£450 PC build.

[slayerspud]

Building my first PC with only a £450 budget for gaming. This is what I have so far:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
Sapphire X1950Pro 256MB
500 Gb Samsung HD501LJ Spinpoint
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400
ASUS P5K AiLifestyle Series iP35 Socket 775 eSATA

I mainly want it for playing WoW on high settings, CSS and BF 2142. Though I am still looking for a suitable case. Looking good so far?

 

[noamkot]

I just bought a E6750 three days ago and it's pretty wicked.
I believe that you should get a better GPU (or at least X1950pro with 512Mb) and a 320Gb HD would suffice unless you have some unique requirements.
A good case lasts many computer generations so invest in a good one. It's also essential to buy a decent high quality power supply and not a cheapo unbranded piece of crap that would fry your system in a power surge.

 

[jimmy j]

What about a soundcard and surround speakers?

 

[yus786]

take a look here mate cos you will find some very good pc deals posted on it

www.hotukdeals.com

they list some dell deals that are cheaper than what it costs to build yourself.

check out the forum for the deals and do a search for dell.

hope that helps

yus786

 

[FAST6191]

Normally I see a system for this sort of budget with no upgrade potential, you however are the exception so kudos.
You will be hard pushed to find any to disparage the core2 line although that motherboard does not sport the 1333MHz fronside bus of the processor. Alas a "weaker" processor will probably cost you more so a motherboard upgrade it is.
Perhaps something like this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....catid=5&subcat=
HDD: A 320GByte will do OK but for the few pounds extra you might as well go for the 500.

Do as noamkot says and spring for a decent PSU as well.

 

[coolbho3000]

Why not get an 8600GTS for about the same price as the x1950pro? About same performance with DirectX10 support. The Nvidia drivers just keep getting better for the 8xxx line, so performance may even increase.

 

[Mangofett]

Agreed. 8600GT's are now 100$ USD(not sure what that is in funny money)

 

[slayerspud]

Normally I see a system for this sort of budget with no upgrade potential, you however are the exception so kudos.
You will be hard pushed to find any to disparage the core2 line although that motherboard does not sport the 1333MHz fronside bus of the processor. Alas a "weaker" processor will probably cost you more so a motherboard upgrade it is.
Perhaps something like this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....catid=5&subcat=
HDD: A 320GByte will do OK but for the few pounds extra you might as well go for the 500.

Do as noamkot says and spring for a decent PSU as well.

Thanks for that, forgot to check about the FSB speed on the mobo. Any recommendations for a decent case / PSU? and what should I go for a x1950pro/XT, or a 8600GT/GTS?

Thanks

 

[FAST6191]

A case/PSU will likely set you back another £100 if you want to do it properly. If you have a case that will work (atx has been around for a while) I would say do that now and grab another a month or two after, if it is a really cheap case with minimal air flow then leave off overclocking and such until it is replaced.

Many of us around here ended up with an Antec 900 gamers case and I can safely suggest that:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....rodid=CA-065-AN
It is a shade on the expensive side though.

As for power you do not seem interested in crossfire/SLI, a big RAID and so forth so you can probably afford a lower power output (which will have to be upgraded when the time comes if you want to add such things). A decent one is a must though still.
I am hesitant to speculate on a wattage (500W should do but I am unsure if you will get away with lower (those 8xxx cards are fairly power hungry and overclocking cooling also ups power requirements).
Around £50 incl VAT should net you a good one.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist....atid=123&rows=0

As for graphics, dx10 for me does not enthuse (and cheap DX10 cards even more so) and in the 9 months until something absolutely requires it (let alone something that is a long tech demo) then yeah.

 

[slayerspud]

Dam, thanks for the help. Really thinking about upping my budget for that case, because it seems that I could use that for a good few years. As for the PSU I am probably going to get this Link, as it should be enough to power what I am going to get. Also for the video card, I will get a DX9 card, and will just upgrade it, in around 6 months when I have the money. So my final specs are:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, S775, 2.66 GHz, 1333MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail £122
Sapphire X1950Pro 256MB GDDR3 DVI TVO HDCP PCI-E Graphics Card £93
500 Gb Samsung HD501LJ Spinpoint T, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ £62
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 5-5-5-12 GOLD XTC £64
CoolerMaster Centurion 5 Silver Trim With Side Window - NO PSU £40
Asus P5K Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £70
500W PSU £50 or so
Total: £501

A bit over budget but still pretty happy. Can someone recommend some good speakers and mouse / keyboard for cheap?

