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Build Advice Introducing the sub £310 PC that can play games!

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Blogins, 12 Nov 2012.

  1. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Prices are accurate at the time of writing. Just interested in what sort of functional PC I could build for as little money as possible. So with that in mind and shamelessly poaching the excellent advice from Custom PC magazine, here's what I come up with. All prices are for the hardware alone and includes free postage from both Amazon.co.uk and ebuyer.com with postage bundled for the HDD from dabs.com (all 98 Pence of it!)...


    £34.28 Fractal Design Core 1000 Series Micro ATX Case - Black Pearl (Amazon.co.uk)
    £52.00 Be Quiet Pure Power L8 430W Modular PSU (ebuyer.com)
    £91.96 AMD A10 5800K Black Edition 3.8GHz Socket FM2 4MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor (ebuyer.com)
    £59.98 Gigabyte F2A75M-D3H Motherboard (Amazon.co.uk)
    £26.50 Crucial Ballistix BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU 8GB (4GB x2) DDR3 Memory Kit (Amazon.co.uk)
    £42.96 Seagate 500GB Barracuda SATA-600 7200RPM 16MB 3.5" Hard Drive (dabs.com)

    Running total of £307.68!

    Excluded software so no operating system, this is just the hardware. Also dropped the optical drive; does anybody actually use these now? As a footnote, optical drives are one of the few components I could not get free postage on. Excluding the 98 pence for the Seagate HDD from dabs.com!

    The only component I splashed out on a little bit is the Be Quiet 430W PSU. This can accommodate a nice discrete GPU upgrade in the future whilst making the build process a breeze being a modular PSU. So what do you reckon? Can some fat be trimmed somewhere? I think it'd make an ideal PC for family and one that can actually play recent PC games allbeit smoothly at lowly resolutions!
     
  2. [PUNK] crompers

    [PUNK] crompers Dremedial

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    Pretty amazing that you can get a reasonable gaming PC for that kind of money, so much more functionality than a PS3 at a similar price point.

    I've just bought components for a very similar ITX build, with the exception of a Lian Li case and slightly better ram (IGP loves fast ram apparently) +windows 7. Came to £500 which i think is still great considering I have a few luxuries in there. Can always throw a 7660 in for Xfire goodness too eventually.
     
  3. fdbh96

    fdbh96 What's a Dremel?

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    If it were a proper budget system, I cant really see the need for a £50 psu. Sure its a nice thing to have but so is a gpu, ssd etc, so a non modular one would probably do, and maybe from a cheaper manufacturer.
     
  4. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Its a nice system

    Cost of OS + DVD drive to install it with ( If you dont have the USB install available to you) is still another £100 on top of it though.
     
  5. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    The only thing I had in mind here was a clean clutter free building process and also an upgrade path for a discrete GPU solution in the future. With this build it'd be possible to drop in a cheap second hand GTX 470/480 for example.
     
  6. mrbungle

    mrbungle Undercooked chicken giver

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    decent attempt but id go down the 1155 route as a G860 or similar + dedicated graphics card is going to be better in most games.
     
  7. [PUNK] crompers

    [PUNK] crompers Dremedial

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    Depends what you want I guess, Trinity allows you to build a small system with very little power draw and very few fans. Intel is more powerful yes but for HTPC/light gaming purposes the APUs are good enough.
     
  8. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    True, but for a £40 saving on the CPU we're not going to get much back spending this saved money on a discrete GPU for what the AMD route offers under the A10 5800K. Open to alternatives if one can be fully specified including prices as formatted in the first post above.
     
  9. mrbungle

    mrbungle Undercooked chicken giver

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    £20.75 Asus TM-250 Black/Silver MicroATX Case w/o PSU
    £32.95 430W Corsair Builder Series CMPSU-430CXV2UK, 80%+ BRONZE Eff', Uncertified, Quiet Fan, ATX v2.3, PSU
    £50.23 Intel Pentium Dual-Core G860, S 1155, Sandy Bridge, Dual Core 3GHz, 3MB Smart Cache, 30x Core Ratio, 65W, Retail
    £32.28 MSI H61M-P25 (B3), Intel H61, S 1155, DDR3, SATA II - 3Gb/s, PCIe 2.0 (x16), D-Sub (VGA)/ DVI-D, Micro ATX
    £93.07 1GB EVGA GTX 560 Superclocked Refurbished, 40nm, 4104MHz GDDR5, GPU 750MHz, Shader 1700MHz, 336 Cores, mHDMI/ 2x DL DVI
    £41.98 500GB Seagate ST500DM002 Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5ms, NCQ
    £26.59Corsair Memory XMS3 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 Dual Channel Desktop

    £300.85

    All from Scan so free postage.
     
