What's the current Budget spectacular?

DampCat

DampCat

DampCat

Soldato
Joined
26 Feb 2007
Posts
14,178
Location
Leafy Cheshire
Hi dudes. I've put this here cause im happy overclocking and will eventually throw WC into the rig. Ambient temps here are too high to clock well without water.

So.. i want an overclockable budget rig :D

I've been out of touch for at least a year which is long enough for things to change considerably.

I'm currently rocking a P5N with e4300 clocked at 3.01ghz, 4gb DDR2 PC-6400 and a GTX260 896mb 216.

Im actually happy with the rig, it does what I want, plays the games i play happily... but id like the option to play newer stuff too.

I probably wont do it all in one go, and keep the 260 for a while more before flogging it.

So, I want to stay intel/nvidia. what are my options? £500 budget max, i reckon.

Cheers guys. I know nothing about the new chipsets anymore so need some help with Mobo/CPU/Ram more than anything :)
 
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SO do you want a new motherboard, chip and ram for you £500 or do you want a wc rig in that cost as well?? If you want wc as well do you just want to cool the cpu or the gpu as well??

A core i7 x58 motherboard and 4/6 gig ram will eat your whole £500 with ease(http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-029-OB&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat=). Maybe think about a second hand q6600 GO stepping quad and overclock that and a GTX 460 1 gig like the awesome overclocking msi
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-093-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1830
Or mabe get a core i5 pre overclocked bundle £418

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-023-OB&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat=

The sell your rig and with the money get the GTX460 :)
 
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what PSU do you have?

if you have a 750w+ then if you can afford the extra £50 get a Phenom II 1055T, ASUS M4A88TD-M EVO, OCUK GTX 470 and teh cheapest 1600MHz 4GB kit you can buy

then use the GTX 260 as a PhysX card
 
Sorry dont need spec for Watercooling. I can do all that myself, it's just mobo/CPU/Ram im after.

Last time i built there was a specfic Gigabyte board that was the daddy of budget overclocks... so its that sort of thing im after.

The i7 looks nice but it might be overkill. A nice clocking i3 or i5 would work just as well for me.

so 460/470 is the recommended GPU.. i can handle that i guess. Does the q6600 still stack up to modern CPUs? on the G0 SLACR how far can i push the clock? And does anything even support 4 cores?

Nice tip on the MSI, that's the sort of thing im after. Things that are good proven clockers!
 
NOT the 470 its to hot and power hungrey as well as expensive for what it is.

The q660 will be slower than i5 but as you said not much need a quad core unless your into video editing/animation etc. Few games truly need one but do take advantage of them eg bad company 2. Alternative is the Q9550 if you can find one sensibly priced.
 
dfour said:
NOT the 470 its to hot and power hungrey as well as expensive for what it is.

The q660 will be slower than i5 but as you said not much need a quad core unless your into video editing/animation etc. Few games truly need one but do take advantage of them eg bad company 2. Alternative is the Q9550 if you can find one sensibly priced.
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how is it to expensive or hot?

heat is irrelevant in modern processors and considering it is about the same price as the average 5850 and beats it not to mention beats the 5870 in min fps, I would hardly call it expensive for what it is.

one could also say power hunger is irrelevant due to being maybe an extra 7p for each 10 hours of gameplay over a 5870
 
Heat may be an issue. Ambient temp here is much higher than the UK, aircon isn't stable throughout the whole room.

If i got a Q6600 it would clock fine in my current P5N right?
 
cheapest branded 470 is £247
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-032-ZT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1810

Cheapest branded (not on offer) is £190
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-039-ZT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1830

So its £60 difference for only 10-15% increase in performance with much bigger heat and power requirements nad with overclocking that the 460 is well known for it can be as quick as a 470 with still less power needed and less heat produced.
 
anant_shah94 said:
What are your case ambient temps and room temps?
Click to expand...

Not sure on case temps, i dont have a machine here only my netbook. Room Ambient ranges from 25c lowest to 37c-42c peak depending on if im home or not. Realistically I might have to not leave it running whilst i'm at work, which isnt a big deal.. just habit changing.
 
DampCat said:
Not sure on case temps, i dont have a machine here only my netbook. Room Ambient ranges from 25c lowest to 37c-42c peak depending on if im home or not. Realistically I might have to not leave it running whilst i'm at work, which isnt a big deal.. just habit changing.
Click to expand...

What's the average ambient temp like when you're using it?
Do you mean to say that you're planning to watercool your netbook?
One of the fundamental things about watercooling is that your temps cannot get below room temperature.
 
Why on earth would i watercool a netbook? :eek:

The average ambient temp of the room when im in it is 25c. That will rise with use of a PC, presumably, although not by much.

I was saying i dont have a PC currently, only a netbook. Hence i cant give you case temps. I want to build a PC. I might watercool it.
 
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