Good first gaming PC for someone who doesn't want to build?

[iknownothing800]

Hey, was just wondering if this would be a decent computer to run most modern games pretty well on? Really not interested in building my own, even though I am aware this could save a bit of money.
Specs: ACER PREDATOR G3-605 Gaming PC Intel Core i5-4440 8GB Ram 1TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745

 

[lehtv]

How much is it, and where?

And as always... please answer these: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=80121

Regarding those specs:
- i5-4440 is good but could handle a much faster graphics card
- 8GB RAM is good
- 1TB HDD is good
- SSD is missing, which is bad
- GTX 745 is not good for demanding games
- power supply appears to be a semi-decent FSP built 80+ Gold unit of 500 watts
- warranty is bad, only 1 year (compared to 3-5+ years per component on a custom PC, with the exception of the case which is usually 1-2 years)

Basically, it's a workable gaming PC if you upgrade the graphics card, but it will end up costing much more than a custom build and the quality and warranty will still be much worse.

Don't you have any friend who could help you build it? Not that it's difficult to do on your own, just somewhat time consuming the first time around.

 

[iknownothing800]

Sorry new to this.

£580 from a local PC store, year guarantee like you say.

-It will be used for general media use, and some gaming too. Wanting to play Cities Skylines and run it well, but also play some other AAA games on decent settings also
-Wanting to spend around £550 - £650 on the Desktop itself, got monitors etc to use in the mean time.
-I am UK based. Dont really wanna build/source parts as I've said.
-No brand preference, just want what will give me the best overall service! I have been recommended Intel and nVidia most though.
-No current parts, and tbh not even sure what overclocking really is.
-Want to game in 1080p
-I need software, but this acer predator comes with windows so OS not a problem.

In answer to your other questions:
- Would a Intel® Core™ i5-4460 Processor preform much better?
- I believe this comes with 8GB SSD?
- So is this graphics card poo? Reviews and people been saying this computer an handle most games on pretty high settings.

Unfortunately no one can build one for me, and dont want to really get into this myself. Become far to used to and spoilt from console gaming, like the idea of buying a decent PC I can just plug in and play for a couple of years no worries.

 

[lehtv]

Sorry new to this.

That's ok

£580 from a local PC store, year guarantee like you say.

It's not terrible for that price - you could sell the GTX745 for maybe £50-70, it's near the performance of GTX750 which is £90 but lack of warranty and lack of proper retail cooling make it a bit of a turn off. You'd then have around £120 to use on a new card - enough for a Radeon R9 270X 2GB which is a decent card for 1080p gaming.

-It will be used for general media use, and some gaming too. Wanting to play Cities Skylines and run it well, but also play some other AAA games on decent settings also

The recommended GPU for Cities Skylines is 7870 or better - 270X is slightly better. GTX 745 is between 1/2 and 2/3 the speed of a 7870.

The i5 is perfect for C:S. But an i3 would also work fine, could save some costs there.

-I am UK based. Dont really wanna build/source parts as I've said.

UK has some shops that let you pick components yourself and they'll build it for you. http://www.buildyourbox.co.uk/ and https://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/ come to mind. Cyberpower is better known, and buildyourbox is new to me, not sure how good they are but it's worth a look. Then there's scan which lets you customize their 3XS systems.

-No current parts, and tbh not even sure what overclocking really is.

The CPU and GPU run at a certain clock speed which partly determines their performance. Overclocking means manually tuning the clock speed beyond factory specifications in order to increase performance.

In answer to your other questions:
- Would a Intel® Core™ i5-4460 Processor preform much better?

No what I meant was that the i5-4440 is already a lot faster than you would need it to be, if your graphics card is as slow as GTX 745. The way it works is that the graphics card renders the game, but if the processor is too slow, the graphics card won't work as well as it should and results in lowered performance. But if the processor is faster than it needs to be, you don't really benefit at all - as mentioned, the graphics card does the rendering. So if you don't want to overspend, you should get a CPU and GPU combination that is balanced so you avoid wasting the potential of either part.

- I believe this comes with 8GB SSD?

If so it probably has a hybrid SSD/hard drive, which merely imitates what it's like to have a proper SSD. But on this budget that's fine.

- So is this graphics card poo? Reviews and people been saying this computer an handle most games on pretty high settings.