    Last edited: 12 Nov 2012
  10. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    Missing RAM methinks.

    Also if you're going for a cheaper case/psu you could easily do that with the trinity.

    A friend's brother is wanting a PC, and he's got around £300 to spend so this is an interesting thread.
     
  11. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Nice build mrbungle, but it does lack RAM. Also the GTX 560 needs a couple of 6-Pin where the Corsair 430W only provides one. Not too keen on the case dimensions and lack of a fan to be honest in comparison to the Fractal.
     
  12. KidMod-Southpaw

    KidMod-Southpaw Super Spamming Saiyan

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    Even the OS would be cheap for the time being. The Windows 8 download from Microsoft is only £25. :)
     
  13. mrbungle

    mrbungle Undercooked chicken giver

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    Sorry thats inc mem pricewise just missed it out when i copied across.

    Could get the fractal for the extra £10 too :)
     
  14. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    I'm going to be burned at the stake for this! :D

    Here's a really nasty build with PSU included in a sub £30 case that will probably explode and burn your house down (you have been warned!)!!

    £23.96 CiT Imp Micro ATX Case 500W (scan.co.uk)
    £50.23 Intel Pentium Dual-Core G860 Retail (scan.co.uk)
    £32.28 MSI H61M-P25 (B3), Micro-ATX (scan.co.uk)
    £29.10 Samsung HN-M250MBB 250GB 2.5" 8MB CACHE 5400RPM HARD DRIVE (scan.co.uk)
    £15.51 Corsair CMX4GX3M1A1333C9 XMS3 Desktop Memory 4GB (Amazon.co.uk)
    £149.99 Sapphire HD 7850 OC Edition 2GB (ebuyer.com)

    Grand total is £301.07!

    Without a doubt if this was to be a real build then you'd have to rely upon some adapters to come with the 7850 to power the card from a molex connection. To reiterate, personally I would have no faith whatsoever in the PSU included with the CiT Imp Micro ATX Case! There's a chance it might just work however and would be a capable little gaming rig if it did!
     
  15. docodine

    docodine killed a guy once

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    You'll want faster RAM for the 5800k:

    http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/46073-amd-a10-5800k-trinity-needs-faster-ram/?page=3

    2133 or 2400 RAM really helps it perform.

    PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

    CPU: AMD A10-5800K 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor ($124.99 @ NCIX US)
    CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($24.99 @ Newegg)
    Motherboard: ASRock FM2A75M-DGS Micro ATX FM2 Motherboard ($55.98 @ Newegg)
    Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($34.99 @ Newegg)
    Case: Rosewill FBM-02 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
    Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 380W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($39.99 @ Newegg)
    Total: $309.93
    (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
    (Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-11-12 15:59 EST-0500)
     
    Last edited: 12 Nov 2012
  16. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Unfortunately I couldn't find any to bring it under the £310 threshold. Also didn't want to dip below 8GB because 5800K consumes some as video memory. Unless 4GB at 2133/2400 would be adequate whilst gaming?
     
  17. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    For us Brits, that build by docodine costs just £195 which I find sickening! For the benefit of our American cousins, £310 is not too far off $500. Technology and everything else is expensive this side of the Atlantic! :wallbash:
     
  18. mrbungle

    mrbungle Undercooked chicken giver

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    I spec'd the very same rig for the 7850 but thought best of it :D
     
  19. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Interesting experiment though!

    Saying that, in the dim past I have built systems around bundled PSU/Case combos without any problems.
     
  20. docodine

    docodine killed a guy once

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    4GB is fine if it's just for gaming, it's not like you'll be doing much with the 7660D that needs 8GB
     

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