Gaming PC £800

[slimmy46]

Hi not sure if this helps or not, or even in fact they come up competitive?
Novatech | Custom PCs, Laptops, Workstations & Servers
Been browsing on here recently, maybe could buy parts / bits as you go along, you know like a week to week / step by step, remember building mine some time ago and i really need to upgrade or get new soon, i thought i could possibly continue using my current one and then buy 1 or 2 items weekly or say 4 parts / bits monthly and slowly see it coming together over a period of time? I thinks thats the buzz of building your own, obviously some parts / bits would be more expensive than others, i'm no expert - in fact from from it, but would buy case first and then you know you have the correct size to fit where you want it, then motherboard, ram, processor, graphic's card, Hdd, etc etc.
The buzz of waiting for the last bits / parts going into the case, then firing up and getting the operating system installed.
The very Best Of luck whichever way you decide to go, I'm sure your son will enjoy it 👍

 

[panorama93]

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[v8grunt]

@steptoe it's a basic system but there is room to upgrade & make it feel like a much newer rig capable of playing most 'AAA' titles at 1080 resolution with high settings (144hz monitor with display port recommended but not essential)

Motherboard - Gigabyte H81M-S2V (low level board but will support a decent CPU as upgrade)
Intel CPU - i3-4170 (best bang for buck CPU upgrade - i5-4690K)
RAM - DDR3 1600Mhz 8bg 'single stick' (add a 2nd identical 8gb ram stick to total 16gb or replace with a matched pair of 2x 8gb DDR3 @1600mhz)
Graphics card - GeForce GT 720 (almost anything would be an upgrade lol, Nvidia 6gb GTX 1060/AMD Radeon 580 or better)

current used price guide:
CPU - i5 4690K - £60
GPU
GTX 1060 6gb - £150+ or AMD Radeon 8gb RX580 - £140+
RAM
1 x 8gb @1600mhz - £35 (match/pair the one you have)
or
2 x 8gb @1600mhz - £60 (corsair or known brand gaming ram)

£300'ish spend in upgrades, no point in aiming higher in components or building new with current prices being stupidly high, no info given on power supply/case so possibly upgrades required there. I'd recommend replacing 'CPU cooler' with an aftermarket gaming cooler if you upgrade the CPU (£30-£40) plus add an SSD (new) for a huge speed boost.

At the end of the day it may be worth looking on FB marketplace as £400-£500 buys a higher spec/newer refurbished system, an £800 spend on a refurb will get him a decent/current rig, possibly a full setup with monitor

I agree he could just upgrade what he already has to the max. If you look hard enough you can find those components you listed a bit cheaper too. As I'm on furlough my hands have been itching to buy and build a decent budget gaming PC for the kids. Something based off a 4th gen Intel Haswell CPU with 16gb RAM and an RX580 card.
Thing is as everyone knows Intel are taking a hiding from AMD's Ryzen chips but they're becoming so popular now the prices are rising in the 2nd hand market.
I built a PC for a family member based on a budget dual core AMD Athlon 3000G chip and jeez even that was zippy combined with an SSD dedicated to OS and 2nd drive for everything else. Literally click on something and bang it's open.
I did build a Haswell based gaming PC (4670k) back when they was first released. Put just over a grand worth of components in and that did anything you asked of it without stressing at the time. To be fair if it's still whole as I built it then it's still not a bad machine even now.