Build Advice £400-500 for a new gaming PC, been a LONG time since I built my current one

Hoping someone could recommend some pieces for a new PC

I made this PC about 8 years ago and have just been swapping bits (including the whole case) as they break over time. It is really on it's last legs now (random crashes, fans failing etc) and I've decided to build a new one finally.

Budget: £500 just base unit. Gaming PC

The native resolution of your monitor:1280*1024

Whether you will be overclocking or not:Happy to with a little help. Overclock my current 9800pro but that is it.

How much storage space you require:500gb would be nice, but not needed as I have a 1TB external HDD

Don't supose someone could throw together a few pieces for me Just the base unit, happy with my mouse and stuff

 

Welcome!

I would strongly suggest checking out the buyers guide we do:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2010/02/03/what-hardware-should-i-buy-february-2010/1

and doing the leg work from there. Most people will suggest corrections to your choices, but won't do your work for you

 

It would also be helpful if you could have a rapid flick through here, which will give us all the information we need and might help you make decisions too.

 

corrected

 

£500 isn't a lot of money for a whole PC, and I'm assuming that there isn't much we can salvage from your current build? What case is it in? What PSU does it have? (At this budget, that is going to make a difference.) I assume your HDDs are useless old IDE drives.

At the moment, I'm leaning towards an i3 530 build, or an Athlon X2 250. Will spec one out for you if you can confirm that this a purely/mostly gaming PC, and if there's any parts we can carry over.

 

This PC is a athlon 3000+, 9800pro, 1gb RAM, IDE 80gb HDD that is failing, PSW that's FAN is dying and mamkes a horrible noise. Not sure of the MoBo, so ye nothing can really be salvaged. i will probably give this PC to a friend really.

Yes it is pretty much purley for gaming, and work but that doesn't need anything really...

 

OK. Games still aren't really coded to take advantage of four cores (not that there's a reasonable quad you could really afford) so we'll stick with duals.

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250 £52
Motherboard: MSI 770-C45 £49

- OR -

CPU: Intel Core i3 530 £93
Motherboard: Gigabyte G-H55M-UD2H £75

- AND -

CPU Cooler: Gelid Tranquillo £24
TIM: Included with the Tranquillo. That said, there isn't very much, so consider a tube of Arctic Silver 5 (£6).
RAM: Geil Value 4GB 1600Mhz DDR3 CL9 £85
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB £39
GPU: ATi HD 5770 1GB £116
PSU: Corsair CX400W £39
Optical Drive: Sony AD-7240S-0B £17 - These are all the same really so whatever you like.
Chassis: Antec Three Hundred £41
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Total: £462 for the Athlon system, £529 for the Core i3 system.

The Core i3 really is a boost over the Athlon, so if you can stretch to that, that would be worthwhile. The i3 build is very solid - the 5770 is the best mid-range 'card around, it's more than powerful enough for your little screen and whatever eventually replaces that. You might be able to save a little money by dropping to a worse 'card, but in practice you won't save much money and performance will take a real hit. If you can reuse your old optical drive, that would save almost all the money you need. Other things that you will need in the long term are two 120mm fans (GPU exhaust and HDD intake) that you can probably nick from your old case?

Hope that helps!

 

Thank you so much!

I will go for the upper system as I am not buying it for another 6 weeks so I can save on some other things

 

£500 might be enough to swap the Athlon for a quad-core Athlon or a Phenom 2 X2 550 or 555? Dunno about the prices over there, though.

 

Have a look at my base unit spec at the bottom of this post. It cost me just over £500. The GPU is an older model and works well and cost me £75 but you might want to try and find a newer design like the 5770 mentioned above for not a lot more.

 

The Phenom II X2s are good CPUs, but they're inferior to the i3 so if you can do i3, stick with that. The only Phenom that can put the 530 in it's place is the Phenom II X4 965 BE, and that's some £60 more expensive (and the gaming won't benefit much, if at all, from the quad). The Athlon X4 is an all-round disaster (I won't C&P again, but read why here); there just isn't a first-hand quad-core solution at this sort of price level that's any good at all. The 4850's a good 'card, but again, it's the 4890 that's the 5770's competitor and that's power-hungry and doesn't support DX11...

 

I personally with PureSilver completely. If you check my sig, all those parts are budget except the sound card and power supply.

CPU: AMD Athlon II x2 250 (AM2+) PureSilver is right about the quad cores. Very few games or programs actually utilize all those cores. The Athlon II's have really great prices right now and have a really great bang-for-your-buck.

