Help With New Gaming PC

Gibbon1988

New member
Hi There,
I'm not too technical when it comes to computers, but willing to learn.
I currently have an over 8 years old PC so I'm overdue an upgrade. I bought it from YoYotech in 2016 for £800 so it is custom built but I just went with one of their preselected configurations and haven't touched anything in the box other than giving it the occasional dusting.

Obviously it hasn't been able to run new releases for a while. I mostly play paradox games like stellaris and Hearts of Iron 4 as well as games like factorio and dyson sphere programme. Love to play CK3 but my current setup can't handle it at all well. I've read these types of games are CPU heavy games so would want to prioritise that over Graphics, but still be able to play newer graphics heavy releases even if at lower settings. (Like Red Dead 2 for instance).

I am also fond of EvE online but even on potato settings I can't multibox anymore without things slowing to a crawl. So that's one query - I'd like to run three monitors, with three or four instances of EVE playing simultaneously. Is there anything to consider in particular if you want to do this?

Budget ah! Oh for the days of 2016 where you could get a decent gaming rig for £800! I was hoping to pay between £1000 and £1300, but expect I will have to stretch to £1500-£1800 to get something decent. So let's go with £1800.
I also realise from browsing this forum that I will likely have to upgrade monitors. Are older monitors OK to use when using multiple? I'm thinking of getting a new main monitor and using my two dated existing ones as secondary monitors. Can you have different refresh rates on different monitors running off the same PC? (Monitor not included £2k budget)

Many Thanks.
 

Stephen_UK

Active member
I’m quite new here, a very basic PC will cost you in the region of around £1700 ish for 1080p with no stability to upgrade in the future, a semi good current gen PC up to 1440p is around £2100, and then anything over that for 2160p is upwards of £2500 +

I’ve recently got some really good advice from the guys at the forum, as they want to ensure your custom built PC can be used for many years and instead of having to buy a brand new system in 1-3 years because of outdated - they recommend “future proofing” your PC so you would only need to replace parts at a fraction of the cost.

The best scenario honestly would be to wait u til the 5k series GPUs are out and hope the prices of current generation GPU drops to a modest price in Q1 next year. this way you can save up slightly more to get future proof pc!

In respect of monitors, you only need one new monitor for the gaming screen, if you browse websites and watch youtube/twitch ect whilst gaming, a 1080p monitor would suffice. Have you tried PCS customised PC creator yet? it’s worth seeing what is available right now and then you should be able to get ann approximate price, can post the specs here for anyone in the forums to give honest feedback to assist you going forward!

As i said i’m very new here myself, and without the guys in the forums being extremely helpful, i would have spent £3k on a semi poor PC
 

sck451

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
You can totally get a really good new PC for £2000, including a new monitor, and you can absolutely use old monitors as secondary, tertiary or even quaternary (!) displays, even if they aren't a close match in terms of resolution and refresh rate. Most graphics cards have four outputs (generally a mix of HDMI and DisplayPort - use DP for the best monitors) and will be able to run them all at once. There's a whole bunch of really decent options (IPS, 1440p, 144Hz or better) in the £200-250 range now -- as well as plausible ones even cheaper than that.

Here, for instance, is a system for less than your maximum that would do a totally good job of what you're looking for.

Case
FRACTAL FOCUS 2 ARGB GAMING CASE (BLACK) Good gaming case
Processor (CPU)

AMD Ryzen 7 7700 Eight Core CPU (3.8GHz-5.3GHz/40MB CACHE/AM5) Good, if admittedly last-gen, gaming CPU, and very efficient/cool
Motherboard

ASUS® TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI (AM5, DDR5, PCIe 4.0, Wi-Fi 6)
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 6000MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
16GB XFX RADEON™ RX 7800 XT QICK 319 - HDMI, 3 x DP Really good graphics card for 1440p
1st M.2 SSD Drive

512GB SOLIDIGM P44 PRO GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 7000MB/sR, 4700MB/sW) Boot drive
1st M.2 SSD Drive

2TB SOLIDIGM P41+ GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 4125MB/sR, 3325MB/sW) Games drive
Power Supply

CORSAIR 750W RMe SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET Good quality power supply means room for upgrades
Power Cable

1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 150 Series High Performance CPU Cooler Sufficient for the 7700
Thermal Paste

STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD 2.5Gbe LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
NONE OR ONBOARD Wi-Fi (MOTHERBOARD DEPENDENT)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence Could you transfer Windows from the old PC? You could save £100
Operating System Language

United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 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
Microsoft® Edge
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 4 to 6 working days
Price: £1,658.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am5-pc/AMPHUmKPzZ/
 

Gibbon1988

New member
Really appreciate the advice both of you.

Yes, looks like a good configuration but equally if I can get something better for a similar price in Q1 2025, I'm also tempted to wait a bit. Also give me time to save a few more pennies.
Good to know no issue with having multiple monitors if some are aging.
 

sck451

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Really appreciate the advice both of you.

Yes, looks like a good configuration but equally if I can get something better for a similar price in Q1 2025, I'm also tempted to wait a bit. Also give me time to save a few more pennies.
Good to know no issue with having multiple monitors if some are aging.
Waiting a bit more is definitely not foolish. Likely to be more product launches soon.
 
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