£300-400 system for gambling addict, spec help!

mart981

mart981

mart981

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My mate needs a new system, the old one I built him out the scraps I had in my bits box - pentium d and 512mb RAM isn't managing to run 2 IE windows quick enough for him these days. So he's decided to use some of his winnings to get a new box and upgrade to Win 7 Ult 64bit.

All he does with it is have a few Internet explorer/firefox windows open at a few different horse racing online gambling sites, with streaming radio and often streaming video. These sites auto update pages of odds every few seconds so it's probably the crapy RAM which is the main problem, not internet bandwidth, he had 8mb down and 1mb up last time I checked it.

Also it needs to be small and quiet and be able to support 2 monitors.

Anyway here's what I've thrown together at a first pass -

Silverstone Sugo SG01B-F Evolution Aluminium Micro-ATX Case - Black £84.99
Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X4096-6400C5C) £81.99
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.60GHz (800FSB) - Retail £54.99
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £40.98
Asus P5QPL-AM Intel G41 (Socket 775) DDR2 microATX Motherboard £39.99
OcUK 450W Dual-Rail High Efficiency Power Supply £32.99

+ XFX ATI Radeon HD 5450 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £39.99 - I assume it'll be fine with 2 monitors as it has a vga and dvi socket - will just need an adapter for the vga socket?

Total - £375.92

Or shall I just get the "Primo Trinity" pre built and phone up to get them to stick a graphics in it? Prejudice advises me against prebuilt but it seems £50 cheaper (after they add a graphics card) for a similar spec with a better CPU - I guess the main reason for holding back is the quality of the case it uses and what fans it has.

Any comments? First build too high spec for just Win 7 64 bit, heavy browsing, streaming video, office 2007, dual monitor usage?
 
"OcUK Value Black Knight Micro ATX Case" probably part of the reason it's a bit cheaper. :p But yeah the Primo (or the one you specced) should be fine for his needs. In fact 2GB RAM would probably still be more than enough.
 
Don't think it's really worth paying for a pre-overclocked bundle in this case, for his friends needs stock speeds should be fine (or a modest overclock on the intel heatsink).
 
Just had another go, got rid of expensive case, spent saving on better cpu

gamblerbuild.jpg


Had a search around for the case and it seems ok, put a couple of decent fans in, 80mm at bottom, 120mm for top position. Should be fine for everything running at stock.

Don't need or want the extra heat concern from overclocking for this build, doesn't seem much point for what he uses it for anyway.

£344.30 for the above, which is basically the same spec as the primo just + a graphics card and different case and fans.

Only question is whether to pay a bit more to get a modular PSU to reduce clutter in the small case. Or just chuck all this out and get the Primo after all :)

OcUK do a £10 cheaper modular PSU than the Antec Basiq 550W but 650W's seems like even bigger overkill for this build.

Maybe I'll just get the wire cutters out and put new terminals on the spare leads, like floppy, SATA power etc. He won't need them to upgrade anyway :)

The graphics card is alright though? Will be able to support 2 monitors from it using the vga and dvi sockets?
 
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mart981 said:
Just had another go, got rid of expensive case, spent saving on better cpu

gamblerbuild.jpg


Had a search around for the case and it seems ok, put a couple of decent fans in, 80mm at bottom, 120mm for top position. Should be fine for everything running at stock.

Don't need or want the extra heat concern from overclocking for this build, doesn't seem much point for what he uses it for anyway.

£344.30 for the above, which is basically the same spec as the primo just + a graphics card and different case and fans.

Only question is whether to pay a bit more to get a modular PSU to reduce clutter in the small case. Or just chuck all this out and get the Primo after all :)

OcUK do a £10 cheaper modular PSU than the Antec Basiq 550W but 650W's seems like even bigger overkill for this build.

Maybe I'll just get the wire cutters out and put new terminals on the spare leads, like floppy, SATA power etc. He won't need them to upgrade anyway :)
Click to expand...

This is a much better components list for a similar price:

AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 630 ~ £84

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-259-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=803

4GB 1333MHZ DDR3 ~ £85

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-087-GL&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Asus M4A785TD-M Evo ~ £70

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-356-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1481

This has the HD4200 IGP which can run one DVI and one VGA monitor simultaneously.

If you can get an X3 440 for around £66 it would be a good substitute for the X4 630.

Also I would consider the following PSU:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-017-CS

Here is a review of the PSU:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/750
 
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CAT's build suggestion seems pretty good, integrated graphics should be alright for what your friend is doing, he can always upgrade at a later date if needs be.
 
