Was looking at buying a gaming pc for 10 year old brother...

My younger brother himself owns a ps2 and a basic laptop having an i3 processor, 4gb ram & shared graphics of 64mb!

He obviously see's me on my rig playing Crysis, Battlefield 3, GTA IV, Mafia II, etc...

He's always asking why he can't have the same games and why his laptop is unable to run them...

He can just about run Vice City & San Andreas on his laptop with slight lag, lol.

Next month he will turn 11. Since he's whining about getting a better pc to run his games his parents thought a new pc would be a good birthday present...

My brother is dam lucky he gets a decent pc for his 11th birthday!

I did not get a decent pc until I turned 15 or 16. On top of that it cost me £1000 (at the time, late 90's) and had 1gb ram, 64gb gpu and 40gb hard drive!

Also had a 21'' Samsung CRT monitor at the time, Unreal, Quake 3, etc...

Now to cut the long story short, the budget for my bro's pc is £400-£500, no monitor needed, just the tower & parts...

After some research I've come to this setup:

Gigabyte M68 Motherboard Technology
AMD Bulldozer FX 4100 3.6ghz 8mb Cache
Patriot 8Gb Ram 2x4Gb
1Tb Sata Hard Drive
ATI Radeon HD 6950 1Gb GPU

Price as well as other parts include:

Vantage Blue Gamers Style Midi Tower Case
24x Dual Layer Sata DVD Writer

The above setup will cost me exactly £525. Is there anything BETTER for the same price or lower?

I bet a lot of you are thinking for an 11 year old kid, he's one lucky bastard.

You know what, he sure is....

When I was 11, we had a $hitty packard bell, pentium III, 16Mb ram and a 32Mb gpu and it was shared by everyone...

Looking forward to hearing other opinions. I'm looking forward to hearing what others have to say, or what could be changed/improved, etc.

Thanks gurus.

 

Those games really aren't for players as young as your brother, for good reason.
Therefor I don't think he's one lucky bastard, with a family that cares so little about his wellbeing.

But I don't think that is the reply you were hoping for. Sorry.

 

Sounds like a job for deltatux...

(note : you may find that buying used parts will take you farther...)

-scheherazade

 

You are correct, 100%

Problem is the current games he has was bought by his parents, I know it's wrong but I'm not his father and did not buy him the games...

However, he will also play games such as NFS the run, C & C Red Alert 3, Flatout 3, etc...

Call of Duty Black ops he has even played at his friends house, he too is 10 years old and also owns GTA IV.

Parents these days...

 

Everyone I know (and me) grew up playing violent games.
No one grew up violent.

Let the kid have some fun. It's not real and he knows it (unless he's retarded, in which case I'd be careful.).

-scheherazade

 

schehe is right.. violent games, lol. If ur gonna grow up and be violent, u ll be anyway, no matter if you play Bookworm or Manhunt 2/Postal 2.

kanej2007, why do you keep saying "his parents"? Arent they your parents too???

And I wouldn't go with an FX4100, its pretty damn slow for a quad core and it will not be that much future proof. Better go with a less beefed up card, say a 5850/6870 and get an 8core FX CPU or Intel Sandy Bridge.

 

Violent games don't make you violent, being a little psychopath does.

 

Less backseat parenting and more hardware discussion IMHO.

Anyway, I would steer well clear of a FX-4100. If it were me I would be looking into a first gen core i3 or AMD 9xx BE build for good budget gaming. Either one will feed a mid range GPU. Barring that, even the 2nd gen core i3s beat almost any of the FX-series CPUs gaming wise even with a 7970.

 

Yes, they are ''our'' parents! Don't worry, this kid's not violent. Apart from being allowed to play 15+ games he is being raised strictly. I highly doubt he will go out & shoot/stab people!

I will look for a 5850/6870 & with regards to a cpu, I will get an i7 2500k.

This.

Correct. I grew up playing violent games too, Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 2, Soldier Of Fortune. At the time I was in my early teens, around 14-15.

Till now I've not killed or massacred anyone yet...

 

Having played Wolfenstein Doom and other titles myself as a kid, I fully agree that those games don't turn peaceful citizens (kids) into mentally disturbed killing machines. But as a (karate) teacher I know that most children are at least showing copy-cad behavior when playing games like this. Nothing too disturbing, and certainly nothing otherwise 'good' parenting can handle, but IMHO it is something that should be kept in check.

Having said that I must admit there is a huge grey area here and that most games use at least some level of violence in them, The games I let my 10yo cousin play at my machine don’t escape from it either (he's a sucker for Maxis' Spore).

To the problem at hand:
I agree with above posters about the CPU and that i7 is a excellent choice.

 

Thanks, will get an i7 2500k then, excellent bang for your bucks...

 

2500K + asrock ex3 gen3 is the best bang for your buck around IMO.

But it isn't leaving much for video, which TBH will matter more [for gaming] than that CPU/mobo.

I would really look into getting used parts with a budget that low.

Maybe there are some 2X00K users that are looking at X79... and would be willing to part with a few pieces at a discount.

-scheherazade

 

a 2500k for a 10yr old? wow.

tbh i dont think he needs something like that...also 10yrs old is 2 young in my opinion to be playing games like cod etc.

13-15 maybe dpends on the kid/family.

 

I think it's clear that 11 year old kids should play definitely Mafia 2, Postal 3, Duke Nukem Forever and Grand Theft Auto with Hot Coffee mod.

And watch Postal the movie.


Bro, just get him a Weeee, get him his Mario and tell him to stop thinking he is all grown-up.

 

My stepson (11), i just built him a rig from old parts, and 2nd hand bits off ebay, E6300,8600 GPU: 160gb hard drive ripped out of an old BT Vision Box.... does for the odd games and internetz that he does... He has his xbox for most other things..

LOL..Although his PC is confiscated just now until his behaviour bucks up a wee bit!

 

something like this

 

That looks like a good setup...

You might get lucky with a cheap ebay auction, like :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-I-5-2500K-SR008-3-30GHZ-/270915336597?pt=CPUs&hash=item3f13cff995

-scheherazade

 

c1:................................:biggun:

 

Slightly more expensive but higher quality components. Ha I just remembered the kid is only 11...but I figure he'll have it for 3yrs anyway.

 

Yeah, will be looking at quality used parts...

Lol, yeah, tell me about it. This kid is a spoilt brat and has been whining for the past yeat to have a decent pc, he seems pissed his 65mb GPU in his laptop is causing lag in basic games, haha!

I agree at the fact he's too young to play games such as COD, maybe he can play the older ones that barely have any gore or bad language, such as COD Allied Assault.

Haha, get him a weeee? I will try my best to convince him...

Not a bad setup for an 11 yo Liam, my old laptop from several years back had the 8600 and even though it was just 256Mb it could play titles such as HL2 & Doom 3 near maxed. The E6300 is a pretty decent cpu for standard gaming so not at all bad.

@ k3vst3r & Pill Monster, thanks for your input for a prebuilt system, both are great and hard to choose from.

However, you cannot go wrong with either of them.