Good £500-£600 PC for Unity?

I live in the UK and would like to buy a new PC for use with game development using Unity. My budget is £500-£600.

The reason I would like a new PC is because the old laptop I have been using is starting to lag as my games get more 'innovative'.

Thanks in advance,
Your friendly neighbourhood spiderman

 

I would hold off until about mid 2016 as new AMD and NVIDIA 14nm GPU's and potentially a bit later AMD will release a new CPU line.

Also Unity are bringing out 5.4 with instancing and DirectX 12 support, which could give you a speed boost.

 

There is always something faster coming out next year. You'll be waiting forever.

Just pick something with reasonably balanced specs and you'll do alright. Prioritise the graphics card and memory. But don't do anything crazy out of balance.

 

Just as a heads up though. That's most likely the Titan card. Last I heard the x70 and x80 cards were June.

http://techfrag.com/2016/01/25/nvid...-in-april-gtx-1080-in-june-and-volta-in-2017/

 

If you look at the industry things are slowing down, GPU's have been at 28nm for about 3 years now, the drop to 14nm scale is a big step.

You don't want to buy a 28nm GPU this month then find in a couple of months 14nm faster parts for about the same price with double the performance come out.

Maybe if you get a SSD drive or more memory to your laptop it will give it a bit of a boost to tide you over.

Also if you can wait until AMD release their new Zen CPU probably near the end of this year, you should be able to get a cheaper CPU as Intel will probably drop prices to compete.

 

As others have said wait and see what amd has to offer before buying something right now.

 

Getting back to your original question, what existing parts do you have? If you don't already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, speakers, etc you'll have to spend some of your budget on those. Below is linked about what you can expect.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freshtech-Gigabyte-Motherboard-Performance-Certified/dp/B012WZLMRU/

It's a fairly weak system with only a budget dual core processor and a relatively weak graphics card. It does have a solid state drive but it does not have a normal hard drive. It's trivial to put additional components in it at a later date though.

Edit: Just noticed that despite the image it doesn't actually have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, or speakers. Silly Amazon.

 

I dunno. The stated budget is pretty low range. I doubt the cost of low range components will change much. Might be relevant if you had a ton of money to spend on the best rig possible.

 

They definitely won't chance that much as budget components are among the last releases for a new series. If anything he would want to focus on older generations anyway due to the savings you can get from buying up models just as they are about to disappear.

Yes, unfortunately that budget will restrict him to relatively weak hardware. While he may want a new PC I think he may be far better off getting a used system and upgrading it to meet his needs. I'm not at all familiar with the UK but I know in the US I can easily get a Core i5 tower with OS included for about $250. A couple hundred more for upgrades and I'd be done.

http://www.pcliquidations.com/p22431-hp-pro-3400-microtower

 

Right, but that's not the primary issue here. I noticed you failed to take it into consideration as well. He's currently a laptop user with no mention of other devices. He won't have a monitor, he won't have a keyboard, he may or may not have a mouse, and he won't have speakers but he may have headphones. Additionally your link lacks an operating system.

Picking up the accessories, the monitor, and the operating system (other than Linux of course) will set him back another one to two hundred pounds. His only options are a significantly weaker computer (OEM or used) or a bigger budget.

 

Okay. I did some digging through the OEMs I am aware of existing in the UK and the conclusion is that you're pretty much stuck with a Dell Inspiron 3650 with that budget. At least if you don't own a monitor and accessories.

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-3650-desktop/pd?oc=cd65011&model_id=inspiron-3650-desktop

It has a decent processor with a reasonable amount of memory but the graphics card is a very weak GeForce 730. There is a PCI-express slot for upgrading it but the power supply appears to be proprietary and is likely too weak to handle anything beyond a GTX 950 or an equivalent card that doesn't require power connectors.

Honestly I'm beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be just as ideal for you to purchase another laptop. MSI has some very reasonably priced gaming laptops that would be perfectly acceptable for Unity development.

https://www.msi.com/Notebook/CX70-2QF.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-2QF-625UK-17-3-Inch-i5-4210M-GeForce/dp/B01AA433ZY/

 

I still think you would be better off to hold off just for a few months, new GPU and CPU tech will drop the price of current components, so even if you don't go for the 'next generation' or can't afford it. It should allow you to get a better bargain than you can today.