Budget Components to get me back!

Nymins

Nymins

Nymins

Soldato
Joined
7 Mar 2007
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Having that damn itch again to get back (casually :p) into PC gaming. I don't want anything crazy, just something to play games decently.

I already have a C2D E6300, 4Gb DDR2 ram, Optical Drive, HDD's etc. All i need is a motherboard, PSU and GPU.

Now obviously I want to overclock the E6300 as much as possible within the budget I have. I want to spend around £150 give or take on the motherboard, PSU, case (if possible, but I could probably source one somewhere) and GPU (GPU will need to be second hand I think, or any of the components for that matter).

I have looked on OcUK and found these:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-221-GI

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-042-OK

I have read about and that motherboard seems pretty good for ocing considering its price. But what about the PSU? I'm sure OcUK wouldn't sell rubbish stuff, but anyone know what the PSU is really like? ;) Or should I just go for the Corsair 400w thats about £4 more? I like the look of the Radeon 5770, so would it be enough for that? I haven't listed any GPU's or cases yet, since I would probably need to get one on MM to keep within budget.

You guys know a lot more than I do (been out of the loop for awhile now!), but I don't want to spend a lot since it will just be used for the odd PC game that I can't play on the 360/PS3!

Cheers
 
i have that motherboard in my htpc and its a good solid board and is meant to overclock fairly well, spend the extra £4 for the corsair and it will happily run your system with a 5770 in it.
 
buy the corsair, and it will easily power your system with a 5770, but I don't know how you are going to afford a 5770 with that budget? maybe find a used 4850.
 
5770 will be good enough for most games you want to play, can be had for around £100 nowdays, check out the xigmatek cases, really cheap and great quality

+1 for the corsair psu.
 
Thanks so far guys!

I have seen the 5770 for about £100 new, the PSU for about £32, and motherboard for £33 odd. So a bit over budget, but thats for everything new, the GPU would be most likely bought second hand for a bit less, giving a little bit of room for a case.
 
Ok so I have been shopping around and have found the following + prices:

Corsair CX400W = Around £30
Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L = around £35
Xilence Quad Core 775 CPU Cooler = Around £8(this any good? I used Xilence fans in my old pc and they seemed decent enough!)

Case wise, I tempted to actually mod/build my own, just as a project. I have an old Dell Dimension 2400 case that could be modded to fit the M-ATX motherboard, the rest is pretty standard.

So far thats about £80 give or take with some thermal paste thrown in. I went for the G41M instead of the G31M because the G41 supports up to 8Gb ram, whereas the G31 is only up to 4Gb. I probably won't ever go up to 8Gb, but for the sake of £4 odd, I may as well.

One thing that worries me slightly though, I checked the ram sticks in the HP SFF I have and they are both 2Gb sticks which is good, but they are PC2-5300 i think, so only 667mhz. They are Kingston branded, so how much will this affect overclocking with the E6300? Will I reach 3Ghz?
 
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i would spend the extra tenner and get either the ac7 pro or coolermaster hyper tx3 instead of that xilence cooler.
you will probably have to set the ram to pc2-4200 in the bios to be able to get a decent overclock with it as it is only 667mhz.
you might get into trouble quoting competitors prices even though you aren't naming the competitor so you might wan't to change your post :)
 
Yea I wasn't sure about the price thing, changed anyway!

So do you need to clock the ram down first to be able to overclock the fsb? Haven't OC'ed in ages so I can't remember what I did with my old C2D E4300!
 
yeah unless you have some really great overclocking ram you will have to clock it down before you start raising the fsb, you should be able to clock your 667 stuff down to 533 and that will let you overclock your cpu.

for example with your e6300 with its 1066 bus if you set the ram to 533 then set your fsb to 1333 the ram will be back running at 667 and your cpu will be running just under 3.5ghz so then you just have to find the stable voltages for the cpu to run at that speed :)
 
Ah i see. Still need to get my head around some figures, but its sort of coming back to me!

I have read about the Gigabyte G41M and people said that it hits a "wall" of around 340 on the fsb. If it does, then what does that mean for overclocking the E6300?

All i remember from overlocking my E4300 is the 9x multiplier and an fsb of 333 to get to 3Ghz. The 1066 and 1333 fsb you mention is confusing me a little.
 
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the e6300 has a 10.5 multiplier so that times a 340 fsb would give you 3570 mhz

intel quad pump their fsb so 200 is 800 fsb, 266 is 1066 fsb and 333 is 1333 fsb.
 
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ooops i think i got it wrong in that case, i just googled e6300 and looked up the intel specs on it forgetting there was the older one :(

if yours is the one with the 7 multi your 340 fsb will only get you to 2380 mhz :(

i can't see the fsb wall being that low though as the board natively supports 1333 fsb processors so i would think there would be a bit more headroom in it than 7 mhz.
 
Yea i have read that someone got their E6300 to 3.5Ghz when they hit the "wall". So i think i must have read it wrong or just didn't understand!
 
Reading that page again it seems the guys E6300 was in fact the Dual Core one and not the Core 2 Duo I have :(.

Think im gonna have to find a P35/P45 board since it seems the G31/G41 have the wall of around 340.
 
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