Help me spec up a (modest) gaming PC

zantarous

I am looking to replace a 12 year old Dell that runs a quad core Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM. It has been a great work horse and to be honest it still does its job rather well, it rips my CDs/Blus/UHD, work from home, browse the web, manage meta data for Plex etc

It is almost out of the question to game on it not that I am a big gammer, I have a PS4 and a Switch but I would love to try streaming games to my Shield or playing some PS2 and Gamecube emulation.

So I am looking at something like:

A decent case with can run the main Windows install of a SSD and then have room for a few more HDDs and a 5.25" bay for a Blu-ray drive (the 5.25 bay is not essential as I can always by a caddy for the drive. Nothing with mesh at the front or huge air vents on top I have two cats and their hair gets everywhere.

AMD Ryzan 5 or i5
8GB RAM DDR4 (single stick to make upgrading to 16 easier/cheaper)
Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB (looking at the 70 or 80 seems to dramatically shoot up the price)

Open to thoughts on the Motherboard and Power supply.

EndlessWaves

I wouldn't normally go for nVidia cards, given that the overall package is worse than the competition (e.g. RX 580/590   Freesync produces better results than GTX 1060) but I suspect nVidia only supports streaming to the shield from their own cards.

A single stick of memory will halve your memory bandwidth and cause occasional stuttering in some games, you're better off going dual channel and spending a little extra on a motherboard with four slots.

Any style or size preferences for the case? Perhaps something like the Raijintek Styx Classic that comes in a variety of colours, you'd have to buy your own dust filters though as they're not included.

DavidG1

What you have posted so far is fine for an entry level gaming PC. As for power supply, choose a branded PSU - corsair, EVGA, seasonic, bequiet. You shouldn't need any more than 650W unless you are going SLI/crossfire. A Modular PSU makes the build neater but adds a little to the cost. As for motherboard choose MSI, Asus or Gigabyte - these are well known brands. Which you choose depends on the CPU.
For storage I would recommend an SSD - these are now coming down in price. If you can afford get a single 500GB SSD or 250GBSSD   1TB HDD as secondary storage.

I would suggest you go to PC Partpicker and look at their suggested builds for your budget

zantarous

Thanks for the reply folks, going to have a look at that the PC partpicker, looks like a great site. Once I have my list of parts any suggestions as to who to buy and build? Scan, PC Speciality, Aria etc? I have never built a PC, I probably could do it but don't want to screw it up.

Also need to work out if my Windows 10 license can be transferred over. I originally had a retail Win 7 Professional license that I bought, then paid £25 to upgrade to Win 8 then did the upgrade to Win 10. Google searches seem to agree that this is a transferable license but no one agreement on how to do it.

EndlessWaves

PCPartPicker is usually for blocking out costs, but it's got big holes in it's listings even for the shops it covers so it's not that good for actually picking parts - particularly things like cases where there are lots of options.

DavidG1

You should be able to install windows 10 and transfer the license
MICROSOFT OS (RETAIL VS OEM)

Install the same version onto the new PC. Once it is connected to the internet it may activate automatically, if not you would have to ring up the Microsoft activation line. The Windows 7 product key will indicate it is a retail version and they will provide you with an activation code.

Of the stores you quote all have been trading for many years. Also look at
CCL computers
Desktop PCs, Gaming PCs, Laptops, PC Monitors, Computer Components Specialists | CCL Computers

I can personally recommend both scan computers and CCL - scan built a quality computer for me and CCL sell a wide range of parts at keen prices

MarkE19

This is what I had and it did transfer without any hassle to my new build PC. I just entered the Win7 license key when installing on the new PC, it was accepted and activated with no need to call MS.

Mark.