Gaming PC Build - Help Needed

[Jacob Hobbs]

Hello,

I am looking to buy/build a new Gaming PC as mine is now outdated and kind of shoddy. I really need help knowing what I need to focus on getting for what I want to achieve and how I want the PC to perform. I have no idea what I'm looking for and would appreciate if someone would be kind enough to help me?

What I will be using it for is Gaming; mainly RTS games like The Total War Franchise, Company of Heroes, Men of War, etc. Guessing these games use a lot of CPU and need good Graphics Cards?

I will most likely use Windows 10 as I have an Xbox and many of there games are now becoming PC cross-play like Halo Wars 2 and Gears of War 4.

I will use it for other day to day things such as web browsing, YouTube and Facebook which should be fairly easy with a high spec PC anyway.

I would ideally want it to run the RTS games/xbox games at the highest spec possible. I understand this might be quite costly but I am looking to spend at least £800-£1000 on the Gaming PC.

All comments are welcomed as I am way out of my depth here and only have a basic understanding of computers. I don't know what CPU, Graphics Card, RAM, Memory etc.. that I want to be looking at for want I want it to be able to do. I have been told that Nvidia is the way to go regarding Graphics Cards but other than that I know nothing...

Kind Regards,

Jacob

 

[keynes]

If you can go closer to £1100 you could get a gtx 1070 and an SSD as the main drive as well but on the lower end of your budget you could consider the spec below:

Case
InWIN GT1 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-6500 (3.2GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® H110M-R: Micro-ATX, DDR4, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
8GB HyperX FURY DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk
1TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Super Quiet Titan DragonFly Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
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 3 to 5 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £852.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unique URL to re-configure: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/quotes//29bxSdXdyj/

 

[Oussebon]

Guessing these games use a lot of CPU and need good Graphics Cards?

Total War certainly does.

Keynes has a good spec for you there.

It seems that since he posted however PCS have started stocking the newer and slightly faster Kaby Lake CPUs. So for £12 more you can get this with a CPU up to 500MHz faster:


Case
InWIN GT1 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-7600 (3.5GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® H110M-R: Micro-ATX, DDR4, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
8GB Kingston DUAL DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
1TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
1[SUP]st[/SUP] DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Super Quiet Titan DragonFly Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
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 3 to 5 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £864.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unique URL to re-configure: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/quotes/intel-home-office-pc/BP3k897Vh6/

Total War does like its CPU performance:
(compared to Titanfall 2 which is a lot more chilled about what CPU you have: )

Edity: Have just seen a WH:TW benchmark comparing a Skylake i5 to a Kaby Lake i5:

It seems to like the extra MHz.

 

[Jacob Hobbs]

thank you both for doing this, what should I use as the main drive?

Im guessing your talking about the 1st PCI-E SSD Drive? Also i will probably go for the higher Geforce GTX 1070

Cheers,

 

[Oussebon]

1st PCI-E SSD Drive?

You don't want a PCI-E SSD. They are incredibly expensive and I think are really meant for high end professional use rather than gaming or day to day workloads. If you want to add an SSD, go for one of the sata ones under the normal "Hard Disk" menus. Hyper-X Fury and Samsung 850 Evo are good.

e.g. with a GTX 1070 and SSD:

Case
InWIN GT1 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-7600 (3.5GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® H110M-R: Micro-ATX, DDR4, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
8GB Kingston DUAL DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
240GB HyperX SAVAGE 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Hard Disk
1TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
1[SUP]st[/SUP] DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Super Quiet Titan DragonFly Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
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 3 to 5 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,127.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unique URL to re-configure: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/quotes/intel-home-office-pc/JAxNSZcStv/

 

[Jacob Hobbs]

Brilliant thank you so much. I will most likely go with 16GB RAM as well.

 

[Oussebon]

Not a bad idea. Note that at 16gb the HyperX FURY RAM is usually a bit cheaper on this site than the 16gb Kingston DUAL RAM, despite possibly being a tiny bit faster (the Fury has a lower latency I think).