My friend has $600 to spend (tax and shipping included, so like ~$530 total) on a desktop. He doesn't need a harddrive or cddrive, so thats my question. If you had that budget to work with, what would you go with? I spec'd out a comp for him and got all the parts together on newegg, but would love to see what others had in mind. I will help him set it up and have no issue OC'ing it for him, but things like heatsink and thermal paste are part of the cost! So, $600, GO! (please )
Here is an attempt, I don't know how optimal it is since it will probably processor bottleneck, but eh. Antec 300 - $54.95 4GB G-Skill DDR2 800 CL5 - $81.99 Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3L - $89.99 E5200 - $64.50 Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - $34.98 OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W XFX 4890 - Combo with the PSU - $244.98 Total: $571.39 with $55 of mail in rebates. That setup is tried and true, but has no upgrade path. Then again, at $600, you are a little limited. The 5200 should overclock wonderfully when combined with the P45 board. The G-Skills might limit you a little, so I would advise changing the memory straps. Though I looked into an AM3 build, I am not sold on their lower end processors. The 4890 does all the work in this one. Laz
Hah, thats just about exactly what I had, e5200, same ram and same heatsink and case, although I had a P43 gigabyte board, is the P45 much better? I had it out with a coirsair PSU though and a 9800gt. Mine came out to be around $525, mainly cause of tax and shipping. Guess I wasn't so far off. Would an OC'd e5200 be enough juice for gaming in the here and now?
here is mine case:antec 300 -54.95 mobo:gigabyte ga-ma78lm-s2h -59.99 gpu-sparkle sxs250512d3 gts 250-109.99 psu- rosewill green serious 530watt-54.99 g.skill 4gb (2x2gb) ddr2 800- 82.99 amd phenom IIXD 500 BE 3.1ghz-99.00 arctic cooling freezer 7 pro-34.98 shipping-9.66 total-506.55
Assuming both are OC'd, e5200 vs phenom....which would win out? I've never OC'd amd proc's so I don't know what goes on there
E5200 + 4890 beats X2 550 BE + GTS250 hands down. The bottleneck is in the GPU, which is why the Core 2 chips are making a resurgence - with the low cost of mobos and E5xxx CPUs, you can really beef the GPU.
the x2 550 is tied witht the E8400 so the cpu wins and the 4890 would b over kill if he doesnt do alot i mean mine is 506 without rebates the other one u need rebates and crap so u will spend over 530 then get the money bak
Does he need a monitor? And I still insist, post-OC, the graphics card will be the most important component in this, since it'll be the bottleneck in gaming. I vote Radeon 4890 over Geforce GTS250 ANY day.
So it seems the question here is where to spend the money, CPU or GPU? I get the feeling that the bottleneck would be on the GPU first though in most games. Esp cause the e5200 can be OC'd near 4GHz without too much trouble, or so I've read. Another thing is if we put more money into the Proc then are intels not valid options? Like I said I haven't had experience with AMD's but I've read they arent as capable at OC'ing as these intels are. Also, are rosewill PSU's good quality (I know it'd newegg's inhouse brand but I don't know if they make a good PSU)? I've had issues with PSU's and getting burned with ones failing on me, I've learned to only buy Corsair cause so far I haven't had a single fail. Yes, but I'm gonna loan him my old 18" 4:3 lcd, it'll do for him for a while. (I have a 27" dell that I use so a loss of that screen wouldn't change my computing life much )
