Build Advice £200 Challenge

Hi All,

I am trying to upgrade an existing system. Please see the following:


Requirements

Mandatory:

1. To play the following games at the highest details, 30+ fps, and at 1280x1024:

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Battlefield Bad Company 2

2. The motherboard should have 2x16 PCIe lanes for either crossfire or sli


Optional:

1. The system should be capable of a future upgrade path


Parts Needed

The only parts required for the upgrade are:

1. Motherboard
2. CPU
3. RAM
4. Graphics Card


Budget

I only have £200 to spend on the above parts.


Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Cheers

 

That budget will just about cover motherboard and ram...

 

So that £200 is for which of those 4 items?

 

unless you want to try ebay or go rumaging through skips you wont get those 4 components for 200 quid. not if they are meant to have an upgrade path anyway.

I can maybe think of 1 set, get a am3 sempron, dirt-cheap am3 motherboard, some dirt cheap ddr3, and a cheapass gfx card. being as these will cost 50 quid each you dont get much for your money. the MB will not have crossfire, the cpu will not be very fast, you wont get much ram, and the gfx card wont play those games at a high level of quality.

 

Thats hard if not impossible. The best for those "mandatory" requirements would be:

CPU: Phenom II X3 720 BE £97.00

Motherboard: Asus M4A79XTD EVO £82.77

RAM: 2x 2GB Corsair DDR3 (1333) £69.24 (for both sets)

Graphic s Card: 1GB Sapphire HD 4890 Vapor-X £161.22

Total: £410.33

Conclusion: You need about double the money for what you are looking for

Rotcrack

PS: How long have you been building computers?

 

Due to the roof splintering price rise of memory recently then £200 simply isn't enough for a DDR2 or DDR3 system that can play games , extended to £300 should manage some lightish gaming...

CPU - AMD Phenom II X2 545 (BE isn't necessary and it'll save you £10 to go with this one)

GPU - XFX 512MB 4870 (though If you can get a 1GB version)

RAM - Anything you can find really for a decent prices (4GB minimum) but for the sake of consistency this kit is from scan - Corsair XMS3 4GB 1600MHz CAS 9-9-9-24

Motherboard: MSI 770-C45 (scored well with bit-tech, and cheap)

 

It should run it, but it'll struggle if I'm honest...




Just a note, Bad Company 2 doesn't have released running specs yet, so I'd wait until it does before buying anything at all... maybe by then you'll have enough money to get a GOOD system

 

Thanks to everyone that's replied so far, so quickly, and so nicely. I have definitely come to the right forum.

In fairness to everyone, I should have said that I would be trying to get all the needed parts from ebay. It's been years since I last built my own rig (see below, which is not the machine being upgraded), and I've only really understood and kept upto date with Intel/Nvidia progress since. Today, it sounds like the AMD/ATI combination, although not ultimately faster than Intel/Nvidia like-for-like, is a much better bang for each buck.

Ideally it would be great if I could get a shopping list of parts, upto 2 years old, that I could use to hunt with on ebay. I'll be looking/hoping on ebay over the next 30 days. I suspect that most people's lists will mention AMD/ATI, and that's the area where I need the most help.

Thanks again for all the input so far.

Cheers

evga 680i
e6600@3.4GHz
4GB Corsair XMS2 6400C4
2x9800GTX SLI @ 1280x1024

 

Ive already posted it but for the sake of making a strong argument I will post again

CPU: Phenom II X3 720 BE £97.00

Motherboard: Asus M4A79XTD EVO £82.77

RAM: 2x 2GB Corsair DDR3 (1333) £69.24 (for both sets)

Graphic s Card: 1GB Sapphire HD 4890 Vapor-X £161.22

Rotcrack

 

gfx card seems a little OTT for what the OP wants

 

Yeah a 4890 is well OTT for 1280x1024 gaming!

 

Yup but OTT = good when your budget is that low, it gives you headroom

 

No... by definition OTT is excessive, therefore unnecessary, therefore bad when working to a budget

 

By definition OTT is over the top, by definition headroom is extra room for growth and increase... you see where I am going here?

 

Yes I see where you're going but you seem to misunderstand the term "budget". A 4890 would be 3/4 of that £200 budget in one go and therefore is not a helpful suggestion.

 

I stick with my suggestion of the 4650, maybe a 4830 if the budget allows (Or a 9600GT if you prefer NVidia)

E7400 or E8400 are about your price range

Look for any P35, P45 or X48 boards (there's a P35 MSI board, mint condition on tehre now for £50), they tend to be pretty reliable and better for overclocking than some other chipsets.

Then pretty much any DDR2 RAM that'll work in the motherboard (most if not all motherboards will support 800MHz, some 1066MHz, just do some research on the board before you get it