Buying a new computer

[slacky1230]

Hey guys

Looking at getting the little one a new computer for Xmas. Now only want to spend around £250 on the tower. Been going through ebay looking at custom built ones and seems there's some fairly decent ones about. Now my question is is the ones im looking at the best I'm gonna get for the price? Although they've got plenty of space and ram is the CPU up to much?

Here's a link to one I've seen

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=151314234258

Thanks

 

[PP Mguire]

What exactly is the little one wanting to do, or play on said machine?

 

[slacky1230]

It'll be just general browsing the Internet, playing web based kids games etc. I might install a couple of games like championship manager nothing draining

 

[PP Mguire]

That'll get the job done. Just know that it's not a powerhouse or anything, and if the kid will want to game heavier games later on you'll need a new build.

 

[cogitateinc]

That machine should work for most "newer" (2012-2013) games as well.
The only thing that you might want to consider "upgrading" would be the hard drive. I would recommend putting in an SSD at some point if the little one wants to play heavier games. Other than that, for browsing the Internet and light gaming use this machine should certainly work well.

 

[PP Mguire]

Although an SSD IMO is a fair necessity for any modern machine, it'll make 0 difference in actual FPS in any gaming. This would require a better GPU which going too high the APU in the machine will bottleneck the card pretty heavily. For a general machine with some light flash gaming purpose I figure this machine is perfect for any youngin wanting to get into PCs.

 

[cogitateinc]

I suppose that would be true, since with 8GB of memory I would assume most games would cache their core files right in RAM.

 

[PP Mguire]

That's pretty true for most games if not all games besides level and/or grid loading. The only place an SSD shines for gaming is loading times and installs. Sadly since most games are developed with consoles in mind an SSD doesn't make much of a difference for those. There are only a few games that truly take advantage of an SSD. The biggest two I've noticed would be BF4 and Skyrim with a lot of mods. That's why a 120GB SSD can be fine for most people because you only need to have 1 or 2 games on the SSD at a time and the rest of the space is more than enough for Windows and programs.