Casual Gaming PC for £500

[Killswitch]

Hi guys,

First of all, when I say "casual gaming" what I really mean is "PC suitable for World of Warcraft, FM2012 and whatever £7-or-less game I bought from Steam this week".

I'm capable of building a PC myself, but I don't keep up with the tech and would have no idea where to even look to find out what's the "best" (or "best value" more likely) motherboard, CPU, GFX card and whatnot.

I really want to keep the initial cost under £500 (including the OS) but I'm happy to buy now, upgrade later. I've found this system from a local company;

CCL Elite Hawk

AMD Bulldozer FX Quad Core 3.6GHz Processor
8GB Mushkin DDR3 1333MHz Memory
500GB SATA III Hard Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6770 Graphics

or

CCL Elite Snowy Owl


Intel Core i3 Dual Core 3.1GHz Processor
8GB Mushkin DDR3 1333MHz Memory
500GB SATA III Hard Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6770 Graphics

Which comes in at £480 (inc VAT) and £490 (inc VAT) respectively with Windows 7 Home 64-bit. I've already got an Asus 22" widescreen monitor (1680x1050 - HDMI connection) which will do for now. Both come with a "quality" 450W PSU;

The 500w requirement for the card is there because it has to support varying qualities of PSU. Not all PSUs are made equal and as we use a PSU of the highest quality 450W PSU with a strong 12V rail it can easily support the 6770 graphics card and beyond, it easily surpasses the performance some 1000W "economy" PSUs achieve.

I'm currently playing on an Asus 5740G laptop with an AMD Radeon Mobility HD5650 so clearly there'd be a big boost in performance. This graph shows around a 3x performance increase, although synthetic benchmarks aren't always a great indicator. Obviously I'd be keeping the lappy, but I'd probably relegate it to front-room duties and the occasional game when I'm on the road.

I also think that both the Core i3-2100 and the FX-4100 CPUs in these PCs would beat the Core i5-430M in my laptop fairly handily. This rather crappy comparison suggests the AMD might be a better choice, but I've seen some bad reviews of the AMD chip also.

I'm leaning towards going for the Intel-based system and then upgrading later to perhaps a Core i5-2500K and maybe a HD6870 later. The motherboard looks solid, if unspectacular and has 4 DIMM slots for a later upgrade to 16GB of RAM and a couple of USB3.0 ports, which might or might not be useful. I might also look to add a second (larger) HDD for backups, MP3s and pornography.

So my questions for the techies here are;

1. Am I right that the Intel system is likely to offer better performance and better upgrade options?
2. Is this good value? Could I get a much better system if I researched the parts and built it myself?
3. Would I need to upgrade the PSU before I could even consider a faster CPU and/or GPU?
4. Am I missing anything obvious or doing something stupid? Are there much better options elsewhere? Does anyone have any CCL horror stories?

Sorry that was a bit long! Thanks to everyone who bothered to read this far and thanks in advance to anyone who has some good advice for me!

 

[MYstIC G]

tldr however casting vote as instant veto reaction to the bulldozer option: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/20/which-cpu-to-buy/

 

[Killswitch]

tldr however casting vote as instant veto reaction to the bulldozer option: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/20/which-cpu-to-buy/

Looks pretty conclusive. Wish I had a bit more money to spend. Thanks man!

EDIT: Incidentally the "Snowy Owl" board definitely supports the Core i5-2500K which is receiving high praise in that article linked by MG. At £120 that should be a doable upgrade within a few months. Then £100 or so for a HD6850 (probably less by then) and I should have a decent little gaming rig for the next 18 months or so.

 

[Zenith.UK]

i5-2500K is apparently *the* CPU to choose if you're looking for bangs for your buck.
http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other products/Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail ?productId=43216

I was looking at that CPU along with this motherboard.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...-sata-raid-pcie-20-(x16)-d-sub-dvi-d-hdmi-atx

Shop around and you can get all the bits for a PC for around £500 and a more powerful machine than you'd get from either of those from CCL.

Like you, I've got an Acer 5920G laptop (the one with a GF8600M GT gfx card) which is an earlier generation of your own. I got it in August 2007 and it's still in daily use. I've been playing a lot of Deus Ex:Human Revolution lately and while the gfx card gets a bit on the warm side, good ventilation means it carries on without any problems.

 

[Killswitch]

Just so anyone who might be interested knows, I went over budget by £100 and bought parts. Ended up with;

Core i5-2500K
Asus Mobo (P8Z68-VLX)
8GB Kingston RAM
XFX Radeon HD6770
1TB Gb/s SATA HDD

Only just finished building it and doing Windows Updates and stuff, but it seems pretty quick already compared to my old laptop.