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Any advice on what to get
My grandson is after a desktop computer as he thinks his laptop is too slow.
He wants to play (I think online))
World of Warcraft
Call of Duty
I don't play any games myself

He may have £300 to £400 to spend on one
He has been told by his mates to look for one with an Intel Processor an an AMD graphics card
He's seen one in Argos that seems to fit that description (but only got 4gbs of memory)
Would it be better for him to get one specifically made up that would be more suitable

Come on the gamers
What advice can I give him?

I have no idea about the best one to get for games but it will be worth checking Dell out, their prices are usually better than same machines in Argos and others.

Derek the memory costs so little now. It's easy to do.
But 4GB should be more than enough.

What I would be cautious about would be if the games he wants to play if they would run on windows 8.

For that money why does he not just buy a console? They just work

I think he has his eye on this one

click

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-660/fs

Seems to be £299 for similar size PC

The dell one there is only an i3 wheras the argos one (which does not include the monitor) is a better i5 processor.

I agree, FAR better to go for the i5 CPU than the i3, much faster for gaming.

4GB is perfectly adequate for most gaming, just be aware that you will need to have a 64bit operating system if you add any more, as a 32bit won't see it.

Better graphics cards can be added to later, as can the memory and even the hard drive, it's the main board and the CPU that are the heart of the machine.

If he's after a new one this might be of some interest to him:

DELL OPTIPLEX 390 MT

STANDARD BASE MINI-TOWER

2ND GEN INTEL CORE I5-2400

4GB (1X4GB) 1.333MHZ D

500GB 3.5INCH SERIAL ATA

WINDOWS LIVE

16XDVD+/-RW DRIVE

DELL OPTICAL SCROLL MOUSE

£345

So you only need the computer itself then? There is no monitor included with the first one, I take it you already have a monitor, mouse, keyboard and speakers?

£300-£400 for a full system wont buy you much in the way of a gaming pc, but if you only need the computer itself you could get a fairly decent entry level gaming rig. Personally, I would go to someone like overclockers.co.uk as they specialise in gaming pc's.
Their cheapest amd and intel gaming systems come in just under your £400 budget, but dont come with windows installed unless you pay about £40 extra.

The computer your grandson has his eye on will certainly play wow and cod, just not with the graphics turned up. And it may be harder to upgrade in the future if he decides to.

I currently play wow on a similar pc and i cannot play on full graphics and when I am raiding with 25 other people i have to turn the graphics down because of all the effects going on .

Do you know anyone who could build a pc for you? My partner ordered his pc components seperately and built it himself. He got a much better pc doing it that way compared to buying one already prebuilt/custom built.

Just picking up on what you posted about playing online, a serious consideration has to be his Broadband connection. Most onliners preference a cable connection to the router and not WiFi.

You can have the fastest PC ever, but your always going to be shot dead before anyone else if you have a slow connection.


You don't say how old your grandson is?
I ask because if you ask a true PC gamer about a PC spec it's always going to be above a day to day PC. The hardware in side the PC is almost always today's technology costing more than anything more than 6 months ago.

If he wants to be a true gamer with bells and whistles you can easily be looking at £1,500

That's why you need to find out what he really wants to play. Where as a dedicated console like a Xbox you can buy second hand for £70 leaving lots of money to buy games and online memberships if it's ps3 or Xbox.

Hope that helps.

A lot of people don't like playing on consoles if they play on the pc. Shooting is much more accurate using a mouse rather than a controller. Plus I find the pc gaming community a lot more friendly than the x box community. All I have from the Xbox is abuse and hearing young kids swearing all the time. Plus if you can get a decent enough pc the graphics are much more rewarding than the Xbox. It's a shame that a lot of pc games nowadays are console converts.

An intel cpu with an amd gpu is a bit of a mis-match, if you get an intel cpu, nvidia cards perform better with them, wheras an amd card performs better with, you guessed it, an amd cpu.

I agree with some of the comments above about seeing if you know somebody who can build one for you, you will save money and get better performance out of it that way, £400 would build a pretty decent mid ranged gaming tower that would run the mentioned games with ease (no monitor or anything else included though!) I would also say to put as much of the money as possible into the motherboard and cpu, as a better gpu can be put in later, and last time I checked, RAM was relativley cheap these days and can be expanded very easily with the right motherboard.

The young (20) fool couldn't wait and rushed out and bought the Argos one.
Now I'm just waiting for the moans in a few months time.

"This pc is sh__t. Mum can we get a faster broadband? can grandad do anything to make it faster"

Anyway thanks for your advice folks