So as I’m sure most of the listeners are aware I have built my own gaming PC, (well built is a bit of a stretch, as I had a lot of help from a good friend of mine to complete it) what surprised me the most was how uncomplicated it was, even for a novice like me who has never even thought of building a PC before.
First of all I need to thank Rafinch who gave me the prod I needed to finally take the plunge and build one, so to the first part of the question, how expensive is it?
Well here is the list of components and yes it is more expensive than a console, but it also serves as your household computer, so it is more than just for playing games on, in addition it is also worth shopping around, as prices seem to change on a weekly basis, so don’t just go for the first thing that you see.
Here we go:
Motherboard – Asus M5A78L-M/USB3
Processor – AMD Six Core FX 6100 3.3Ghz
Ram – PATRIOT 2 x 4Gb 1600Mhz DDR3 Memory
£166 for the bundle
Case and Power supply – MARS BLUE GAMING ATX CASE PC COMPUTER TOWER & LCD TEMP DISPLAY + 650W PSU
£49.95
SSD Hard Drive – SanDisk 128GB SSD 2.5 SATA Hard Drive Solid State Drive 128 GB
£58.99
HDD Hard Drive – 1 TB Samsung
£39.99
Additional LED fan
£3.95
SSD Bracket
£4.95
GPU – EVGA Nvidia GTX 650Ti SuperSuperClocked
£134.95
Win Ult 7 SP1 64-bit English 1pk DSP OEI DVD (This OEM software is intended for system builders only) (Software)
£79.95
So added up that comes to – £538.73, but if you already have an operating system and don’t bother with an SSD, it would have only cost £399.79, which is pretty good for a gaming PC and is not a lot of money, when you think how much more than gaming you are getting.
Other GPUs are available at slightly more expensive but have also got a little more power the AMD Radeon HD 7850/7870 or Nvidia 670Ti for example and if you want to pay a little less the AMD Radeon HD 7770 which are all reasonable cards, I guess it comes down to how much you want to spend and the power supply you have, for me, I was quite happy with middle to upper, which will run most games on high settings on my 32″ TV.
So that’s all the bits, what about building it then? Well the power supply has all of the leads that you need and to be honest, most of the plugs will only go into one socket, all the leads also came labeled, here is a good guide from YouTube Click For Link watch the videos carefully and away you go, it really isn’t that scary, the most complicated part was installing the operating system and ensuring that the slave drive was allocated correctly, as I don’t have an optical drive, so we had to plug in my friends in to install windows, but apart from that it was pretty straight forward, and as most people have an old PC you can re-use the optical drive from that.
Why bother you may ask, well there are plenty of cheap games to be had on the Internet many of them for free (legally of course), and who can resist when Steam has a sale, especially now that they have added Big Picture Mode!
Below is all of the stages in picture format:
Category: 
Genuine question. Is it actually cheaper to do it this way or to buy one prebuilt?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-X6-FX-6100-3-3Ghz-Gaming-Pc-Computer-500Gb-4Gb-Nvidia-GTX-650-Ti-1Gb-Saturn-/370669314884?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item564d9ce344
This is a similar price excluding SSD, but it has half the Ram which would save £20, cheaper graphics card, and less memory, so you do get a bit more for your money doing it yourself, but prices do seem to have gone up since I built mine before Christmas.
Well stu I would like to thank you for giving me the prod to go ahead with building mine!
For anyone who doesn’t know I built the same of as stu’s with some minor changes that I’ll talk about in a bit. I built it completely from scratch myself and it was incredibly easy, although the operating system installation did cause a bit of head scratching.
In terms of the performance and gaming on it I’ve been blown away. So far I can run my whole steam library including metro 2033, saints row the 3rd, skyrim and planetside 2, on ultra settings with no problems at all. And I can spawn up to 950 cheese wheels in skyrim before in crashes (look it up on YouTube).
So, the changes, first of all I added a disc drive (£15 on amazon) as I have a lot of disc games. I used a radeon 7770 which I found for £90 on the Internet. And I bought a HD 1080p acer 16.5′ monitor for £85 to go with it. I used windows 7 home premium but bought a product key instead of a boxed disc which is 100% legal don’t worry and saves you a bit of money at only £39. Keyboard and mouse cost me only £10 but I’ll mention that later.
