Help me build a PC for less than £200

Ok, there's a lot of people on here who have more experience in PC builds than me so I'm looking for some advice. What I'm considering doing is buying the bits to build a cheap PC with my kid as a Christmas present (we'll do the build together so hopefully he'll find that interesting). Looking for something that will do basic homework stuff with maybe a bit of gaming initially but nothing beyond Minecraft and maybe Fortnite for now. Budget is <£200 (excluding monitor) if possible but it needs to be expandable at a later date if he so desires. I'm guessing I probably need to put more money towards the motherboard and go cheaper on graphics card (or even integrated graphics) at the beginning.

So, can it be done? And if so then hit me with your suggestions.

While I've not looked into specifics, I don't think it's really possible. At least with new parts.

Looking at logical increments https://www.logicalincrements.com/

It's looks like they recommend £288 for 'light 720p' and £318 for a bit more performance. For Fortnight you'd need their 'Entry' @ £415, and even then it's only 30fps if you want 1080p.

I'd recommend the Xbox Series S, and maybe save up for something in a few years when it's possible to go for something £500+

I don't know much about integrated graphics and chipsets such as A320, so I don't know if it is possible. The cheapest system I could put together is ~£202, not including shipping or an operating system.

An AMD A8-9600 and ASrock A320M-HDV can be picked up for ~£100 currently which meets the Minecraft minimum requirements and should run Fortnite too (have to go off them both needing Intel HD 4000 on this one. AMD Radeon R7 should be fine). Not sure if you can get anything cheaper than that combo at the moment.

I am sure we can crowdsource some spare parts. A few people on the PCGT thread in games have been updating recently.

That's a very kind offer but I'm in a position where I can afford this so those spare parts would be better going to people who can't. This is really about him learning how a PC works and building his own machine (with help), therefore going with cheaper initial parts means less cost if they get broken.

Those two sites above are really interesting though, will dig in on them asap.

I think a bit of help from Ebay might make this possible. For example you can find a Ryzen 3 3200G on Ebay for £80 which I would take over the A8-9600 as it's a much better APU for gaming.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Ryzen-3- ... Swrcle6hEr

Look for bundles on amazon, scan, overclockers (slightly more expensive). Lots of low price ones with processor, mainboard and ram. After than you just need a case, storage and psu.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ is a good site to build a full system and will let you know where it is cheapest.

Best bet might be to just buy a an old office desktop and throw in an after market GPU from ebay. Going to be pretty jank though.

PC building has got really expensive these days.

You could probably find something half decent by picking through ebay looking for cheap processors but I don't think the time investment is worth it.

The budget is the killer here really, if you stepped it up to somewhere above £300 it would be much easier to build a decent bit of kit, it's still not going to be massively powerful but it would be up to doing the likes of Minecraft and Fortnite with the right settings.

This might be helpful: Best Gaming PC under $300

If you're doing it for the enjoyment and educational value of building it with your kid as much as the end result then you'll still get something out of it even if the final machine isn't a beast!

So I've finally managed to get everything together, finding a CPU has been the most difficult bit but just secured a Ryzen 3200G for delivery by Thursday. Seems like there was a real shortage in the marketplace of AMD cpus. Ended up going over budget as was originally looking at the Athlon 3000G.

So all in all

AMD Ryzen 3 3200G £110
Crucial 240gb SSD £23
8gb DDR4 £28
ASROCK A320M HDV mobo £42
Case £27
Aerocool PSU £23

Had been hoping to repurpose and old case and psu but weren't compatible so that was another cost.

Help me build a PC for less than £200

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