Budget Components to get me back!

Nymins · 15 Jun 2010 at 19:56

Been thinking GPU wise, I noticed a forum member has a Radeon 4870 512mb for sale for £60. Would this be the same as the 5770 at 1280x1024 for most games on high settings? Seems to be a decent price for the card, but again I have been out of the loop for so long now, I just don't know whats good!

I know the 5770 has DX11 in its favour, but thats about it...i think?

Baldrick1001 · 20 Jun 2010 at 21:19

the 5770 also has twice as much memory and, I beleive, it draws less power..

Baldrick1001 · 20 Jun 2010 at 21:25

thinking about it further..... the 4870 is still a good card. I did mean to give you some advice, but now I have confused myself...

Nymins · 20 Jun 2010 at 21:29

I went ahead and bought a 5770 512mb for £90. Seemed like a good price brand new. To me anyway!

Baldrick1001 · 20 Jun 2010 at 21:31

at that price - no brainer - good decision.

Nymins · 20 Jun 2010 at 21:44

Thats good! Was afraid it wasn't that great a price

Just need to sort out a motherboard and CPU now. Pretty strapped for cash now that an unexpected bill has come in though!

I have been thinking of going AMD maybe? The processors look cheap and the ability to unlock some of them to tri and quad core sounds good! Been looking around for a good, cheap AM2+ (AM3 will be too much due to DDR3) motherboard. Really confusing trying to find out which are good and which are not on a tight budget!

Do you know of any that are decent for overclocking and/or unlocking cores?

Or should I just stay with socket 775 with my E6300?

stulid · 20 Jun 2010 at 21:51

dont invest in old DDR2 for a new machine

Nymins · 20 Jun 2010 at 21:54

Well its not exactly a new machine. I'm just putting together old parts that I have. The GPU is the only new part that I have (new as in this gen).

I have a C2D E6300, 4Gb DDR2, 320Gb HDD laying around. Sneaky Peaky has sold me a P5K-E WiFi, but may need to cancel on it due to unexpected expenses that need paid! I'm just wondering whether or not to hold off and sell my E6300 and get an AM2+ board and CPU instead of staying with s775.

Nymins · 30 Jun 2010 at 15:19

Just thought I'd update this thread as my budget build is nearly completion! Went the AM3 route, as I got a crazy bargain on a motherboard and CPU of eBay (and the other stuff apart from the case and PSU! All bought of eBay). So I had to sell the DDR2 ram and upgrade to DDR3, which is better in the long run I guess! Here is the final costs:

Athlon II X2 250 + Gigabyte GA-MA790GPT-UD3H = £59 (pretty unbelievable price i thought!)
Asus Radeon HD5770 512mb = £95
4Gb DDR3-1066 (Hynix+Kingston) = £39.48
Xigmatek Asgard Case = £26.99
Akasa Paxpower 500w PSU = £30

Total = £250.49

Not bad. I think lol!

. Considering what I got its pretty good for the price, and minus £35 for the DDR2 ram I sold and £40 for the CPU+other ram, it works out pretty cheap for a good machine imo!

Waiting on the RAM to arrive, should be tomorrow or Friday. Tell me what you think!

stulid · 30 Jun 2010 at 15:21

cool.

Redmint · 30 Jun 2010 at 15:53

Nice, get yourself a rear case fan and maybe move the HDDs apart by 1 slot to give them slightly better cooling.

Nymins · 30 Jun 2010 at 16:00

Yea I'll be getting a 120mm fan for the back soon. Is it ok to keep the hard drives infront of the front intake fan? I kept them down there because I thought it would give the front fan more space to disperse the air, but if its safer to have the hard drives apart then I shall do that!

Redmint · 30 Jun 2010 at 16:40

Probably doesn't make a huge difference, generally I've always left mine separated if I have spare HDD slots. Probably more important to have them split in cases that don't have a front fan tbh.

Nymins · 30 Jun 2010 at 21:06

Moved the HDD up one slot, thought it was going to knock into the 5770, but its fine

Gonna pick up an Arctic Cooling F12 120mm fan. eBay voucher comes in on Saturday, so ill get £2.66 off due to purchases lately, will order it then.

Just to test I turned the PC on. Obviously it didn't POST, but it made 5 longish beeps. I assume thats just because the RAM isn't installed?

NathWraith · 30 Jun 2010 at 23:21

Nice little system you got there, bargain aswell!

Nymins · 1 Jul 2010 at 15:05

Yea I'm very pleased with it!

Got the first 2Gb ram stick today and I've installed Win7. Thankfully everything seems to be working ok! The fan that comes with the case is a bit loud though. Tried it without it plugged in and was amazed at how quiet everything was! May have to replace it with another Arctic F12.

Redmint · 1 Jul 2010 at 15:07

Nice

I'm always slightly relieved the first time you hear that beep and see the BIOS splash screen on a new build.

Nymins · 1 Jul 2010 at 15:11

Redmint said:
Nice I'm always slightly relieved the first time you hear that beep and see the BIOS splash screen on a new build.

Yea I know! At first I thought the beep was a bad thing

(I assume its not? It beeps once every time I boot the computer. Hope thats okay?)

Redmint · 1 Jul 2010 at 15:26

It's normal, if you didn't get it with a previous computer it's probably because the motherboard/case didn't have a speaker attached.

Nymins · 2 Jul 2010 at 12:14

Well got the last 2Gb stick today, so its pretty much done! Well, ill still need to get the case fans.

Done a Crysis benchmark. Dunno if its good or not though, nothing overclocked yet, everything at stock:

Seems okay to me. Stayed pretty much at ~30fps all the time.