£550 AMD quad spec gor gaming help

THE Nemesis · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:36

Hi, can you help plz?
I am looking to spend around £550 on a PC for my son,
I want to stay with AMD quad but noticed AM3 for mobos & RAM is a lot more so wondered whether the price was actually worth going for AM3.
I have already purchased a copy of Win7 home

But I need

tower
mobo
CPU
ram
PSU
GPU
1 X sata Hard drive 160GB+ 7200 speed.

any ideas please?
thanks
Stu

eddyc · 30 Apr 2010 at 12:44

Will he be overclocking?
What will it be mostly used for?

If he will not be overclocking and will be gaming then how about:

If he will not be gaming then remove the 5770. The onboard graphics on the motherboard will be enough.

THE Nemesis · 30 Apr 2010 at 13:00

wow eddy that was quick thansk very much!

Well i have OCd mine slightly and have a big antec case i got with the 240 fan which caqn cope with it but i dont want any problems with my sons with heat etc but would possibly give it a slight increase to help..
mainly for gaming & browsing,,
would the PSU you put @ 500W be suffice

also the DVD-rom i would skip
and with whats left improve the GPU, i have a 1GB powercolor 5850 which i got for £200 so might opt for that?

eddyc · 30 Apr 2010 at 13:12

Pretty sure the PSU should be fine. I will let others answer more definitely though I am not an expert on PSUs.

That CPU should be fine for some light overclocking. You should even be able to do it on the stock cooler. For more serious overclocking I would go for a phenom II 955 or 965 and get a decent cooler thermolab baram or similar.

Good idea spending the rest on GPU upgrade. In the end thats what determines game performance. You could also go for an SSD to reduce boot times if you felt like it.

THE Nemesis · 30 Apr 2010 at 13:51

how about this but what graphics for around £150? ati 5770?
powercolor 5850 has gone up £40!!

thanks

Marine-RX179 · 30 Apr 2010 at 14:11

You can get a PowerColour 5830 at under £160 now, but not here at OcUK.
It's either that, or swap the motherboard for one that would Crossfire:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-366-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1481
Grab a 5770 1GB, then add another 5770 to crossfire in the future when it's cheaper.
Or pay the extra and grab a 5850.
Or just grab a single 5770 to use with a cheap motherboard that won't crossfire.

THE Nemesis · 30 Apr 2010 at 16:52

THE Nemesis said:
how about this but what graphics for around £150? ati 5770?
powercolor 5850 has gone up £40!!

thanks

ok, think ill opt for a single 5830 for now.. another 200+ is going way beyond our means
is the spec i changed above here all compatible plz?

eddyc · 30 Apr 2010 at 16:57

Yup looks good to me. That should be a pretty sweet system. Should be nice and upgradeable as well if necessary.

THE Nemesis · 1 May 2010 at 22:16

ok ill order that from OC, i have £160ish to spend on a GPU
but which one LOL??

stulid · 1 May 2010 at 22:23

One little suggestion is to get a samsung F3(not the ecogreen) 500gb harddrive or western digital black 500gb.

They are just that bit faster.

As for gpu, XFX 5770 is £128.

Marine-RX179 · 1 May 2010 at 22:38

Either the Asus ATI Radeon HD 5770 CuCore 1024MB (£135.99)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-219-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1515

Or PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 5830 OC 1024MB (around £158.61)

Or XFX ATI Radeon HD 5830 "AVP Edition" 1024MB (around £164.49) P.S. The AVP game worth around £15, so the card itself is just £150

You'd have to search around a bit for getting the 5830 at those prices though.

stulid · 1 May 2010 at 22:44

Edit.

mymorph · 2 May 2010 at 09:06

id get a new CPU cooler as well. the zalman cnps9500 will do a good job for around £20, will cope with overclocking too should you want to. the stock amd ones arnt upto much.