Ah, yes quadcore would be much nicer. Also I always assumed intergrated graphics wouldn't be able to run 2 monitors, don't know why, probably because I forgot what d-sub is was subconciously looking for 'VGA' :)

Great suggestion though, thanks Cat. Shame the motherboard is out of stock, may get the slightly costlier Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H AMD 785G (product codes getting pretty ridiculous these days I see!)
 
Thanks for digging that out, I just got a reply from my webnote and OCUK seem to think they will be getting the Asus boards in the next couple of days. Whether that's the standard reply to all stock enquiries I don't know but think I'll wait :)
 
Been looking around again this morning, will be ordering Monday most likely.

Geil Value 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit £84.99
Samsung EcoGreen F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £38.99
Coolermaster Elite 360 Mini Tower Case - Black £24.51
Fractal Design 120mm Silent Cooling Fan £9.99
2x Sharkoon Silent Eagle 1000 80mm Fans £11.72
Akasa AK FC-06BK Fan Controller Junior - Black £9.39

Asus M4A785TD-M EVO £70.39
AMD Athlon II X3 440, Rana, Triple Core, S AM3, 3.0GHz £66.27

inc VAT and delivery (mobo and cpu not in stock at OcUK)

Found my old Corsair 520 modular PSU he can have for a bargain price of a night of free drinking.

£324.47 + £30ish ;) - inc VAT and delivery (mobo and cpu not in stock at OcUK)

Pretty pleased with that spec, room for him to upgrade CPU, add RAM and/or graphics card in future.

Not too worried about the case, looks all right from a review I found.
 
Another post but may as well complete the thread, only took a few pics after the initial build, I did swap a few fans around. Pleased overall, one minor niggle was the stock cpu fan, it did have a bit of a rattle when at full speed but using the fan control and turning it down makes it go away.

Fan set up is one 80mm intake on the bottom. 120mm intake on the side blowing down onto the cpu fan thats blowing down onto the heatsink, 80mm exhaust rear and 120mm exhaust on top. Probably not the best set up for the smoothest airflow in the case but it keeps everything at 40ish C. Considering he'll never play games on it I doubt the cpu will ever get any prolonged usage over 20% so not worried about temps.

The side 120mm fan and the cpu fan are turned down to their lowest speed by the fan controller - the 120mm came with the case and is a hairdryer at full speed. The Fractual 120 and the 80 sharkoons are relatively silent at normal speed so left them. Overall only a whisper of noise from the case now.



My old 520 corsair psu and dvd drive not shown.



I did swap the old ide dvd drive, which I was only using to install OS, for his current sata drive. Also removed that cable tie round the power leads so they don't overhang the mobo now.



He's using it stood up for now, but either way is cool and quiet. Even though I was initially dubious about the screwless drive bays I can't hear any HDD rattle and although the DVD drive probably does have more vibration noise than a tight screw fit it's acceptable with such a cheap case, especially if you won't be watching dvd's or playing games with the disc in.

Thanks a lot for the spec help, when I was testing it made me want to keep it and give him my E8400 DDR2 system, it's definitely quicker for browsing in multiple windows, maybe not significantly but it was noticeable. Although that may be because it was a nice fresh install of Win 7 as well I guess.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
I think that you need to run the RAM in the same coloured slots so you can enable dual channel mode.
Click to expand...

I was unsure about this to be honest, in the manual it lists that channel A is dimm A1 and A2 and channel B is dimm B1 and B2

From left to right in the above pic they are A2 B2 A1 B1

When I searched online I found "To enable dual channel mode, it is necessary to use 2 RAM stick (having same brand, same size, and same frequency) in A1 and A2 slots. " So I'm still not really positive because to me "dual channel" means 2 channels or A channel and B channel :confused:
 
mart981 said:
I was unsure about this to be honest, in the manual it lists that channel A is dimm A1 and A2 and channel B is dimm B1 and B2

From left to right in the above pic they are A2 B2 A1 B1

When I searched online I found "To enable dual channel mode, it is necessary to use 2 RAM stick (having same brand, same size, and same frequency) in A1 and A2 slots. " So I'm still not really positive because to me "dual channel" means 2 channels or A channel and B channel :confused:
Click to expand...

download and run memtest86 - it tells you if its running dual channel :)

Oh nice little build by the way!
 
It was only running in single channel /oops, in my defence my old P35 Gigabyte mobo uses banks 1+3 and 2+4 for dual channel set up rather than Asus' far more sensible 1+2 and 3+4 banks for dual channel set up :D

Thanks for spotting that CAT!
 
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