i have around 800 and im looking to build a tower.. what do u recommend I get?? What would u get with 800?? I dont need monitor, keyboard or mouse..
Core2duo E6300, Gigabyte DS3, a gig of DDR2 667, enhance ENS5150, a 7600 series card, and whatever else case, dvd burner, hard drive, etc. Lazlow, in the US, $800 will get you a LOT farther than $800 in the UK. in the uk everything is like, 800£ for what you would get $800 at in the states. pretty much.
or this http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/01112006/62/640-bhp-police-car-0.html i hate living in england now, as i see where tax payers money goes! uni is so expensive! £3000 a year tuition fee! Sorry its off topic!
Bbq.of.DooM pretty much has the solid rec for that price range, depending on whether or not you'll be doing any overclocking etc... I would make a few minor tweaks to that but otherwise solid. I just built two systems for friends that had VERY strict $800 budgets (LCDs in hand already): $181.99 Intel Dual C2D E6300 CPU $ 56.99 ASRock 775Dual-VSTA* $214.99 A-Data ADQPE1A16K 2X1GB DDR2 667** $ 88.99 3D Fuzion 3DFR76256GSE 7600GS*** $ 69.99 Antec NSK 4400 w/ 380W PS**** $ 69.99 Samsung SP2504C 250GB HD $ 30.99 NEC 18X DVD+-R DVD Burner ------- $713.82 ------- $794 TOTAL (w/ ship/taxes) * Very little if any default overclocking (but using the Core 2 Duo Voltage Boost mod I found at vrzone.com I got some very decent OC for the price). ** You could save a few bucks with other generic ram but I had great success with these. *** Yes the mobo PCI-E is limited to 4X but it can handle this card with no impact on performance based on the testing I did. **** Too many case choices and many that are cheaper but I found this combo to be high quality as long as you're not going overboard. Ran two instances of Prime95 on these boxes for 72+ hours with no burps, for the money they are nice little systems. You could save some money by buying a Pentium D instead but I prefer the Core 2 Duo.
Nnyan's got a pretty good setup there. Don't think you'll go too far wrong with that. However... Dispite the budget limits I do think the motherboard may hold back upgrade potential and changing a mobo is a pain in the a***. Maybe over the next year or two you'll want to go to DX10 and Vista. PCI-E x4 will hold you back graphically with more powerful cards in future and I would guess in a couple of years we'll be discussing the advantages of 4Gigs of RAM.
The motherboard could be changed for the ABIT SG-95 at $2 less of a cost. This way you get around the x4 limit on the PCI-E for future upgrades, and ABIT is a pretty good manufacturer for mobos! The only disadvantage of the SG-95 is that it's micro-atx, so less PCI slots
It would have been about £12,000 for me... and I'm still a UK Citizen, just living abroad. Hence Canada! On topic: I like what Nnyan put together for you, but I might suggest going for a single stick of 1 GB of RAM at first, and putting the money into the motherboard instead. Another stick of 1GB RAM can easily be bought later and then added to the system, but you won't be able to upgrade the motherboard anywhere like as easily. Plus the motherboard is the backbone of the whole system... worth putting money into.
If you do go with one stick of ram, get a good P965 chipset motherboard, like the ASUS P5B-E or the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3.