EDIT: Just wondering if someone can have a quick look at the parts to see if they are all compatible, and does anyone know some good guides for building a PC?

Thanks

 

[FAST6191]

If you want to go under budget try and find someone with a business and get them to order it, VAT is around £75 on that. You will not see the cash for a little while (3 months is the tax period as I recall) but yeah.

PC building is square peg in square peg hole sort of thing and it comes with manuals to do it (if you do not read said manual you are asking for trouble). The most important part I find is to get the drivers (bundled stuff is usually old and bug ridden), OS and stuff to install all sorted beforehand (there are a few threads recently linking peoples choice apps up one here: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=54757&hl= ).
The only real things to make sure of are:
USB and firewire often have the same connectors (different colours or names by them though) on the motherboard: do not confuse them. Likewise the power button to the board may also be slightly confusing.
Graphics cards and motherboards tend to have two power inputs: unless the manual says otherwise (and I know of none that do) power all of them.
Loose connections are a pain, avoid them.
CPU + heatsink. The core2 line come with decent coolers but adding them can be a pain: there are several stripes of conductive paste already applied and the force of attaching the fan is supposed to spread it out. Make sure to be careful when applying this unless you want to go and buy some more (which is fairly expensive).

PSU: akasa do great PSUs (I have used them in a few builds recently and that one should work fine.
Case: I would happily give you a case (presently we are in the same town it would seem) but I am not sure I have a spare ATX one around. You can probably bring yourself into budget with a trip into town but most of those deals are junk case+PSU bundles.

All other components should work fine together.

I assume also you have a CD/DVD drive, keyboard mouse etc already.

Edit:
Missed the speakers etc.

This sort of stuff ideally gets factored in but most (myself included) leave it out of for friends/family members to get for "tech gifts". Not to mention each adds a

Mouse: laser, USB and wired is my choice. Gamers mice are not bad but are often horrendously overpriced.
Keyboard: I am suffering a £5 keyboard presently, no model numbers or anything I can suggest.
Speakers: good speakers are more than you will spend on this machine and also make a good upgrade, stick with some standard stereo stuff or even use the ones from your stereo (search for a 3.5 mm jack to RCA/phono). http://www.cableuniverse.co.uk should do them and I know there are places in town that do them for less than £10.

 

[Darkforce]

Just a few suggestions, it might be worth spending a few quid more on a graphics card and get one with 512MB of memory, you won't see a massive difference but that's what Bioshock is recommending anyways and may help tide you over that little bit longer till you need to upgrade to DX10. You may be able to pick up a card cheap on ebay what with people upgrading all of the time. ~ I picked up a 7950GT OC 512MB for £110 inc postage 4 months ago (at the time they were £160 new).

Deffo get a good case and PSU, especially if you plan to overclock. The Antec Ninehundred is sweet if you want to overclock or run a very cool system - worth the extra pennies.

Buy some thermal paste called Artic Silver (i.e. the paste that goes between your CPU and CPU cooler), it's about £4-5 a tube and it's waaaay better than the stock stuff paste included. Your machine will run upto 10 degrees c cooler.

Get some RAM with 4-4-4 timings if you can afford it, it's a bit quicker.

As for keyboard and mouse, anything logitech. If you want something cheap their EX-110 wireless keyboard and mouse bundle is a nice buy at £17 from ebuyer. Speaker wise, depends how many you want, but I'd recommend at least a 2.1 setup. You can get some nice Logitech 2.1 for around £15 [link], Altec Lansing is also quality stuff.

Have fun building your first PC! Don't worry it's not hard, it'll take a few hours and be a very satisfying experience!

And yes, you will go over budget, don't worry about it!

 

[slayerspud]

Seriously thanks for the help, going to order the stuff tonight. Will also post some pictures when I have finished building, thanks!

 

[Sinkhead]

Ask for advice on BuildYourOwn.org.uk/Forums. They're really really helpful, but the build you have there looks pretty good to me anyway.

- Sam

 

[nephdj]

personaly I would go down a few cpu's, and use the 10-20pounds saved to buy a decent 5.1 sound card

Alot of modern games are raped by onboard sound, u will loose fps from processing too many noises
pretty much any game after 2005, has this problem