Build for a friend: £500-700 price range

petemyster · 29 Apr 2010 at 22:14

Hey, my friends laptop is on its last legs and he would like a new desktop for gaming. The price range is between £500-700, but the closer to the £500 mark the better.

He doesn't need any pherphials (monitor, keyboard etc). He also has an external hardrive, so you may want to take that into consideration before splashing out on a massive hardrive.

EDIT: Needs an operating system.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Apr 2010 at 22:15

Do you need a copy of Windows BTW??

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Apr 2010 at 22:41

stulid · 29 Apr 2010 at 22:48

why talk blah blah blah about the integrated graphics chip with its rubbish 128MB of ram.

why not spec a motherboard without that useless feature he wont ever need.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Apr 2010 at 22:50

To the OP this is the cheapest AMD build I could think of to have decent gaming performance IMHO.

If you want a more powerful build you could go for a quad core,a 790 or 890 series motherboard (many have Crossfire ability) and a more powerful PSU.

eddyc · 30 Apr 2010 at 11:34

will he be overclocking?

Kill_Phil · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:11

heres my shot without an OS, nice and future proof me thinks...

eddyc · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:17

Nice one getting the x6 in there! Could save £20 by going with the mobo from Cat though. Any particular advantage with the ga890?

Also is a 400W PSU enough? I have the same one and it seems to run my system fine but I do wonder whether I am nearing its limit. Would be interested to know what people think...

gurusan · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:20

gurusan · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:29

forgot windows 7.....now we're a bit above budge :/

Kill_Phil · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:30

eddyc said:
Nice one getting the x6 in there! Could save £20 by going with the mobo from Cat though. Any particular advantage with the ga890?

Also is a 400W PSU enough? I have the same one and it seems to run my system fine but I do wonder whether I am nearing its limit. Would be interested to know what people think...

the advantage is that a) i would its a better overall mobo b)more future proof in the fact is has usb 3.0 and sata 6 gb interface.

the tad extra spent now will be worth it in long run, 400w psu should be ok being corsair and all, but if your slightly worried then for a extra £20 could get you this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-037-OC&tool=3

eddyc · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:35

Middle ground for a non overclocker:

Spokwiththeears · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:49

mrfun1981 · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:52

How heavy of a gamer is your mate & dose he wanted it over clocked? Dose he use the PC for any other stuff apart from gaming? Iv gone a bit of a different route to other people & prob get slatted for the GPU choice But if your mate dose CPU intensive tasks as well this system will be fine for him.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK Overclocked Intel Core i3 530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz @ 4.00GHz DDR3 Barebones OcUK Overclocked Intel Core i3 530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz @ 4.00GHz DDR3 Barebones £499.97
(£425.51) £499.97
(£425.51)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £84.99
(£72.33) £84.99
(£72.33)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £69.98
(£59.56) £69.98
(£59.56)
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM £31.98
(£27.22) £31.98
(£27.22)
Sub Total : £584.62
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £15.00
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £104.93
Total : £704.55

Cookeh · 30 Apr 2010 at 13:57

X6 is absolutely shocking for most games atm, and pointless in that respect. There's all of 2 games atm that can support 6 games, and those that cant just leave the extra cores doing nothing, so according to benchmarks you get lower fps.
Stick to an X2 or X4.

Cats spec was very good for the price

Alex74 · 30 Apr 2010 at 14:03

Processor choice really will depend on what your friend wants to do with the rig.

Also is your friend lucky enough to be a student? Could help cut the cost of the OS..

eddyc · 30 Apr 2010 at 14:36

Cookeh said:
X6 is absolutely shocking for most games atm, and pointless in that respect. There's all of 2 games atm that can support 6 games, and those that cant just leave the extra cores doing nothing, so according to benchmarks you get lower fps.
Stick to an X2 or X4.

Cats spec was very good for the price

I dont think thats true. Given that the X6s seem to overclock better than any of the X4s the cores that are being used will be faster. It looks like these hit 4GHz easily and you have to be lucky with an X4 to hit that. The benchmarks are most likely based on stock clock speeds.