Well, people who buy prepackaged PC's from major vendors don't generally know that much about what's a good buy as far as gaming performance is concerned - no offense. GTX 745 is an OEM version of the most entry level card that exists in NVIDIA's current lineup of cards specifically aimed at gamers. The optimal card for 1080p gaming currently is GTX 970, it achieves excellent framerates without being a waste of money. GTX 745 is a bit more than 1/3 the speed of GTX 970.

Unfortunately no one can build one for me, and dont want to really get into this myself. Become far to used to and spoilt from console gaming, like the idea of buying a decent PC I can just plug in and play for a couple of years no worries.

Alright. I'll let you ponder on this post for now, gotta go - hopefully I'll have time to suggest a build later

 

[iknownothing800]

Cheers for your reply and all your help! Really appreciate it! I'll have a read and a think, thanks

 

[escrow4]

This is plug and play:

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/view/Vortex-1000-gaming-pc/

I'd change the SSD to a 250GB 850 EVO which will bring the price to just over a $1K, not counting monitor. The 550w PSU is the bare minimum but it will do.

 

[lehtv]

@escrow4

$1K? His budget is in max 650 in GBP / £

I was going through some part selections on pcspecialist, and it looks pretty good overall. This for £593 incl. VAT:

• i3-4170
• Asus Z97-P (minimum)
• Corsair 200R case
• 1x8GB DDR3-1600
• AMD R9 270X
• 1TB 7200RPM HDD
• Corsair VS550
• Windows 8.1 64bit
• standard warranty (1 yr parts, 3 yr labor)

Now that's already plenty for running most games on mid-high settings smoothly. The only slight disappointments are the power supply (VS series is pretty basic quality) and the short warranty on the parts. With the £50 left in the budget I'd choose between:
1) Samsung 850 EVO 120GB SSD (for 1st hard disk, keep 1TB for the 2nd) -> £647
2) Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD (without additional storage) -> £64
3) pocket

The price isn't too far off from what you'd pay if buying parts separately, which is definitely nice.

I tried piecing together a similar Scan 3XS system, it ended up at almost £750 incl. postage, even though the motherboard was a worse H81 one and the parts themselves were only worth around £550. Scan is asking for a huge premium, not worth it.

Let's see if CyberPowerPC has anything to offer... actually, I'm pretty impressed. You get R9 285 2GB or R9 280 3GB for the price of R9 270, the parts selection is better overall than at pcspecialist (not forced to pay for a Z97 board for instance), you get 2x4GB DDR3 and not forced to go with a single 8GB module, and standard warranty is 2 years for parts (which to me is a huge deal).

Here's what I pieced together for £570.

It's better than the pcspecialist rig and costs less. Power supply is CX600, not the best but still better than VS550. Motherboard isn't as beefy but it doesn't need to be. Graphics card is about 20% faster than 270X (with R9 280 you also get more VRAM but R9 285 is newer tech, either is fine). Other than that, it's basically the same computer. With so much left in the budget you could easily add that SSD in there (BX100 120GB or MX200 250GB without hard disk, total £630 in both cases).

Finally... I took a quick look at buildyourbox.co.uk, and I'm just going to dismiss them because they don't have an Intel i3 build option.

 

[iknownothing800]

Intel Core I5 4460 1tb 8gb 1600Mhz GTX 970 4gb Core Computer Gaming PC:
CASE BUILT IN Fractal Design Core 1000 Black Mesh Fronted Case
MOTHERBOARD Gigabyte H81M-S2H
MOTHERBOARD EXPANSION SLOTS 1x PCI Express x16, 2x PCI Express x1
CPU TYPE Intel I5 4th Generation Haswell
CPU MODEL Intel Core I5 4460 3.2ghz 6mb Cache 4th Gen Haswell
CPU SOCKET Intel 1150
CPU CLOCK SPEED 3.2 Ghz
CPU MAX TURBO CLOCK SPEED 3.4 Ghz
CPU COOLER Standard Intel Cooler
MEMORY 8GB DDR3 1600mhz Performance Ram
HARD DRIVE SIZE 1tb Seagate Barracuda Sata 6Gb/s 64mb Cache 7200rpm
OPTICAL DRIVE Samsung 24x Sata DVD Writer
GRAPHICS CARD Nvidia Geforce GTX 970 4gb Includes The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt and Batman Arkham Knight Games
PSU SIZE Corsair CX600 80 Plus Bronze Certified 600w Power Supply
OPERATING SYSTEM No Operating System
FRONT / TOP CASE PORTS 2x USB 2.0, 1x Headphone Jack, 1x Microphone Jack
REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS 1x PS/2 mouse port, 1x PS/2 Keyboard port, 1x D-Sub port, 1x HDMI port, 2x USB 3.0/2.0 ports, 2x USB 2.0/1.1 ports, 1x RJ-45 port, 3x audio jacks
MOTHERBOARD FEATURES Support for Q-Flash, Support for Xpress Install, EasyTune, EZ Setup, USB Blocker, Smart TimeLock, Smart Recovery 2
PC SPECIAL FEATURES 1x 12cm Cooling Fan Included, Additional Case Cooling Optional, Fully Upgradeable, Overclocking Potential
WARRANTY 1 Year Collect and Return Warranty Included with all our Computers. Buy with confidence knowing if anything goes wrong we will pick up the Computer and repair it at no cost to yourself during your warranty period which shows the faith we have in the products we sell.
ALSO INCLUDES Free 60 Day Trial Norton Internet Security ( OEM )
AT £585

