Build the impossible....

[Zed]

A Friend of mine wants a new PC. .. easy right. But.

Budget: �600
Base unit only.

Requirements / Desirables
1. Small form factor
2. Quiet as possible
3. Capable of running modern PC games in High Res
4. 8GB RAM Minimum
5. SSD for OS
6. 1TB+ for storage
7. Good CPU (see 3)
8. win8.1 included.

I cant do it... can you. The budget is pretty much static. May get away with a max of +�50 but not more.

 

[Chick]

I don't think that is possible.

For that price you won't get a Haswell system. A quick look at OCUk shows a mid range i5 + motherboard will not leave you much change form 300 quid, then you are looking at another 150 for gfx card leaving 150 for case, psu memory and any extras such as a decent silent fan, SSD, Extra drive, etc etc.

It's not really doable - you are going to end up cutting corners and not getting enough for your money. I doubt even AMD would nail that price at 'current gen'.

Even dropping back to a Ivy Bridge processor is going to cost you around the same price as the market for them is still very strong. You will get a bit more but not much.

What he'll probably have to do is skip the SSD for now, and probably skimp on 'something else' and upgrade it later.

Looking at prebuilts as a rough guide, this is about the closest you can get:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-412-OE&groupid=43&catid=2475&subcat=2485
Which is 570 with no SSD, and a last-gen AMD CPU, no OS and so on. You could probably build something similar for 50 quid cheaper but still miss most of the markers.

The only saving grace is that last-gen plays new-gen games perfectly fine at 1080p ultra. Well, my I5-3750+660GTX do. Though with SSD and one-piece watercooler that ended up circa 850.

YMMV though.

 

[Tempy]

To echo what Chick said, an OEM version of WIN8 is going to be about �70 - its not doable to that spec for that much money.

 

[Zed]

Thanks guys.. hence my 'build the impossible' header

Ill set his expectations....

 

[Zed]

friend says:

Can you drop the SSD and assume components are approx 1yr old in todays market... what does that look like?

 

[Chick]

Without the SSD and 1 year old you are looking at something around the Overclockers package.

It will just about play everything current gen flat out. Mostly. This year. Probably next too. I don't trust ATI / AMD so couldn't recommend it's future-awesomeness. By next christmas some gibbon will have DX14.3 enabled thingamajigs that look super shiny and it won't cut it any more.

See - this is pretty solid: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-366-OE&groupid=43&catid=2475

But, it's OS-free and out of his range.

Bottom line is a grown up LargeFF is going to cost �700 minus ssd minimum. A proper Haswell gaming rig in Mini -ATX of Micro-ITX is going to be close to a grand once you have 'everything'. The plus side is it will be "current spec" for 2-5 years and very pretty.

He has to decide really.

erm....

pps: if you want quiet - these are the business:
http://www.coolermaster.co.uk/product.php?product_id=6865
but it's another hundred quid.

 

[Aciiid]

As a word of caution windows 8 isn't very compatible with a lot of games (or other software) so caution is advised. win7 is still the best for pc gaming atm. They dropped a lot of there compatibility stuff in 8 so mileage may vary depending on what he plays, I'd recommend 8 for tablets really. Don't know if 8.1 (start button patch) changed much of this but maybe. (I'm kinda writing off win8 so I'm not really keeping up)

 

[Chick]

YMMV but I've only had a prolem with one game in a year or so of gaming.
Lots of very old stuff no-longer works, but often it wouldn't in 7 either. Anythign that old can usually be run in an xp compatability VM