So as far as my experience personally it was good fun. However a few bits of advice, first of all don’t feel disheartened if it doesn’t all work first time round. When my OS wasn’t installing properly I got really fustrated but I gave it a nights sleep and next day I redid it and it was fine. Secondly, invest in a good keyboard, my £10 one from hong kong really was too good to be true and came with non-working buttons and keys in the wrong place;not fun. But the main piece of advice is have fun with it! If you do it with a friend you’ll have two heads to work out any problems and two people to share the joy with when you hear the fans start for the first time!
Thejcmyster out!
Feel free to ask me any questions!
I’m going to wait to compare steam box to a home build. Honestly, after repairing the 3 red lights on my old Xbox myself, I don’t ever want to put anything together again. Stu your hard drive is as big as a refrigerator. Can you store gaming snacks inside it? It looks like E.T.’s spaceship. How much extra was the blue light? I hope you don’t have a ceiling fan above that rig.
@ woody I built a gaming PC over the summer and whilst it wasnt cheap (£600) it was considerably cheaper than if i had bought my PC pre built, similar spec PC’s to mine are around £750 so its a substantial saving.
Stu where are you getting the prices listed here? they are a tad on the cheap side (not by much around £5 here and there) and the only other thing i would say is that Stock power supply’s can be a bit dodgy so its worth buying a separate one (normally if you are going for a PC what need 600W-700W +, no point cheaping out on power). Also things like additional fans/SSD brackets dont need to be bought if you get the right case, many come with enough fans or SSD brackets supplied.
I bought almost all of my stuff from amazon as i normally use them to shop and quite frankly the prices where amazing on there over the summer. for those interested here are my PC specs, i’m looking to upgrade me GPU in around 6 months after the first waves of games which are designed to run on Next gen systems hit.
CPU: Intel 3570k @ 3.4Ghz (will be overclocking if i get a new CPU cooler)
GPU: AMD 6870 1GB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600mhz
SSD: Intel 330 180 GB
HDD1: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB
HDD2: Western Digital Caviar Red 1TB
MB: Gigabyte z77 UD3 USB 3.0
PSU: Corsair GS600
Case: Zalmann Z11 Plus
A word of caution though personally i found the need to upgrade both my mouse and keyboard to something more suitable for gaming which isnt cheap if you want quality stuff (cost me around £100 for both but i did get nice ones), also picked up a Xbox controller for PC massive help as i have bought a lot of games from steam which require a controller to play comfortably (Dark Souls, assassins creed etc), ALSO BUY A MODULAR PSU much easier to install luckily my case is pretty big but for most cases a modular PSU is a life saver.
If anyone is considering building a PC check out LinusTechTips on youtube he is a tad annoying but really knows his stuff and keeps it simple and always explains points he makes, he has a guide on building PC’s and general PC maintenance/upgrades.
Having built several PCs myself in the past I got slightly burned the last time I upgraded when I ended up spending around £500 and then I discovered that I didn’t like any of the PC games available. Recently however with Steam calling me and my desktop PC now dead I decided to buy an ultrabook that came with an Nvidia graphics card and SSD storage:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007PPCEJI/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i00
It’s not the most powerful rig in the world but so far it has played everything I have thrown at it quite nicely and it starts up quicker than my PS3.
Thanks guys. With all of your talk of high pricing and such a huge range in quality specs. Your nerdgasms have talked me out of a new PC. Seriously, thanks. I think you just saved me a thousand dollars. So Stu, I guess we’re even now. As far as you charging 1000 dollars per download.
I agree with Jason. Despite Chinny’s best efforts on the podcast, I gave been increasingly tempted to try doing this. Not any more. It actually sounds more confusing and expensive than I had expected.
I think I’ll wait and see what Xbox 720 or PS4 looks like. I suspect significantly cheaper than an equivalent spec PC – you don’t get the other computer-ey things of course, but I have a 2 year old MacBook Pro which covers all my non-gaming computing needs perfectly well.
Well its not expensive if you want a PC to run current gen games no problem, somewhere between £300-400 will do that no problem (though i do appreciate that current consoles are so cheap you might think whats the point), the point is that to run all games which come out for the next 5 years or so will set you back around £650-750 (or less if you are using parts of your current PC as well) which isn’t a crazy figure if you consider the PS3 came out around the £450 mark if i remember correctly.
