Extras.

There are a couple of things missing from our PC at this point, not least of which is some sort of optical drive.

I’ve purposefully built some contingency into this PC build for things like this, as everyone’s needs and preferences will be different.

Personally, I don’t bother with fitting any form of optical drive to my own PC’s as most of the games I play are bought through online services such as Steam.  If you do want a DVD-writer, though, you can pick one up for less than £15.

Other components you might consider are a WiFi card, or maybe you could spend the extra money on a better keyboard and mouse.

 

Conclusions.

Hopefully the last few pages have shown you that it’s entirely possible to build a new gaming machine from scratch for less than £300.

By prioritising your money on the key components (graphics card and memory) you can produce a system that will handle anything that you can throw at it, and will probably be usable for the next three or four years.

That being said, there are several things that have been left out of this build.  For one, there is no operating system installed.  The reason for this is that a lot of people will have a valid Windows 7 license already.  If you don’t, then you’ll need to add around another £75 for a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium.

If Windows isn’t your thing (or if you just can’t afford it), then there’s always Linux, which is free.  The problem here is that most games are written for Windows, so it may be an additional cost that you have to budget for.

I’ve also given no consideration to your monitor, on the understanding that you already have one.  If you don’t then another £100 will need to be found if you want to take advantage of your new PC with a 20″ widescreen.

At the end of the day, if you’re comfortable with building a PC then this is a great way to save some money.  An equivalent system on the high street would cost around £450-500, so the savings are significant.

You also retain a degree of future proofing as your machine will be upgradable for some time to come.  A processor upgrade to one of the latest quad core CPU’s would cost less than £100, and graphics card updates can prove quite cheap as well, providing you sell your old card on to someone else.

Finally, although I’ve used examples from online one online source, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of other resellers available online.  In my experience, Aria usually have some of the best prices around and also have a great selection of components.

It’s also important to consider the shipping costs; buying each component separately may seem like the cheapest option, but add in the postage costs for each item and it can sometimes work out cheaper to buy from one reseller, even if some of the components aren’t the cheapest.

The closing message for this article is to at least consider building your own PC, it can be a daunting task to begin with, but it really isn’t that difficult, and there’s a ton of information available on the Internet regarding how to do it.