CPU cooler: Coolermaster Hyper n520. This cooler keeps my 20% overclock nice and cool.

Thermal Paste: OCZ Freeze Thermal Extreme Never use the junk that comes with the cpu and cpu coolers. If you are ordering online try to get the Arctic Freeze Silver compound. It's the best paste out there as PureSilver said.

GPU: Nvidia GTS 250 1gb GDDR3 Most wont agree with me on the GTS 250. Most will say it's just a rebranded 9800 GTX+. Well whatever Nvidia did, it runs Crysis on High (not Very High) graphics with a constant 32 fps. It rarely dips below 27.

or.... and ATI Radeon HD 4870/4890. The 4770's were great cards but now the 4870's have come down in price and they are great cards. Better than the GTS 250 but a little bit more money. It's up to you on the cards based on your budget. Although, keep in my mind that the GPU is the last place to skimp on if you play lots of demanding games.

Mobo: Gigabyte MA770-UD3 This is a great budget motherboard with lots of PCI slots for you to add sound cards and wireless adapters or anything else you might want or need.

RAM: PNY Optima 2gb Dual Channel 800mhz Ram. I recommend dual channel 800mhz ram because..... it's what I use! And it gets the job done.

PSU: Corsair 400w Corsair makes solid power supplies that have really great reviews and reliability. They recommended Corsair here on Bit-tech when i built my first rig. It also supplies 30amps on the +12v rail.

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue Great brand. They haven't failed me yet. 500gb is more than enough unless you are a dvd maniac.

Optical: Samsung TS-H662A DVDRW Drive. This was actually the Bit-Tech editors' favorite drive for a long time due to the low price and amazing read/write capabilities. And once again it's also the one I use.

Case: The case is usually the first thing to choose but I'm not sure on your color/design preference so I'll leave that to you. The Coolermaster HAF is a great case. Spacious and has lots of airflow. And, if you decide to watercool in the future it has plenty of space for that and a predrilled holes for a radiator up top. And it comes with a big ass red fan!

The cost of this rig I just described came out to 315.00 (GBP) I left you room to upgrade or change things around to suit your needs. You may want more RAM or a better PSU for future upgrades.

I apologize in advance if I sound like I'm talking to you as if you don't know anything. It's a habit.

Good Luck!

 

Yeah the L3 may make Athlons a cheat and not even worth the price, but the 635 sure felt snappy in my use.. I guess it also depends on the test/program used if the lack of L3 makes the chips totally useless to everyone. Anyway getting a Phenom 550/555 might be a better bet all-round and also gives you the chance of unlocking.

(I already said "chance", don't come yelling how unlikely it is...)

 

dont buy quads at this price range mhz not cores

 

Bear in mind those prices don't include the cost of the OS, which takes you to circa £600

Have you considered a package build? http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ShowSystem.asp?SystemID=1011 or some of the starter bundles?

As an aside, i don't entirely agree with the quads theme, GTA IV certainly uses them. Things are changing, it's worth considering a quad or i3

 

I was thinking of just using my current XP tbh, is that a silly idea? Would it hold the hardware back atall?

I wouldn't include the cost of the OS anyyway as I can get it pretty cheap

Think I can push my price range up another £100 to £500-600 as I am saving a lot at the moment.

Thank you so much for the links again btw I won't be building for atleast a month so things will be even cheaper I guess.

 

The performance difference between an i3 and the Phenom II X2 isn't NEARLY enough to justify an extra £20 which is ~ 30% extra on the price of the Phenom, I'd stick with a Phenom, its also easy as to overclock, just shunt up the multiplier to 18 or 20, maybe play with the voltages a teeny bit and its pretty stable

I agree with that but tbh the Athlon X4 is demonized a bit much on these forums, I can think several applications where those extra 2 slower cores would me more useful

Regarding OS, considering the price of Win 7 right now going with XP is a silly choice
and as for Graphics card, a 4890 or 5770 will suit you, the 5770 runs cool so if you buy an aftermarket cooler then you could push its clock speeds quite high, if you want to avoid Overclocking just stick with a 4890

Btw - I've got to mention, it may be trivial but avoid the Sony Optiarc Drives, especially the 24x RW ones, I have one and its unbearably loud while reading

 

Right looks like I will be building this earlier than expected, next week infact. I will have another proper read through the links and get ordering sharpish.

Have also just confirmed a free copy of windows 7 =D

 

I would recommend going for an i3 build. Its not much more expensive and will offer better gaming performance. Should overclock easily too.

 

I have a 550, but I managed to get it for £55. If you have more cash go i3.