For £600-700 you get a 100% backwards compatible machine which the games you purchase will remain on your account forever (assuming most of you will do it through steam, why wouldn’t you cheapest and easiest to use)
For £300-400 you get a PC that will run all games currently out and most of the ones for 3-4 years or so (not on high but on medium-low specs)
Interested in the steambox? if so it is very likely that any compatible games you have bought through your steam account will be good to go out of the box, free back catalogue. (ALSO Half Life 3, yes i said it).
You also will save a lot of money over the lifecycle of your PC because you will because the games generally will be £5-10 cheaper. REMEMBER! Console launch games are a rip off most will be £50 at least for the first 3-6 months (which is why i can see the Wii U becoming a moderate success in that time of crazy pricing) so you and you PC will be laughing as you save a crazy amount of money.
Remember you get a PC with that so its not as if its an isolated investment, if you need one anyway (i did as i only had a mac like Duke and due to my degree i needed a PC to run microsoft software).
Oh and one more thing no crappy advertisements which microsoft has decided we needed to see, despite paying £40 a year to use the online service. They have lost me as a customer because of it, congratulations hope it was worth it. If i do buy console it will be Sony all the way.
Finally (if you made it this far you are very patient) building a PC is very simple, yes there is a large range of components out there but most of them are the same thing just branded by different manufacturers so dont panic. The key component when looking at compatibility is the motherboard, if the specs on the motherboard line up with another component you are looking to by then you are generally good to go. Dont be afraid to ask any questions either most people are very friendly on PC forums there are plenty of guides out there to help with first time builders. If a prebuilt PC is what your after check out overclockers.co.uk excellent site, every machine on there is built for gaming. If you want to build it but have no idea of what specs to buy then each machine has a list of specs below it so just use those as a starting point to base your machine off of. Any questions at all feel free to send me a message.
Cheers Duffstuff, I think it’s phrases like “EVGA Nvidia GTX 650Ti SuperSuperClocked” that frighten me tbh – seriously, that could be in Sanskrit for all the sense it makes to me.
I’m going to hold off until the new consoles get announced before taking the plunge one way or another. I’m not big on multiplayer so I very rarely buy games on release, and I get most of my games through PS+ or else retail about 6-12 months after release. So the price differential between console and PC games is probably a lot less than it would be if I was a day 1 purchaser. And like you, if it is a next-gen console I go for, I would lean to Sony over MS. PS+ is a big consideration here, but from the spec leaks doing the rounded at the moment it looks like PS4 will be the more powerful of the 2.
This is all really interesting. Another question, Is anyone worried that once the next gen console hardware is released, developers will become unshackled and pc minimum specs will sky-rocket. This is my prediction. The next few years will see a giant leap in pc tech once the next gen console is released.
@AxemanPhil
Its probably a good idea to hold off for now, at least everyone has shown their hand with regards to hardware, pricing and launch lineups.
@woody
I’m not sure i agree 100% with that really as current PC hardware is so far in advance of anything this or a next gen console will be having, particularly in terms of RAM which on current consoles if only 512MB (almost certain that is right) and the next consoles are rumoured to have in the region of 2-4 Gb which isn’t all that much considering how cheap RAM is (my 8GB’s cost me £42 and that wasn’t the best price i could have got as i found out annoyingly afterwards, could have saved myself £5)
Most PC purpose built games such as Battlefield 3 are so far ahead of current console games (not having a dig but its true- p.s. owned both PC and Xbox versions) that the engines have been built with the transition in mind making the engine very scalable.
The PC that Stu has outlined for £400 has the following:
6 core 3.3Ghz CPU
8GB of RAM
1GB graphics card
for Battlefield 3 (used because in my opinion its the best looking game out there, and one of the most graphically intense) you need as a minimum:
2 core 2.2Ghz CPU
2GB RAM
512MB graphics card
On almost all games there is no noticeable performance difference between 2 or 4 core CPU’s, very few games take advantage of the extra power and this will likely remain the case as dual core CPU’s are amongst the more likely options for at least 1 of sony/microsoft to take in order to cut costs. The PC Stu outlined t will run BF3 on Mid settings at 60 Fps and likely on high at around 40-50 Fps. If you remember that console games almost always run at 30 Fps then you start to see that although a PC tech leap may come it will neither be useful or even viable to all but the most intense PC gamers.
