New build for a fraction under £500

[X-Morgan]

Hey everyone, first time poster and a 5 year lurker

After being out the PC building scene for a few years, technology has really went over my head now, I just miss the nForce 2 and GeForce 4 series, seems like a million years ago now.

I've been taking a crash course on what's 'new' and I think I've come up with a nice tidy number for just under £500, I was looking into some feedback. Please feel free to criticise and suggest improvements, but keep it around the £500 mark as close as possible.

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £65.99
(£77.54) £65.99
(£77.54)
**B Grade** Samsung SM-206BW 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - G £79.99
(£93.99) £79.99
(£93.99)
Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7200S 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.99
(£15.26) £12.99
(£15.26)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2180 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.00GHz (800FSB) - Retail £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £22.99
(£27.01) £22.99
(£27.01)
Gainward ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £99.99
(£117.49) £99.99
(£117.49)
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A33423) £25.99
(£30.54) £25.99
(£30.54)
Antec Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU (CMPSU-450VXUK) £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Sub Total : £417.91
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £7.48
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £74.44
Total : £499.83

As you can see, I've got the E2180, but I've heard that OC's quite well. It'll be cooled with an AC Freezer 7.

Many thanks for the help!

 

[Will_3rd]

the only criticism I would level would be to get a bigger and faster HDD, apart from that looks solid enough

oh and claimed btw

 

[jennidc]

Build

Good alround build - personally I would save extra money for a better processor -
if you added just £70 (2 weeks off the beer ) you could go quad with a 6600 and have the potential to OC upto 3.6 with 4 cores. Or if you prefer dualies you coud go for a Wolfdale 3Ghz and potentially get to 4ghz

 

[jrwagh333]

or you could cut some money somewhere and get an entry level water cooler from swiftech?

I have the H20-220 compact but the H20-120 would be much better than >95% of the air coolers

 

[Meloco]

I would think about changing the processor to an E8400, some good deals around. Also, 4GB ram makes a hell of a difference. Especially if you are using Vista. Other than that looks good, (maybe try the hyper 580w psu, i've got it and works a charm in that case with a similar spec).

 

[sibeer]

The Samung 320GB HDD would be a decent cheap upgrade for your main drive. Much faster than the IBM and a little more room for not much extra dollar. Also agree with Meloco'c suggestion for the Hyper (save a few quid too).

CPU wise the E8400 is really the best for a gaming system, but you will have to find £117 for that and cash for a better cooler (around £35). That said the better cooler will probably be needed anyway to clock your current cheap CPU option. If it was me I would save a little more, or buy an even cheaper CPU with a view to sticking on ebay and replacing ASAP.

RAM I would always recomend the 1066Mhz stuff for an Overclocking machine, just for the free headroom. 2GB is fine for XP, but if going Vista be sure to install Vista 64 and get 4GB.

 

[X-Morgan]

the only criticism I would level would be to get a bigger and faster HDD, apart from that looks solid enough

oh and claimed btw

So your advice has a price then? Very good, steal the new guys cheap eye candy

Good alround build - personally I would save extra money for a better processor -
if you added just £70 (2 weeks off the beer ) you could go quad with a 6600 and have the potential to OC upto 3.6 with 4 cores. Or if you prefer dualies you coud go for a Wolfdale 3Ghz and potentially get to 4ghz

I'm not too sure that a quad core CPU would really be utilised on my build, but a Wolfdale does sound tempting with 6MB of L2 onboard though

or you could cut some money somewhere and get an entry level water cooler from swiftech?

I have the H20-220 compact but the H20-120 would be much better than >95% of the air coolers

Water and electronics gives me the fear, so no water set up for me! Argh, just the thought of dampening down the magic smoke with water ..... argh!



Many thanks guys for your help, I'll have a wee quick look and see if I can spare the extra cash for a better build.

Also, as a wee quickie, is it worth the extra tenner to get the Pro version of the Asus board?

 

[Namistai]

Not a bad spec you've put together - but let me make a couple of suggestions

Firstly, I'd change the CPU for an E5200. It uses the newer Intel core architecture and should overclock excellently, and is only about £9 more. The 2180 is a great chip, but it's really not sensible to scrimp on £9 over the E5200

The only other thing I would change is the hard drive to a Samsung Spinpoint F1 320gb. These use more dense platters which are therefore faster than the 250gb. They're also very cheap

Otherwise your spec is spot on imo You could go for 4gb and it would make a good difference, but this is something you can always easily upgrade later on (sell the 2gb kit to a friend or on ebay, then buy a 4gb kit )