£500 Gaming PC Spec?

Korath · 15 Nov 2010 at 12:30

Hey guys.

Been out of touch with whats what these days so looking for a £500 spec for a gaming machine.

Couple of notes:

Case - Smaller rather than larger, doesn't have to be shiny.
Windows - Need a copy of windows 7 (home prem?)
Keyboard - Something basic, plenty of nice £10-20 ones around.
CD/DVD - cheap & cheerful - might just reuse my 5 year old Pioneer DVD-RW.
Will need a wifi card
Running on a 24" Dell Ultrasharp 1920x1200

Don't need: Mouse, Monitor.

Thanks in advance,
Leon

hybrid572 · 15 Nov 2010 at 13:10

Sorry it's a little over, but you can't really go under this without a serious drop in performance. A 5770 will perform adequately (although not as well) for £25 less, and you might be able to get a cheaper mobo and wireless card, but stretch to this if you can.

OcUK Value GeForce GTX 460 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with HAWX2 PC-Game £135.11
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £82.24
AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 640 3.00GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £76.36
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £62.99
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £61.09
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard £58.24
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £43.49
OcUK Value 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter £16.99
Blaze K3254B Multimedia Silm Keyboard - Black/Silver £5.98
Sub Total : £461.70
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £82.64
Total : £554.84

adrichardson81 · 15 Nov 2010 at 13:19

Is a 460 enough for 1920x1200? If not, might be worth looking at a cheap 470.

hybrid572 · 15 Nov 2010 at 13:41

A 460 is easily enough for 1900x1200 and will do everything you want it to. Not to mention we're already over budget here anyway

ahenners · 15 Nov 2010 at 14:10

hybrid572 said:
A 460 is easily enough for 1900x1200 and will do everything you want it to. Not to mention we're already over budget here anyway

Agreed. Most 460's will overclock a decent amount as well which would help boost perfomance. From benches though it looks adequate for 1920x1200, my 4870 does fine with most games at 1920x1080

Korath · 15 Nov 2010 at 16:12

Cheers guys. Looking good, now have to wait till payday on Friday

Cookeh · 15 Nov 2010 at 17:39

hybrid572 said:
Sorry it's a little over, but you can't really go under this without a serious drop in performance. A 5770 will perform adequately (although not as well) for £25 less, and you might be able to get a cheaper mobo and wireless card, but stretch to this if you can.

OcUK Value GeForce GTX 460 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with HAWX2 PC-Game £135.11
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £82.24
AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 640 3.00GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £76.36
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £62.99
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £61.09
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard £58.24
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £43.49
OcUK Value 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter £16.99
Blaze K3254B Multimedia Silm Keyboard - Black/Silver £5.98
Sub Total : £461.70
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £82.64
Total : £554.84

If that's too over budget, drop the GTX460 down to a 768MB version and overclock it - will give you similar if not identical performance.
You could also get a 500GB F3 to save a few more ££.

Apart from those optional tweaks its a very capable system.

hybrid572 · 15 Nov 2010 at 19:10

Cookeh said:
If that's too over budget, drop the GTX460 down to a 768MB version and overclock it - will give you similar if not identical performance.
You could also get a 500GB F3 to save a few more ££.

Apart from those optional tweaks its a very capable system.

Agreed those are good tweaks to slice it down a little to get it exactly within budget, but assuming this is a real-life scenario where +/- £50 for a computer is not too much of a biggie, I would *really* recommend sticking with my spec- if you're spending this much anyway, it's worth the little bit of extra cash for a fairly big performance boost.

Cookeh · 15 Nov 2010 at 20:43

hybrid572 said:
Agreed those are good tweaks to slice it down a little to get it exactly within budget, but assuming this is a real-life scenario where +/- £50 for a computer is not too much of a biggie, I would *really* recommend sticking with my spec- if you're spending this much anyway, it's worth the little bit of extra cash for a fairly big performance boost.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/156?vs=180

Hardly a fairly large performance gain

Even less so when overclocked.
£50 is a significant amount, regardless of budget, frankly - especially in current times of economic downturn!

If you can get the extra £50 without a big issue for £550 you can get an i5 system which will stomp all over Athlon II X4.

However, for £500, X4 is your best bet.

Cookeh · 15 Nov 2010 at 20:45

Double post :confused:

Ignore.

funkyphantom · 15 Nov 2010 at 23:23

Would this system be capable of playing all of the most recent games at reasonable resolution? Would i see a benefit to my games if i spent the extra 50 quid and bought an i5 system. Sorry I havent built a computer for a couple of years, and have lost touch

hybrid572 · 16 Nov 2010 at 06:27

funkyphantom said:
Would this system be capable of playing all of the most recent games at reasonable resolution? Would i see a benefit to my games if i spent the extra 50 quid and bought an i5 system. Sorry I havent built a computer for a couple of years, and have lost touch

The i5 is the far better processor- it plays better on both old and modern games, and will be able to play up-to-date games longer than the X4.

If you can afford it, it's a great buy, but it's £144 and the s1156 motherboards are more expensive as well. The X4 is easily enough to play top-of-the-range games, both now and for the foreseeable future.

Considering your resolution though, I wouldn't really recommend any lower than the GTX 460 1GB, if you're the type of gamer that likes to rack a lot of settings up.

Korath · 16 Nov 2010 at 11:36

Sounds good. I'm seeing if I can source a copy of Win7 from work to bring down the price but worst comes to worse I'll shell out the extra £50 and make sure I get the 460 1GB.

Still on schedule to buy it on Friday but with moving house and having to go 200 miles to collect my monitor after doing said move I'm not sure it will work out