Budget Gaming

Martynt74

Martynt74

Martynt74

Soldato
Joined
20 Feb 2004
Posts
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Location
Hondon de las Nieves, Spain
Hi Guys
I’m putting together a PC for my stepson for his birthday. He wants it to play games ideally as he has an old laptop for general use. I was thinking about something like the AMD Athlon 250 based with something like an ATI 5470 or Geforce 440 with it. Which I’d hope would run things fairly well for him. Overall the budget is probably about £400 which obviously isn’t a huge amount. As I need to factor in Windows and a wireless keyboard/mouse. Which will probably use up about £100 of my budget

Then I spotted the bundle below for £275

• Coolermaster Elite 335 Mid Tower Case, Black, with Coolermaster Elite 460w PSU
• Intel Core i3 540 Dual Core Clarkdale 32nm, 3.06GHz, 4MB Cache, 73W, Integrated GPU @ 733MHz, Retail
• Asus P7H55-M/USB3, Intel H55, S 1156, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2200(OC), SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0, mATX
• 1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM
• 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.50V
• Pioneer DVR-S19LBK 24x DVD±R, 12x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, RAM x12, SATA, Black, Retail Labelflash

If I then added the same graphics card and other bits as above would work out about £430 overall. Would this do the job for playing games fairly well and would it be better than the Athlon 250 bundle I was initially thinking of. He probably isn’t too bothered about huge resolutions as it’ll be hooked up to his tv. Or Would the onboard gfx do a job to start with and then get a dedicated gfx card at a later date?
 
Nope, £230 plus VAT for £275. I thought it seems cheap aswell so thought it might be worth a punt if it would be a good option. Trying to build it on here came to around the same without the ram/case
 
Would the onboard graphics be ok aswell or am i best to get that straight away?

Out of interest what effect would adding thr gfx at a later date have on the system? I know theres always some upgrades where a clean install is best advised. Would this be one of them?
 
Great price. I take it this is not an OCUK bundle, though. For the graphics card recommendation, do you happen to know what games your stepson would want to play? Also, is there a particular reason for choosing wireless peripherals?
 
Unfortunately not, although if you scan the internet you might find it.

Just layout of the room really, as the tv isnt really on a desk and i imagine he might want to browse the net.

I know for a fact he wants Fable 3 which we've bought him. He's been talking about Crysis 2 aswell but i don't know whether he'd buy most games like that for his PS3
 
Marvt74 said:
Would the onboard graphics be ok aswell or am i best to get that straight away?

Out of interest what effect would adding thr gfx at a later date have on the system? I know theres always some upgrades where a clean install is best advised. Would this be one of them?
Click to expand...

Onboard graphics not very good at gaming. It depends on the games though, anything up to date and it will struggle. It should play Half Life, half life 2 on low, guild wars, things not too demanding. But I'd look into at least a HD 5770 / HD5830. You need to also take into consideration that the PSU is weak, so you can't use a top of the range graphics card. I'd stop at a 5830 / 5770.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Cooler-Master-Elite-Power-460-W-Power-Supply-Review/1005/1
 
Is that struggling completely or just at what you'd consider high resolutions/settings

He's never really been a big one for settings (he played his PS3 on composite connection for about a year before bothering to use a HDMI cable!)
 
thats looking like a really good bundle there. i'll have a look and see what you can get from OcUK, but i doubt you will be able to beat that. does your stepson already have a PC that you can steal a DVD drive, hard drive, and possibly some other stuff from as well?

looking at that bundle, you'll be hard pushed to get a good graphics card and windows 7 with £125, unless you can get a discount on windows 7

this is my best effort from OcUK:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5830 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £85.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) £29.99
1 x Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
1 x AMD Athlon II X3 Tri Core 450 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £59.99
1 x OCZ Special OPS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK) £35.99
1 x MSI GF615M-P33 GeForce 6150SE (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £32.99
1 x Blaze BL-6700 2.4Ghz Wireless Desktop £20.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £427.81 (includes shipping : £11.25).
 
Its all looking good mate, I'm pretty shocking at keeping to a budget when it comes to building systems but it seems that you've kept a close eye on things.

You wouldn't mind posting up a few photos of it later on would you?

I'm looking at building a PC for my mate who wants to play games 'occasionally' and this seems to be his budget.
 
Cheers guys.

If i go for a better gfx card i'd really be pushing myself over i think. To knock a bit of cash off i could go back to the original Athlon based system i think. Would the 250 be ok for games or would a tri core 450 as above make a big difference?

As its a gift and not for me i'm trying to avoid purchasing used things as of yet. Mainly because i'm very late in organising this and need it sorted by Thursday!
 
Marvt74 said:
Cheers guys.

If i go for a better gfx card i'd really be pushing myself over i think. To knock a bit of cash off i could go back to the original Athlon based system i think. Would the 250 be ok for games or would a tri core 450 as above make a big difference?

As its a gift and not for me i'm trying to avoid purchasing used things as of yet. Mainly because i'm very late in organising this and need it sorted by Thursday!
Click to expand...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/143?vs=189

the game charts at the bottom show the i3 540 beating the tri core 450.

in fact the i3 540 beats it a lot of times in most of the other comparisons, there a few exceptions but not many.
 
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