Build Advice Budget Build - around the £500-£550 mark

Hey guys,

I'm looking to build a budget pc first just to see if i get the hang of building a pc and would like it to be able to play games like WoW, starcraft and dawn of war 2 smoothly, I have most of the parts, just wondering if they fit together right.

Appreciate the help guys

Budget: £500-£550

List of Parts:

Mobo: asus p7h55m

GPU: msi gtx 460 hawk

CPU: intel pentium g6950

Cooler: gelid tranquillo

PSU: antec 500w earthwatts

Case: xigmatek utgard

Ram: corsair xms 2*2gb

Internal HDD: samsung f3 1tb

and i will be overclocking.

Just wondering if all these parts fit together or if any parts need changing or if anyone has an entirely new better build, please let me know.

Thank you all

 

The parts will all fit together quite nicely but I would personally make the following changes:

Change the CPU to a Phenom X4 955 BE (or X2 555 if you want to chance an unlock). Being a quad core it will offer better all round performance than the non HT enabled G6950 whilst also overclocking quite nicely as well.

- 955 BE can be bought for around £110 (retail).

If you do want to stick with Intel in this price bracket at least go for the i3 540 as it offers the benefit of Hyper threading which does make it quicker than the G6950 at the same clock speed.

On the motherboard front take a look at the MSI 870 C54. It is a great motherboard supporting all the latest bells and whistles (USB 3.0/ SATA 6Gb/s etc) and comes in around £70.

To balance up drop the MSI Hawk in favour of one of the cheaper 460 alternatives.

Personally with that budget I would build the following:

*Case - Antec 100 - £42
*PSU - OCZ ModXstream 500w (modular) - £50 (OCUK This week only)
*CPU - Phenom II X4 955 BE - £110
*MB - MSI 870 C54 - £71
*Memory - 4GB (2x2) GeiL PC12800 DDR3 - £38 (OCUK This week only)
*HD - Samsung SP F3 1TB - £40
*GPU - MSI HD5850 Twin Frozr II - £134.99 (OCUK This week only)
*Cooler - Gelid Tranquillo - £25

Total - £511

If you need an OS add around £75 to the total for Win 7 HP 64bit OEM.

Finally if you increased your budget by around £50 you could push for a entry level Core i5 2300/2400 Sandybridge with a H67 motherboard. This would leave you without the ability to overclock though (not that you would really need too though).

 

+1 to the 955 build

although not from overclockers as even thier deals arent as good as scans prices usually + service is horrible.

 

I have ordered many a time from overclockers and they have been fine. Scan on the other hand were absolutely atrocious so it's swings and roundabouts.

Given all stores are pretty much the same when things go wrong (not particularly great) I would just purchase either from somewhere you have used in the past (that didn't give you any issues) or from where-ever is offering the best buy.

The last time I checked the MSI board was out of stock on Scan but it may be back in now.

 

I've heard of OEM products being thrown around in the forum but i don't know what it means, like whats the difference between a product thats OEM and retail?

For the mobo, do you mean the msi 870 c45 or the msi 870ug55 cause the 870ug55 is the only one i see that has the usb 3.0 and sata 6gbs that you mentioned around that price bracket?

Well i definitely prefer your build more to mine since it actually kept to the budget lol

Thank you for all the advice

 

Differences between OEM and Retail

 

^^ thank you

Okay i most of the important parts now and they all add to roughly £580, including the os
Now time to just order from both scan and ocuk!

 

The motherboard I mentioned is the MSI 870A G54 (not C54 - I got it wrong the first time).

It has both SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 (2 ports).

It's this one:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-134-MS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=1782

 

for 550-600 id really look towards a rig with a i5 or similar

especially for cpu hungry games like wow and starcraft

night and day for grunt with the amd stuff

 

A 955 should be just about as fast as an i5-750 at stock! - Plus you can upgrade to 6 core further down the line.

+1 to the 955 build.