Now whilst there may be a leap in terms of PC tech you have to remember that current PC tech available is so far ahead of not just anything that is affordable but quite frankly anything that is useful to the vast majority of people. So if consoles drive the price of PC components down then it isnt likely to make a difference as games wouldnt be programmed to take advantage of it, as the install base of users who have access to that sort of power wouldn’t even be past the 50,000 mark. It would quite simply take too many man hours to make a game that could use even half of the power currently available at the high end of PC components. Some graphics cards alone have 6GB of memory which is insane.
By far the most likely mass market technological leap is 4k displays, for which the extra memory is going to be crucial, which is one of the other reasons i’m hesitant over the next console generation, if they go cheap and have only 2GB of ram then whilst outputting to 4k displays we are going to see some tight squeezes to get games running at a reasonable frame rate, which will be jarring especially if you are going from a launch game which will likely run at 60fps on 1080p no problem to a game which when at 4k res is likely to be in the 20-30 bracket, i’m personally comfortable with 30 but many people aren’t when sitting at a monitor, and the difference is noticeable currently when going between PC and console.
Short version: I’m not that worried because any current decent gaming PC has more power than is being used in at least 2 areas (RAM and CPU), however that doesnt meant devs wont get lazy for a while and make poorly optimized games but even if they do prices of graphics cards which are currently over the £200 mark should be at a more affordable level, thus resolving the issue. GPU power is likely to be most PC gamers only bottleneck currently. Also the market will be far too small for Devs to risk missing out on valuable sales especially if SteamBox is a success
Good arguement DuffStuff. Do you think youll be able to run watchdogs and 1313 at max spec? I recon you should. I wonder if the stuff at this years E3 will be massivley different.
@ woody : Its hard to say really as the demo’s currently available for both games both look visually amazing but were noticably restrictive in what they let you see. Star Wars in particular had very tightly controlled camera movements. If i was to guess, i would say i could run them on High settings but may want to turn FXAA and Shadow details down a bit just to bump the frame rate up. If the rumours for both games are spot on, which is to say that many titles (notably star wars and watch dogs) will be demoed on both this and next gen consoles then its a safe bet that i could run them smoothly enough. My only current bottleneck is GPU power but it will be fine to run all games for a while yet, most of them on high.
I’m of the opinion that for the next year or so launch titles for consoles games will come with high res texture packs included, to add some much needed beef to both consoles launch lineups. I’m mainly basing this prediction off of:
Console rumoured specs being as close to retail PC components as its ever been.
Ken Levine saying Bioshock on current gen consoles is equivalent to its PC counterpart running on medium settings.
And next gen hard drive specs still being a tad on the low side especially if they have a strong digital distribution platform in mind. (My 1TB hard drive is half full on my PC and i use that for games exclusively).
Publishers will be dying for devs to port a version for launch of games already released early-mid way through this year, especially at the inflated console launch prices (Look out for exclusive next gen versions of games released on both platforms earlier this year, maybe even Skyrim is worth a shout as it is a game that is massively better looking on PC and could come with DLC bundled out of the box)
After last years E3 which i was massively underwhelmed by across the board (partly because i was desperately looking to nintendo to provide me with a reason to buy the Wii U). I’m hoping for so much more from this years conferences.
Here is a mini wishlist of games i would like to/expect to see:
Star Wars Battlefront 3 (locking this down as a launch game exclusive could skyrocket Sony/Microsoft sales)
Zelda (3DS demo, full back catalogue added to download and Wii U Zelda announcement)
Full retro nintendo catalogue added for purchase as a digital download on Wii U.
New Bungie project exclusive to new Xbox (probably a delayed PC launch as well).
Blizzard MMO to be teased.
Call of Duty Spin off possible Xbox arcade style game ala battlefield 1943.
Ex Infinity Ward (Respawn are they called now) game to be heavily teased.
FALLOUT 4 PLEASE!!!!
New Red Dead would be amazing (dont care for GTA personally but loved red dead so much).
SKYPE! Would definitely bet on skype being integrated for use in the next Xbox with video calls being used via Kinect 2.
Possible and this is a stretch but possible Steam/PSN integration from the get go for Sony as they have shown sign of buddying up in the past. Things like cross game online on certain selected games ala portal 2. Friends lists shared voice chat.
Probably missed a ton of games i would kill for but they’re the main ones that spring to mind.
I have hardly touched my PS3 since building a PC 3 months ago. Console games are notoriously expensive here in Australia (everything is!!). I saw Sleeping Dogs for sale on the PS3 the other day for $50. I picked it up on greenmangaming for $13 2 months ago. Enough said.