Basic Gaming PC under £350 – Dec 2012

A little while back in response to a poorly researched article on a tech website I decided I would list out the parts I would use of building a basic gaming PC for less than £350. With Windows 8 and AMDs latest FM2 socket processors now out it seemed to make sense to update that article.

So for a mere £349.28 from dabs.com (at time of publishing including postage) here is what you should be looking at getting.

Just one thing before I go any further – proper gaming PCs that run games at their very highest detail are expensive items of kit (£650+) if that’s what you are looking for then this is not the PC for you. However if you are after something to keep the kids happy or just like to dabble in gaming and are happy with medium levels of graphics detail then this is ideal for you!

CPU/Graphics – AMD A10-5800K – £95.26 At the top of the line of the new FM2 socket APUs (CPU and GPU combined) is the A10-5800K with its quad core design and 3.8Ghz clock speed its one mean machine with professional review websites (link) showing that it performs very well for basic gaming.

Motherboard – ASRock FM2A55M – £37.41 This basic motherboard comes with 4 USB ports, DVI and VGA monitor ports and the 2 SATA cables you will need for the hard drive and DVD drive.

RAM – Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz – £30.99 Plenty of RAM is a must for gaming these days especially as the APU uses system RAM for graphics. With 5 star customer reviews across the board on dabs.com you can’t go wrong!

Hard drive – Seagate 500GB Barracuda – £41.98 Its a hard drive, its got 500GB of storage space, if you need a bigger one get a bigger one…not much else to say!

DVD drive – LiteOn DVD-RW – £12.68 I’d like to believe that most people have a old PC lying around somewhere that they can use the DVD drive out of but if you need one (to install Windows/Games) then this will meet your needs.

Operating System – Microsoft Windows 8 – 64-bit – £69.99 Windows 8 is out, with a new Windows store for casual games (Hydro Thunder and Angry Birds included!) its an easy choice for any new gaming PC. You also get the added bonus of the latest version of DirectX which is used in the latest games.

Case and power supply – Fractal Design Core 1000 & OCZ Technology 500W CoreXStream – £27.99 & £31.99 Fractal design are very attentive in the design and manufacturing of their products with premium features (like dust covers and anti vibration grommets for the hard drives) showing up in very affordable cases. Going for the OCZ power supply over generic unbranded ones is a good call as you get the assurance of 80+percent power supply efficacy which will help make sure your new PC isn’t chewing through power needlessly.