Hardware Building a £400 Gaming PC

very good to see an article like this on Bit. for comparison, the same system would cost ~$1000 NZ which translates to just under £400 (minus shipping but including tax). very good to know that you can get a good budget gaming PC for that money.
over here (new Zealand) in a local department store (Harvey Norman) I've seen for $2300 a pc with a sempron 2.2GHz 2GB ram 160GB HDD HD-DVD drive (unknown if it burns them - they seem to be peddling off a dieing format besides) and usually an 8400GS with a 19"lcd, keyboard mouse & speakers. Here you can get a slightly better specced machine for $1066 {£407} (minus a screen, keyboard and mouse, but still a better deal) <E4600 2.4GHz, 2GB DDR2-667, ASUS P5KPL-VM Intel G31, 500GB HDD, 8400gs, unnamed DVD burner & either XP pro or Vista business>. every time I hear someone talk about getting a new PC I tell them to keep as far away from Harvey Norman as possible.

 

I agree, the cheapest case will do...a cardboard box will do!
Bought a so called "Gamer" case though...only real benefit is it coming with fanfilters pre-installed...which I need because of the case standing on the ground an there's a cat around producing dustmice.
Otherwise no pluspoints to the cardboard box i used before (was even quieter)

...of course going to LAN's changed that...and the Shuttle comes with a case ;-)

 

Personal or not it's not a gaming PC when you haven't bought a monitor, speakers, a mouse and a keyboard. All you bought for £400 was a case with stuff in it, it's in no way usable without spending £1XX(+) more on said items >_<

 

Some people do though, some people have very complex RAID setup. I myself have 3 hard drives plus an external hard drive, and because of my small case (it's anything but small compared to the average PC you'd get from someone like Dell) and the length of the graphics card, I can't put another HDD in one of my 2 remaining slots, if I had SLI then I wouldn't be able to put any more in at all.

You don't necessarily want to fill all of them up either, as a big block of hard drives in front of the intake of your PC won't do good things for the cooling of your case.

With the front bays, as shown in the article, spare bays are great for hiding unused cables so it looks nice and doesn't screw with the airflow. Two optical drives is also the norm usually, and people also have things such as fan controllers, displays, etc.

More expensive cases also have sound dampening, and air filters, although my case has an air filter, it's poorly designed and there's still a large gap that it sucks loads of dust through.

There is a point to the more expensive and bigger cases, but I do agree that for the average consumer, a case like in the article is perfectly fine, but as Tim said, he had trouble getting the PSU to fit into the thing and a removable motherboard tray would make it easier to build the PC. It doesn't look too bad either, we've moved on from the era where any case that wasn't beige and horrible costs the earth, but then again it doesn't really look that good.

 

How loud is the system - the PSU in my PC is really loud (it's actually one that you gave me Tim - it sounds like a hoover). I want an affordable PSU (round the £30) that is nice and quiet!

 

its a comparison with consoles tho isnt it... and you dont get a free hdtv with your console do you...

 

Don't you? :O

edit: So in summary they are both useless lumps, how wonderful

 

I got all excited until i realized this wasn't in dollars. I compared around and realized its about $800 US.
Still a nice article to help get my bearings set straight. Similar things in the future would rock.

 

Well everything is real cheap now, last year you couldn't get a decent pair of 2GB sticks for under £150, I spent £250.

 

I wouldn't be suprised if the same system cost less than $600 (or £300) in the US.

 

400 pounds! That is one heavy computer. Hope you have a reinforced desk for that mammoth to sit on.

 

US prices would be nearly on the dot. As virtually any website you buy parts off of you dont pay tax. Unless you live in the state that the website is run from. I built my rig virtually tax free (other then OS, but got a great deal on that anyway).

Great article, very economic.

 

So how much would a similar system cost you from a US web site (ex tax)?

 

American Pricing

E2180 - $60
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3505668

Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic - $175
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...u=P458-9600&srkey=Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic

Gigabyte GA-P31-S3G - $75
(I couldn't find the actual Bit board on Tiger/NewEgg
so someone will have to tell me if this isn't the closest match.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128077

Corsair XMS2 DHX 2GB (2x1GB) - $32
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3089875&CatId=2368

Corsair VX450W - $70
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...s.asp?EdpNo=3287208&sku=C13-2500&srkey=VX450W

Cool Master Elite 330 Case - $50
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2541414&CatId=1843

Western Digital WD2500AAJS 250GB HD - $65
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...dpNo=3540620&sku=TSD-250AAJS&srkey=WD2500AAJS

Phillips SPD2415BD Combo-Drive - $25
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3606229&CatId=89

Vista Home Premium (OEM) - $110
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3746812&CatId=306

Total Before Shipping - $662
After Shipping - $687

(Tiger doesn't charge local sales tax. Living in Iowa though its 0.07c on the dollar. Meaning {Total Cost} * 1.07 )

So all-in-all this came out much cheaper then expected.

(Someone explain though why a "8800gt" was cost-prohibitive when I see it here for $180.)
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3897642&CatId=3670

====================
(Its all from Tiger, except for the Motherboard, cause they didn't have it. I use Tiger cause I trust them. If you know better deals, shout out!)

 

Priced out basically the same system on newegg for the US, $594.83 shipped (after rebates). Differences in system are...

XFX PVT88PYSF4 GeForce 8800 GT 512MB - instead of the 9600GT. With the current rebates on this card, it's actually cheaper then most 9600GT's.
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB TWIN2X2048-6400C4 - Ram was CAS 4 instead of the CAS 5 in the article. Same series, but it was cheaper with the rebate.
COOLER MASTER Elite 340 - they didn't have the 331.

 

So at

594.83 = 302.992 GBP

Ouch!

 

God bless America

 

As Angel O' Death said though, that was with rebates. I tried to price mine without.
349.940625 (Or L350) is about what it would cost for my set up.
Still fifty pounds less. I always thought the US was getting screwed by the exchange rate.
Apparently its not quite as cut and dry as that though.

 

I never quite understood the rebates, are they basiclly there so the lazy pay more?

 

You mail them in, get money off. Its incentive to buy from that company over another company.
However I have some problems with getting the rebates and they take so damn long, and you have to fork up full-price first---
I actually will go out of my way to find items WITHOUT a rebate.