Budget Gaming PC upgrade £350 before getting married!!

Spon

Spon

Spon

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9 Jan 2003
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243
Hi guys,

I need your help quick. A friend of mine is getting married soon (fool!) and wants to upgrade his rig before all monies are allocated elsewhere by his other half!

He has £350.00 to spend and needs a CPU, mobo, RAM, graphics card, PSU and a Case to fit it all in. He is not an overclocker and wants to play things like Fallout 3, Dawn of War 2, Empire Total War and be as reliably compatable as possible. Monitor, keyboard, drives etc... he has and will re use.

Any suggestions?
 
Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £78.99
(£68.69) £78.99
(£68.69)
Asus P5QL Pro Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £64.98
(£56.50) £64.98
(£56.50)
Corsair VX 450W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-450VXUK) £54.99
(£47.82) £54.99
(£47.82)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail £51.99
(£45.21) £51.99
(£45.21)
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD5001AALS) £43.99
(£38.25) £43.99
(£38.25)
Corsair XMS2 DHX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX)

Sub Total : £289.50
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £44.93
Total : £344.43


The only thing missing is the case..

|I'd recommend the 335 but unfortunately they are out of stock at the moment.. but worth maybe back ordering.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-160-CM&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=29

For £30, including VAT.. less free shipping, this will be very near to the £350 budget.
 
+1 for the Hubby's spec.

Even if he's not an overclocker he'll hit 3GHz with no issues using the stock cooler and very little tweaking.
 
sweet. thanks for the quick responces.

He will be gaming on a 19" monitor so probably 1024 x 768 or 1280×1080 at best. He's not hardcore just likes to play games easily.

Thanks for the spec Huddy, my friend wants to use his present hard drive so if I remove the Western Digital Caviar Black drive thats very affordable to add the case.

What are peoples take on the Titan Nero offer?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=FS-180-OK
 
My go :D :

AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail £79.99
(£69.56) £79.99
(£69.56)
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £76.99
(£66.95) £76.99
(£66.95)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 1GB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 1GB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £75.99
(£66.08) £75.99
(£66.08)
OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel (OCZ3P13334GK) OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel (OCZ3P13334GK) £46.99
(£40.86) £46.99
(£40.86)
OCZ StealthXStream 400w Silent ATX2 Power Supply OCZ StealthXStream 400w Silent ATX2 Power Supply £36.00
(£31.30) £36.00
(£31.30)
Asus TA-8H3 Case Midi Tower Case - Black (No PSU) Asus TA-8H3 Case Midi Tower Case - Black (No PSU) £24.99
(£21.73) £24.99
(£21.73)
Sub Total : £296.48
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £46.23
Total : £354.46
 
wow looking good!

Just the practical questions left...

is 400watts PSU enough for this?

Will everything fit into the case?
 
Just for the record, 1280x1024 is a pretty low res - I can play DOW2 at that res with everything maxed out on my puny 3850! I'm sure Fallout 3 and E:TW are slightly more demanding, but they should still look pretty good with cheaper and more modest graphics cards than the ones they specced you here.

And yes, 400W should be ok for Shadowake's spec.
 
Thats a good point, thanks for the advice.

I'm suggesting to him the following...

1) "Titan Nero" AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7850+ Black Edition 2.80GHz DDR2 System for £350.00 (inc VAT + Delivery)

2) AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail £79.99
(£69.56) £79.99
(£69.56)
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £76.99
(£66.95) £76.99
(£66.95)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 1GB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £75.99
(£66.08) £75.99
(£66.08)
Corsair VX 450W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-450VXUK) £54.99
(£47.82) £54.99
(£47.82)
OCZ Reaper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C6 1333MHz Dual Channel (OCZ3RPR13334GKK) £47.99
(£41.73) £47.99
(£41.73)
Asus TA-8H3 Case Midi Tower Case - Black (No PSU) £24.99
(£21.73) £24.99
(£21.73)
Sub Total : £313.87
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £48.84
Total : £374.46

Hopefully he'll be persuaded to spend the £25 more for the AM3 DDR3 system but that does mean I'll have to build it for him!
 
lol thanks CK61938! I've been telling him that but in his own words "its time to stick of twist" true gamer lol
 
If you had another 42 posts you could save him the shipping costs - as you would then be entitled to free shipping as a loyal member (250 posts plus over 90 day membership - link). Obviously, you would have to order it on your account.

If you've got a good overall knowledge you could probably knock out 42 post in a few of days helping ppl out across the forums.
 
Last edited:
shadowake said:
My go :D :

AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail £79.99
(£69.56) £79.99
(£69.56)
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £76.99
(£66.95) £76.99
(£66.95)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 1GB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 1GB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £75.99
(£66.08) £75.99
(£66.08)
OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel (OCZ3P13334GK) OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel (OCZ3P13334GK) £46.99
(£40.86) £46.99
(£40.86)
OCZ StealthXStream 400w Silent ATX2 Power Supply OCZ StealthXStream 400w Silent ATX2 Power Supply £36.00
(£31.30) £36.00
(£31.30)
Asus TA-8H3 Case Midi Tower Case - Black (No PSU) Asus TA-8H3 Case Midi Tower Case - Black (No PSU) £24.99
(£21.73) £24.99
(£21.73)
Sub Total : £296.48
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £46.23
Total : £354.46
Click to expand...


Amazing what a 350quid can get you nowadays :).

Some years ago you had to spend at least 1grand on a decent build and now for just over a 300 you can get a PC that will run pretty much anything up to date on maxed out settings and will do fine for the next year or two probably :).


Also if you get lucky on this you might unlock the 2 extra cores, and it's also easy to OC this up to 3.4-3.5ghz on stock cooler ( might be tought with small case tho). But even on stock speeds this is a quite powerfull beast :).

The only thing I can say is that if you gonna play on low ress - you can save some pennies on the GPU and get the cheapest 4830 for 10quid less which is an excellent card for the price as well.

Also you can get search around for cheaper mobo in the 60~ range and maybe get an AF7 Pro over the stock cooler for the extra money u saved.
 
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