Hey everybody! This is my second buildlog on the forum, as well as the second PC build I have done. I’m afraid this is nothing special - there’s no fancy watercooling or modding going on here. That’s not the purpose of this build, as much as I would love it to be! This build is for great performance at a great price. If you’d like to see some pictures, keep scrolling - I’ll just give a bit of background on the reasons behind this build.
INTRO
So, first of all - this isn’t a computer for myself. It’s actually for my friend. We’ve been friends for a very long time now, and his 18th birthday is coming up. At the beginning of this year I built my first computer and it was one of the most rewarding, painful and enjoyable experiences. Since that time, I’ve been using my PC while my friend has been playing games on an Xbox 360. The first game we played together was, in fact, Runescape. He was playing it on a 4 year old notebook that has awful integrated graphics, while at the time I was on my MacBook. It was great fun, and since then we’ve played Borderlands 2 together, as well as Battlefield 3. The latter is the game that has encouraged me to build this computer for him. I’ve played BF3 on his laptop, and it is complete poo. Seriously. He’s playing at 800x600, minimum details and can just scrape 15fps. Thankfully, the thing he does best is sniping, which is the one thing that is doable on that machine. It’s a far stretch from my PC, which cranks out 100+ fps at 1080p ultra settings! I’ve let him play on my machine, and the look on his face is priceless 
He’s not a huge techie but he appreciates great looking graphics, and while he can tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps, he doesn’t quite know what it means. I’m teaching him everything slowly 
I thought he deserved much better than that, so I decided I should build him a computer. Then I also won’t get death threats shouted at me down the mic on Skype when his PC black screens
PARTS LIST
Like I said, this is a budget build, so I’ve tried to cut the cost down while also allowing the PC to last a long time (as my friend is going to a different uni I won’t be able to help with any problems all the time. But nothing’s going to go wrong with it, because I’m building it 
).
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£137.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£31.19 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Mushkin Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£62.96 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£45.50 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 270X 2GB Dual-X Video Card (£129.00 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (£27.55 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£35.80 @ Amazon UK)
Monitor: Asus VE247H 23.6" Monitor (£119.00 at Amazon UK)
Other: Windows 8.1 (£15.00)
Other: Logitech C270 webcam (£17.00)
Other: Mousemat (£5.00)
Total: £624.99
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-19 14:56 BST+0100
I've been buying things behind his back at the moment, and he doesn't have a clue 
I've been talking to his parents about the cost, and they've agreed to help me pay. I'm paying for his GPU, and his family are able to cover the rest. To save on cost, I'm going to be recycling the HDD in his laptop until he can buy himself a 1TB drive. That's the only part that's worth salvaging to be honest...
So far I have the GPU, and the monitor is arriving today. At the moment I have exams, so I can’t do much with the parts. I’ll be ordering the other parts after the last day of exams, which is on Monday. My friend has finished his exams already, which sucks 
But when the monitor arrives, I’ll have to open it up to check everything is okay. And maybe I’ll give myself dual monitors for a little while 
For now, here are some glamour shots of the parts I do have. The build should be ready by the end of next week.
--As I was typing this, the monitor arrived! So there are pictures of that too now --
The new monitor, on the right. It's a TN panel and the colours don't quite match my IPS but I've tried to get them as accurate as possible. Also, having 2 monitors is AWESOME
