The Best Gaming PC You Can Build for Under £200
In this video, we are going to build and benchmark the best pc you can buy for under £200 – all from used parts, and you guys are going to come along for the ride, so lets get started!
-5 weeks later…-
So, it got a bit complicated. Let me run you through some of the fun I’ve been having. I started off specing a system out on ebay, and as you can see here, it’d be a decent setup, and all for £188. Not bad. So, I bought the system first. I would have bought the graphics card too, but the second that I finished recording to go and buy the stuff, someone else bought it.
No big deal, I’ll just wait until the system arrives and double check everything before I get any other parts. Cool. So the system arrives and I find that it’s actually a Dell Optiplex 380 – not 780 like the listing suggests. Again, no big deal… except it is. All the research I’d done was on the 780, so I didn’t know this one was an inverted chassis with only 1 PCIe slot, that requires a single slot GPU, that’s only about as long as the PCIe slot since the cooler’s mounting bracket is very much in the way… great.
So I go about finding a GPU that’ll fit. Brilliant, I’ve found this RX 460 from MSI for £69, it’s low profile, single slot and JUST small enough to fit in, like, this is a full on r/PerfectFit moment. It JUST squeezes in. Awesome, we are ready to go. So I throw in the SSD, and some RAM to test with only to find it doesn’t boot. Oh boy.
I swap the RAM back around, and it boots fine. Few. I install Windows onto the SSD and get all the games and tests loaded on, but notice it’s horrifically slow. I don’t think this would play any games if it can barely open task manager… and the main issue is the dual core CPU. So, back to ebay to get a Q9550, a quad core, 2.83GHz CPU that fits and works in this motherboard.
So, I swap the CPU in and.. Oh, now the GPU isn’t working right. It just keeps saying “No AMD graphics card detected, please install the correct driver for your hardware” and device manager says “Windows has stopped this device as it detected a problem with this card.” Ok.. maybe the CPU has some trouble with PCIe devices or compatibility, since the card was working fine with the dual core…
So I return the CPU and get a new one. Drop that one in, only to have the same issue… No I’m even more confused. I swap the graphics card into a known good system with an 8700k to see what’s up, and low and behold it’s go the same code 43 error, which means the GPU is dead. Faaaaantastic.
So, off to ebay again to buy ANOTHER GPU, but I cannot find any in the same price range that would fit in the system, so have to go a little more upmarket. I found a GTX 1050 mini from Zotac that’s perfect. It’s £120, but it’s perfect, so I pick it up and get benchmarking, and that brings us to now.
While we are at it, here is the benchmark results for PUBG, Fortnite, Rainbow 6 Siege and Rocket League. All at 1080p on medium or low settings.
Now as you’ll have seen, it actually does pretty well in most games. CPU utilization does hit 100%, but so does RAM, so if you are following in my footsteps here, and you’ve got a tad more than £200 to spend, 8GB – which is this systems maximum supported configuration – is definitely recommended.
So how much did this system actually cost? Well, the Dell tower was £56.10 delivered, the GPU was £120, the CPU was £23 and the SSD would be £41, which I’m well aware adds up to £240. If the first GPU hadn’t died, the total cost would have been £189 – so I’m gonna blame that.
The takeaway here is that building a used PC, especially one from an OEM system like this Dell PC, is going to be a hassle. It’s going to take time to find the right parts at the right price, and you are going to find dead hardware. You are going to find compatibility issues. You will have to try and return stuff. And it’s going to cost more that you expect.
But look at what you get in return. A system that can be upgraded a bit more, and one that can play most games at 1080p medium or low settings, and is faster than a £600 new system with an AMD APU for less than half the price.
As always it’s a tradeoff between the time you are willing to invest in hunting for parts and making it all work, and the money you are willing to spend, but if you are a kid in school with a fixed, small pot of money and want a gaming PC, then this is a totally viable option.
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