Hi ppl, Budget: £700 Main uses of intended build: Gaming Previous build information: non salvageable Monitor resolution: 24" 1920x1080 (already own monitor) Storage requirements: 500gb will suffice Overclocking: yes, but not a great deal Motherboard requirements: possibly usb 3.0 and new sata Right now I am probabily looking for a i5 setup, any suggestions???
Here's what I'd get: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition: £85,25 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair DDR3 PC3-10666: £94,99 Asus M4A87TD EVO, AMD 870, S AM3: £91,50 1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3: £54,84 1GB Asus HD 5850 , PCI-E 2.0 (x16): £223,23 Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM: £82.33 Total: £605,14 inc. VAT Some comments: didn't include case, as this is something you should choose for yourself And, as the HDD is only £54, you don't really save much by going with a 500GB HDD imho. Also, don't know if the mobo is capable of unlocking cores, I recommend looking into that as well. Another option is going with an i5/i3, but the price will increase accordingly so you'd have to take that into account - by all means, this should be a very capable gaming beast, especially as your resolution is high enough that the CPU won't be a bottleneck 90% of the time. Also, I think the Intel motherboards that would support crossfire are more expensive. Alternate mobo: same as mine, M4A79XTD EVO: unlocks easily, supports crossfire easily, is a tiny bit cheaper, yet doesn't have upsb3/sata6. Some food for thought. Hope I was of help, and feel free to update my build so I learn more as well Edit: took the list prices from Scan.co.uk. Also, I didn't put together an i5 build for you, as I'm a bit dark in the mobos for i5 cpu-s.
haven't managed an i5 setup for under £650. the 'best' i could manage is £750 http://www.scan.co.uk/savedbasket/3f26d9d0bcf94b4db6a9c9b2eaa01bec
forgot about the cooling and psu but I see that going with antec 300 + a nice cpu cooler you're easily tipping the 700£ limit. Can you stretch a bit over the budget? As there's not much to cut back on to be honest, at your resolution i'd really recommend at least a 5850 to be able to enjoy full details in almost all games
you wont get an i5 setup for under £650 problem is adding your hard disk means he has no case which would be intresting. the setup is the way to go change the cpu to amd 250 its more than fast enough. MSI board is like £40 why would you spend double that on the asus? you can save over £100 on the cpu and motherboard which allows you to get a decent case and the samsung hard disk granted you may get more cores with the black edition but its a risk not worth taking. If you want a quad core you need more money. the cheapest i5 build i got to that could play games at 1920x1080 ( aka 5850 5830 cards) was around £720 for the 5830 and closer to £800 for the 5850. That includes case but not windows 7 which would put prices up alot 5770 would allow i5 build but its not powerful enough for 1920 x 1080 and your below £600 with case which isnt too bad
True that the amd 250 is fast enough, however there are cases where the L3 cache really ups performance... now put all components: amd 250, msi 770-c45, 500GB seagate, antec 300, titan fenrir and you're up to ~£735 with W7. getting lower than that, and you'll have to sacrifice some performance... or alternately you could skip the fenrir at first, which brings you just a tiny bit over £700.
you can just about get a Core i5 for just under £700 and overclockers are not the cheapest around but shows it can be done minus the OS http://www.overclockers.co.uk/viewcart.php
I got the MSI 770-G45 board about two weeks ago for a build for my little brother and it one of the best board iv seen (for that price bracket).It easily overclocked the 240 to 3.6ghz and will go higher Also i would recommend getting an F3 1tb drive as it is only slightly more expensive than a 500gb and you get brilliant proformance and an extra 500gb, i can not recommend these drives enough
Right got back from work so just a few things to update -I dont need an OS I got Win7 I need to amend my budget to £700 I would like to get me something that will last for a few years, so ideally a quad core, as more of the newer games prefer them
Well the last build I did was back 2006, and I've not been keeping up with the latest tech, after a read around and taking to a mate, he suggested going AMD, as the i5 platform wont be supported after a few years is this true???
no offense mate but I think I will pass that offer from overclockers, I've had a bad experience with them in the past and so have a couple of my mates. The company may be fine now for all I know but I will stick to ebuyer, scan, ccl etc
its a long story, too much to mention. But in a nut shell I was not a happy chappy. But as for now who knows they might have improved.
Right so how about going for a phenom 955/965 build instead they seem to be fairly good on some of the benches I've been looking at
I'd recommend for you: Case: Antec 300 You're not looking for something insane at your price, and you'd have to compromise on other stuff if you were going to go for something more expensive. CPU: i5 750. I'm not saying that the AMD models are bad, I'm just saying that I haven't used them. Personally, I try to go by my own experiences, and so I picked you the 750. Further more, for AMD chips you really want as tight latencies as possible with the ram, whilst Intel chips don't really care how loose your memory is. Memory: Corsair XMS3 1600MHz, 9-9-9-24 It's the cheapest 1600MHz kit on Scan. That's all there is to it. Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L It's the cheapest P55 motherboard on Scan from a supplier I trust. Gigabyte tend to make quality products, if anyone can find something else that would be better, great, but here's a nice cheap one. Graphics card: 5850! You can see why I've skimped so much on everything else! A 5850 will be all but essential for gaming at 1920x1200, personally I'd be wanting a 5870 for that (which clearly isn't in your budget). Hard drive: 500GB Seagate It's cheap. PSU: Corsair VX550w. It isn't much, and if you can stump up the extra £10 for the 650w that would be great. Both will work, but the 650 will give you more room for upgrades later on and will probably be quieter. DVD drive: Anything will do. Total price: £722. A little over, but it's not much over your limit and I hope you can stretch further for perhaps a better power supply. I think that would give you some great speed, and since a significant minority of 750s nowadays can overclock to about 4GHz on the stock cooler, you should be set for some reasonable overclocking even without an aftermarket cooler.
thanks for the advise. But wow the tech is changing so fast now both intel and amd have 6 core cpus. How does the phenom X6 1055 fair against the i5 I wonder?
Dw, you won't be able to afford either if you want to play games In single/dual/some quad-threaded apps the i5 will be clock-for-clock just as fast as the X6. There are no real mainstream uses for six core setups yet, as far as I know. In the future, maybe, though the majority of processors sold are as of yet still dual core and occasionally quad core.
QFT, all good advice. On the thought of hexacore cpus, dream of them, because they will cost your entire budget atm .
