Critique my £650 gaming build

Phrief

Phrief

Phrief

Associate
Joined
12 Feb 2011
Posts
8
Hi,

I'm trying to put together my second home built gaming pc. £650 is pretty much the maximum I can spend so I'm already at the limit. My current PC is completely unupgradable so I definitely want a build that I can overclock and set up for crossfire somewhere down the line. This is what I came up with:

basketr.png


The motherboard cost a lot more than I expected but that seems to be the cheapest ATX board with two x16 PCIe slots.

I guess the graphics card is the weakest link? I won't be getting all the bits for a few months so maybe I'll be able to fit a 6850 in there if the prices fall a little. I suppose I could get RAM for £40 and upgrade to a 6850 that way, didn't want to cheap out too much on that though, thoughts?

Any improvements / glaring hardware conflicts / completely different builds you'd recommend? A sentence or two explaining why my choice is an idiot and yours is better would be helpful too, rather than just a link to the items please ;)

Thanks for your time.
 
 
Last edited:
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £164.99
(£137.49) £164.99
(£137.49)
Asrock P67 Extreme 6 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £159.98
(£133.32) £159.98
(£133.32)
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £124.99
(£104.16) £124.99
(£104.16)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33
(£53.61) £64.33
(£53.61)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £40.99
(£34.16) £40.99
(£34.16)
OCZ Special OPS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Pioneer 24x Internal S19LBK DVD Rewriter including Labelflash SATA Retail £21.98
(£18.32) £21.98
(£18.32)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366) £20.99
(£17.49) £20.99
(£17.49)
Sub Total : £523.54
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 20.00% VAT : £106.81
Total : £640.85
Stulid what do you think?
 
Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £164.99
(£137.49) £164.99
(£137.49)
Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £144.98
(£120.82) £144.98
(£120.82)
Asus GeForce GTX 460 Direct CU TOP 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £124.99
(£104.16) £124.99
(£104.16)
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition Power Supply £68.99
(£57.49) £68.99
(£57.49)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM 1yr Warranty (ST31000518AS) £37.99
(£31.66) £37.99
(£31.66)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
OCZ Special OPS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1155/ 1156 / 1366) £19.39
(£16.16) £19.39
(£16.16)
Sub Total : £521.93
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 20.00% VAT : £106.49
Total : £638.92
 
I dont think the psu that comes with the case is good enough for two of these graphic cards.
 
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £164.99
(£137.49) £164.99
(£137.49)
MSI P67A-GD55 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £134.99
(£112.49) £134.99
(£112.49)
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £124.99
(£104.16) £124.99
(£104.16)
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition Power Supply £68.99
(£57.49) £68.99
(£57.49)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £40.99
(£34.16) £40.99
(£34.16)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
OCZ Special OPS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366) £20.99
(£17.49) £20.99
(£17.49)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.66) £13.99
(£11.66)
Sub Total : £529.09
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £108.07
Total : £648.41
MSI board is cool as well
The hyper 212 plus is also better at cooling when overclocked and in load.
 
Last edited:
Can't keep up with you guys, I see you're both recommending really cheap RAM in favour of a better graphics card and PSU, interesting :)

Can't argue with the stats on the 460 vs 5770. But price wise the 460 is closer to the 6850 isn't it? Might be a fairer fight.
 
This is great, should be able to fit a superior graphics card easily now :)

One thing about anuraj's last suggestion. The MSI motherboard description says it's for 1133/1066 memory, does that not conflict with the RAM you've been recommending?
 
Phrief said:
This is great, should be able to fit a superior graphics card easily now :)

One thing about anuraj's last suggestion. The MSI motherboard description says it's for 1133/1066 memory, does that not conflict with the RAM you've been recommending?
Click to expand...

Its absolutely fine, the 1600mhz rating is just the amount of "extra" you can get out of it when overclocking
 
Those 460 vs 6850 stats are interesting, seems like the 460 holds its own pretty well despite being £15 cheaper, and I guess if I get to crossfired 460's that'll be another thing altogether :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom