Hey there GB community, I'll make this short because I'm sure there are plenty of similar forum posts out there.

I'm about to plunge in and buy my first PC from parts and I've got about £500 to pal with, it's not going to be tip top of the line or anything but I'm hoping to make a decent little number with a path to upgrade when I can afford.

Any tips for first timers? Any shoulds and should nots?

Thank you for your time

This may sound flippant, but my advice is to put together a little more money before building anything. That budget isn't going to get you very far.

I'm a bit strapped for time this morning but I've thrown up a PCpartpicker list here. I've been pretty quick with my brand selection so you can shop around for, say, a different brand motherboard or GPU.

It's about £100 over your budget but in all honesty I wouldn't go for a gaming rig for £500 unless you use second hand parts. You'll be able to save some money here and there by lowering your RAM to 8GB (but only £20 or so), smaller wattage PSU and a smaller HD. You could go for an AMD CPU but I've got no experience of the latest models so wouldn't stand over them, someone else might though.

Finally, you could knock down the GPU to a 950 or AMD equivalent but, again, I've got no experience with them and wouldn't recommend an entry level GPU for a gaming system. If you don't plan to game much on it then knock yourself out. :)

I built a similar system (i5, 16GB RAM, 960, mech hard drive) for a friend recently and he's super happy with it. You'll not get 1080p/60 on Ultra on the latest AAA graphics hogs but it's a capable system with upgrade potential.

Edited to change the case which now has front USB 3 ports and is slightly cheaper, and a shorter 960 which means you shouldn't lost drive space. Told you I was in a rush!

This seems as close as you can get to something reasonable for near that budget. I would advise against going below 500W PSU though, especially if you plan to upgrade in the future (e.g. a better GPU might cause you power problems). You can probably get away with 8GB RAM for now, but yeah, £500 is a tough budget.

A good guide with different price points.

also goes over how to put together a PC.

http://techreport.com/review/29453/system-guide-current

People often forget but do you have an OS you can use? If not windows 10 will be 100-200 more dollars added on. If you have a pc already I would take some parts out of it like the HDD if you can, also go AMD cpu and mobo if your really on a budget,or go for the cheaper intel's. If your building now i would go with Skylake and newer intels with DDR4 ram as I just don't see a point in upgrading to older shit, also AMD's new CPU's are supposed to come out soon i believe as well so you might want to wait a bit. Nothing wrong with entry level GPU's as well, most guys online will recommend you shit for 60fps gaming at 1080p(or 1440p or 4k), but mid range cards will be fine for 30-50fps or 50-60fps with lowered settings so you'll be fine, it'll still run better than a console atm. Just build with upgrade in mind and you'll be fine. Honestly i would go with a 750w psu or higher with a good service record, i have a 630w right now and it's lasted me about 6 years but it's too weak for some GPU's so if i wanted to upgrade to an AMD Furyx for example i would need to upgrade my psu as well which will cost me more money down the line.

So yeah, if you want 60fps gaming on the highest settings then save up more, otherwise you have plenty of options.

Thanks for all the advice. Yeah I know five hundo is low as hell, but it's been about 8 months since I've had a computer at all and a pretty tight year.

My hope was to maybe send some feelers out to see if it was possible.

I do not have a OS in place, so I'd have to sort that.

Going in I was aware it wouldn't be a perfect machine, I'm just sick and tired of not being able to check out more small scale indie stuff and complex strategy. Also Kerbal is something I would be very surprised if it worked well on ps4.

Again, thank you for the advice

Here's a revised build, with OS: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/phnHYJ

Dropped down to 8GB, went with cheaper H97 board, and R9 380 2GB. £597.47

Here's an option around 500. Newer motherboard, for upgrade path, but CPU drops to an i3 (fast clock speed, but only dual core): http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2729hM

I just did the same thing - started with ~$550 budget and upgraded a little later. Since I didn't have an OS, I found it was actually cheaper for me to buy a pre-built PC with a good CPU & motherboard rather than start from scratch myself. I didn't care about anything else, just those 2 things.

One side benefit I didn't expect was motivation. Having the PC at my desk, knowing it just needed a good video card & some RAM to run the games I wanted to play at highest settings...I found ways to save the $ for them MUCH faster than when it was just a theoretical PC in my head. Ended up with some of the highest-rated parts available ATM for a little under $1,000. Something to think about if you lack an OS & motivation! :)

My token line:

Do not try to save on the PSU. Get good one (not a refurbished), with 80+ efficiency and enough wattage wiggle room.

A £500/$715 budget build is both possible and enjoyable to use, especially if you don't have the mob mentality of 'nothing below 1080/60'. But if that budget is also meant to cover things that people seemingly under appreciate and don't mention in various $X00 build guides: peripherals, then you'll want to hold off for a bit. A good monitor, keyboard, sound system, and definitely a decent mouse really brings a system together.

Cheers all!

The 600 build looks solid. @kneebees you should watch for sales on these parts / similar parts over the next few weeks and you can probably get it down to 500.

Dropping the CPU is a good way to save money, because you can probably slot an i7 in there down the road if you find it's showing its age. I'd drop the CPU before GPU.

Just to update to say all my parts are arriving today, I'm really excited to build it!

Thanks again for all the advice everyone.

@kneebees: Post pics. I wanna see how this looks.

Well, best of luck to you. Enjoy it!