OR

ACER Aspire G3-605 Gaming PC:
Type Gaming PC
Operating system Windows 8.1
SPECIFICATION
Processor - Intel® Core™ i5-4440 Processor
- Quad-core
- 3.1 GHz / 3.3 GHz with Turbo Boost
- 6 MB cache
Memory (RAM) 8 GB DDR3, 1600 MHz (32 GB maximum installable RAM)
Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745 (4 GB)
Storage 1 TB HDD, 7200 rpm
Motherboard Intel® B85 Express Chipset
CONNECTIVTY
Wireless 802.11 b/g/n
Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000)
Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0
USB - USB 3.0 x 3
- USB 2.0 x 2
Video interface - Mini HDMI x 1
- DVI x 1
Audio interface 3.5 mm jack
MEDIA
Optical disc drive DVD/RW
FEATURES
Mouse / trackpad Wired gaming mouse
Keyboard Wired gaming keyboard
GENERAL
Colour Black & orange
Box contents - Acer Aspire G3-605 Gaming PC
- Power cable
- Wired gaming mouse
- Wired gaming keyboard
Model number: DT.SQYEK.036
Dimensions 438 x 180 x 430 mm (H x W x D)
Weight 15 kg
Manufacturer’s guarantee 1 year
AT £575

Which deal is better and will give me the best overall gaming experience?? Thanks

Duplicate threads merged in here.

mfenn
General Hardware Moderator

 

[Ken g6]

Intel Core I5 4460 1tb 8gb 1600Mhz GTX 970 4gb Core Computer Gaming PC:

That may be the best pre-built gaming system I've ever seen! Certainly at that price. The only downsides are:

1. H81. That means memory runs in single-channel, always, and only 2 RAM slots. Not a big deal. Edit: Oh, and only PCIe 2.0, but that really doesn't matter.
2. No SSD. But neither system has that. Only affects game loading times.

Basically, yeah, get the first one. :thumbsup:

Edit2: I just figured out the reason for the price:

OPERATING SYSTEM No Operating System

Got Windows? :hmm:

 

[VirtualLarry]

Which deal is better and will give me the best overall gaming experience?? Thanks

The first one, by far. It has a GTX970. The second one only has a GTX745, which is a poor gaming card and would have to be replaced, PSU permitting.

Edit:

1. H81. That means memory runs in single-channel, always

Edit2: I just figured out the reason for the price:
Got Windows? :hmm:

Hmm, I missed the part about the missing Windows license. That would explain the good price.

But I think that you are wrong, no contemporary Intel big-core chipset is limited to single-channel memory.

 

[iknownothing800]

i have no OS but told I could buy one for around £20, is this not the case?

 

[lehtv]

i have no OS but told I could buy one for around £20, is this not the case?

Not from a store, no. You might be able to find a key for cheap on eBay or a message board that has a sale section. You can then use the key to download and create the media here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery

 

[ignatzatsonic]

i have no OS but told I could buy one for around £20, is this not the case?

It's not the case for a known reliable source for Windows 7 or later.

At that price, you'd have a significant chance of a dodgy license or outright rip off. Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't. I certainly would not chance it.

Best price in the USA for a known good source would be close to triple that (maybe $80). What does Amazon UK charge?

 

[Ken g6]

But I think that you are wrong, no contemporary Intel big-core chipset is limited to single-channel memory.

You're right, I was thinking of H61.

i have no OS but told I could buy one for around £20, is this not the case?

If you're a student, the best price I can find is £50.