[UK] Gaming Pc Build for <£500

[Tehgoose]

I have a budget of £500 but would prefer to spend in the region of £480.

It will be used for gaming with games such as gtaV, league of legends, tabletop simulator, elite dangerous and possibly star citizen.

I would like to run one monitor.

I am upgrading because I am currently using a ancient mac that can barely run tf2 :/

This is just the pc, no peripherals, operating system or monitor. I also already have an external optical drive so won't be needing one of those.

I would like it to have a blue theme with a case preference of the NZXT S340 (white) and would like to upgrade with another graphics card in future with possible overclocking capabilities.

 

Here is one I came up with: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Cvssqs

[Guest]

Oh man, that's gonna be hard. 

First of all, if you're on a tight budget, forget about themes and expensive cases. You literally can't afford that, especially when you realise what I'm going to tell you.

You selected AM3+ platform, which is outdated and gonna be replaced by Zen lineup in just a few months. Even though it seems a good idea on paper, you'll be better off with an i5-4460 or similar, as it will crush the AMD CPU in performance. 

Then, you selected a GTX 960. I won't say it's a bad card, but if you're planning to keep it for some time, I'd rather go for something like used 290 or 770. I'm not a big fan of 4GB version of 960 either, for me the card doesn't have enough oomph to actually need 4 gigs. 

That's ESPECIALLY if you're going to play Star Citizen. You're going to need lots of performance on that. 

 

[stconquest]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£155.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock H110M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£57.36 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£31.52 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£18.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 380 4GB Video Card  (£156.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Rosewill SRM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  (£24.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Super Flower Golden Green HX 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  (£60.00 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: Akasa AK-274CC-4RAS 38.4 CFM 120mm  Fan  (£4.88 @ Amazon UK)  <<Front intake
Case Fan: Akasa AK-274CC-4RAS 38.4 CFM 120mm  Fan  (£4.88 @ Amazon UK)  <<Front intake
Total: £513.62
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-01 00:57 GMT+0000

[Streetguru]

47 minutes ago, Tehgoose said:

I have a budget of £500 but would prefer to spend in the region of £480.

 

Maybe save up a bit more and get an i5

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/k3TN3C
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/k3TN3C/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i3-4170 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  (£89.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£74.27 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£27.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£38.97 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 380 4GB Video Card  (£156.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  (£28.49 @ Novatech)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (£52.80 @ Aria PC)
Total: £469.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-01 01:24 GMT+0000

[Andrew420]

A quad-core Athlon is a bit newer, and probably better ipc. Also, the mobos for FM2+ are cheaper than AM3+. 

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/bg9Fzy

[Tehgoose]

Thanks for all the help, I realise that it probable won't be realistic to do themes etc. I'm just still not sure what processor to buy for my build.

[stconquest]

1 hour ago, Tehgoose said:

Thanks for all the help, I realise that it probable won't be realistic to do themes etc. I'm just still not sure what processor to buy for my build.

Ideally, you want an Intel quad core.  At the same clockspeed, Intel is generally 30% faster than any AMD CPU in single threaded performance; sometimes more.