An equivalent of this would be over budget so I think a spec between the two will work well for a good 3 years+. My own son, thanks to having an amazing Dad (lol) is running quite a high spec which I have rebuilt myself a couple of times with upgrades, my other older son still has a i57400/1060/16gb combo and hardly ever complains.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, here is what I can come up with. (I don't know much about the motherboard). It is a budget monitor but in my experience 14 year old boys really don't seem to care too much about the picture/monitor - they just want to play with their friends, and is a big reason why I personally think it is a good time to buy Gaming PC's running at 1080p, modern PC's can eat them up.

(he wants RGB)

Case
PCS SPECTRUM RGB MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 3 3100 Quad Core CPU (3.6GHz-3.9GHz/18MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME A320M-K: Micro-ATX, AM4, USB 3.0, 6GB/s
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2400MHz (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1650 - HDMI
1st Storage Drive
512GB PCS 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W CV SERIES™ CV-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Monitor
AOC 23.6" E2470SWH LED - 1920 x 1080,1MS, D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 13 to 15 working days
Price: £711.00 including VAT and Delivery

 

[liambrown951]

That's probably the best he's going to get for around £700, not sure how well its gonna cope with the more demanding games though like COD

I still agree that £800 is the baseline, £750 being the best compromise

I'd go with a 6 core CPU at the minimum, have smaller but slightly faster Ram for now (easily up-gradable) and a more powerful PSU

Case
CORSAIR 175R RGB MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.25GHz/19MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME A320M-K: Micro-ATX, AM4, USB 3.0, 6GB/s
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1650 - HDMI
1st Storage Drive
512GB PCS 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W CV SERIES™ CV-550 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre European Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Monitor
AOC 23.6" E2470SWH LED - 1920 x 1080,1MS, D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 13 to 15 working days
Price: £735.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-home-office/sxbpP9byaV/

 

[SpyderTracks]

I really wouldn't recommend that build, it's far too compromised and has incredibly poor upgrade potential.

Where there's a budget, anything under around £900 means that you're sacrificing the core platform of the computer which means you can't upgrade it, which means, you may think you're saving money, but in the expected lifetime of the PC, by paying £200 less now, you'll be paying £1000 or so more in the short term future as you'll have to replace the whole PC rather than being able to upgrade components.

It's a really bad idea.

The Ryzen 2000 series were not good CPU's, the 3000 series would be the absolute minimum that we would recommend. That platform as well is not a gaming platform, it's for office utilisation.

 

[skewball]

Hi, thanks for the feedback.
I do understand, I have been here myself with my own sons. But they are going to buy a gaming PC in this budget, with or without my help. There is nothing I can do about that.
I can however help them optimise what they do buy otherwise they will buy a package deal from Amazon, which I think will be worse.

I get the upgrade potential but this build could add a slightly better GPU and PCU in the future, although a slightly better PSU would help. I had considered a B450 motherboard but can't really see a huge amount of benefit as adding a future series of AMD processor is not guaranteed on it anyway and would need BIOS updates as well.

I guess I am asking are the 3100 and 1650 showstoppers to run most modern games at 1080 at sensible settings...? If they are then I will refuse to help them and tell them they are mad parents...

As a thought I might sell them a perfectly good 1080p monitor (good refresh rate) I have for a small amount. So I could be looking at £670 excluding monitor.

edit: With above in mind, I have come up with this. With a view that they upgrade the RAM when they can afford it...

Case
CORSAIR 175R RGB MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 3 3100 Quad Core CPU (3.6GHz-3.9GHz/18MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME A320M-K: Micro-ATX, AM4, USB 3.0, 6GB/s
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
512GB PCS 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W CV SERIES™ CV-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre European Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

Price: £682.00 including VAT and Delivery

 

[Scott]

Totally agree with what @SpyderTracks said.

We won't in good conscience recommend such a build. It's a difficult position for us to be in as you are asking us to help recommend something we would never recommend. We don't want to see people make poor choices, never mind recommend that they do it.

The B450 would be the minimum board. It at least has compatibility potential with the 5000 series. At least then there is potential for the future.
The 1660 Super is a huge over-spend for such a small budget. The 1650 would be the starting point for 1080p.
I would definitely bump up the power of the PSU.

The rest is OK. Not sure on the case but I don't think it will be particularly hard pushed.

 

[skewball]

Hi, thanks again for the honest feedback. I do get this is not a recommended spec.

With what you say in mind and a potential upgrade to the CPU in the future, why would the 1660S be too much?
In other words are you saying that a B450 + additional 8gb RAM partnered with a 1650S would be better balanced than A320 + 8gb + 1660S. My gut feeling is to go for the better GPU as it is what 14 year old kids will notice more in frame rate rather than RAM, but I don't have any science to back this up!
cheers

 

[Scott]

Exactly that. The budget isn't there to have it all. The most important thing is the base, the GPU can be chopped and changed at will with little fuss. The motherboard is a nightmare, as is the CPU to be honest. The GPU tech moves VERY quickly, where the rest is quite slow and steady.

The B450 will take a better CPU if warranted but the 3600 is a decent chip. The GPU, as much as it's low-balling just now, can be upgraded to the 1660 Super, 2060, 3060Ti or whatever is warranted down the line.

To stick with the 1660 Super only to have to effectively dump the system in a couple of years is not a good plan.

 

[skewball]

Great, thanks. That's decided then, a B450 (or even B550), 16gb of Ram and a 1650S looks like the way to go. I would love to get a 3600 in there but it does look like a 3100 will have to do, although for the price it really looks like a sweet spot for budget 1080p gaming, quite fast and quad core, pretty amazing spec for the price compared to CPU's even 2 or 3 years ago.

A nice upgrade path for a 3600 and 3050/3060super in the future lol. I recently upgraded a CPU and it was easier than I expected.)

(and yes, I wish I hadn't been asked for advice but there we go!)

 

[Scott]

It's a shame as the 3300X is a perfect gaming chip, it's just rarely available.