Hey guys, edit to include stuff: skip below for tl;dr I have just upgraded to a c2q 6600 and my PC is flying, I'm really happy with it in all games, including the RTS games I play (Supreme Commander 2, Company of Heroes, Napoleon Total War and Starcraft 2). I point out RTS games since they are likely to stress the CPU the most with all those pathfinding and trajectory calculations going on, compared to a FPS where I guess it's more limited. A friend of mine is looking to get a new PC as his old one has given up the ghost, but he is skint as anything. His mum is going to put 50% towards it and they were looking at PC World £299 jobbys with IGP - I said it would do the job if you threw in a graphics card but it wouldn't be stellar. Anyway, got talking, and I agreed if he was ok with not having the same kind of return-to-base warranty that he'd get with PC world that I would build for him. Now, if I was building for myself, today, I'd either get an i5 750/760 or one of the newfangled 2500K chips. So much power for the price! The problem is, on my C2Q, I don't struggle to run games, so when looking at someone with a very small budget - does it make sense to buy a top of the line chip? tl;dr - If we wanted to build someone a computer that would satisfactorily play games for next few years on the lowest possible cost, what would we be looking at? He already has a 4650 I got him that can be recycled . Would the following suffice do you think: http://www.scan.co.uk/savedbasket/1efe7d88ecda481995023e3ebce241be Cheers!
always build to your budget theres is always something better or a slightly faster chip for an extra £500 lol. whats the budget and we can spec the best system for tha amount of money keeping gaming as the primary use. oh and you link doesnt work
Fixed the link: http://www.scan.co.uk/savedbasket/1efe7d88ecda481995023e3ebce241be If it comes in under-budget, that's a good thing! But he has max of £400 to spend.
Depending on the game a Phenom X2 550 might be a better purchase (also chance of unlocking to X4).. Saves £10 as well. As long as that's a good motherboard I can't see what to improve or where to cut costs at that budget.
hmmm £400 isnt too bad and should be able to whip something up. as its for gaming a 4650 is massively underpowered what resolutions is he intending to game at ? your build isnt too bad except id drop the rubbish athlon quadcore (cheap and nasty) they are outperformed by cheaper dualcores. could maybe swap the HDD to samsung F3 500GB which is faster and same price. minor issue though as its only a little faster and the WD blue is a good drive. swap the mobo to the excellent MSI C45 770 which is cheaper and better than the gigabyte board. is overclocking been done ? EDIT after your EDIT 4650 is not good enough for 1680x1050/1600x900 hell its not good enough for 1280x1024. id drop the quadcore down to a 245/250 overclock it. £400 is a stretch if you choose to upgrade the GPU though and i dont think you will be able to do it with a decent GPU unless you get a 2nd hand bargin or up the budge to £450
A guy on the marketplace is selling 5770's, these would perform much better, can't remember the price though... Edit: They're £75 and he still has one left...
Scan's Today Only page: Coolermaster Elite 335 Black Mid Tower Computer Case - £23.99 Intel Core i3 540 Dual Core Clarkdale 32nm, 3.06GHz, 4MB Cache, 73W, Integrated GPU @ 733MHz, Retail - £81.00 Asus P7H55-M LX, Intel H55, S 1156, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 1066/1333, SATA 3Gb/s RAID, MATX, VGA - £53.99 Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB Hard Drive - £29.39 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.65V - £35.99 Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM - £80.48 Play.com OCZ OCZ500MXSP-UK / ModXStream Pro / 500W / ATX / PSU - £49.99 Total = £354.83 That leaves £45.17 for a GPU - not enough for a decent one, let alone another case fan (only one comes with the case) and a decent cooler if overclocking (stock will struggle with an overclock). Factor in another £20-£25 for another case fan and an Arctic Freezer 7 CPU cooler. I would suggest using the crappy old 4650 until either a) he can afford £75 for a 2nd hand GTX260 or HD5770 or b) save enough for a new 768MB GTX460 (circa £110). Then overclock the nuts of the i3 540. The only other alternative I can see is to source more parts 2nd hand. Lurk in the marketplace. Edit: forgot to add an optical drive, add another £12.
you could lower the cost by opting for the corsair builders PSU which is cheaper. or try and get the coolermaster eilte 335 with a coolermaster 460W PSU - ive used these before on budget build and never had an issue. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/cool...r-case-black-with-coolermaster-elite-460w-psu
Price of Win 7 has gone up too, OP might be able to find it elsewhere cheaper. I thought of the case + PSU option but those PSU's are really pants, they can't output 430w, let alone 460w. Linky: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Cooler-Master-Elite-Power-460-W-Power-Supply-Review/1005/9
