Gaming on a budget.

Simon1988 · 11 May 2011 at 12:44

Hi all im new to the forums and was just wondering if anyone can help

Im new to pc gaming and im looking to get a pc for mainly playin WoW and possibly runnin some decks on is there anything out there that would be suitable for a noob like me in the £400-£500 mark for complete setup?

Any advice will be greatly apreciated thanks everyone

stulid · 11 May 2011 at 12:46

Do you need everything?

Operating system? monitor, keyboard etc?

sk82jack · 11 May 2011 at 12:47

when you say complete set up does that include monitor, OS, keyboard, mouse, speakers etc?

stulid · 11 May 2011 at 12:48

Simon1988 · 11 May 2011 at 12:53

Yeah if its possible to get everything i need on that sort of budget?

stulid · 11 May 2011 at 12:58

Difficult.

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Iiyama ProLite E2008HDS 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black £101.99
(£84.99) £101.99
(£84.99)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5830 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £89.99
(£74.99) £89.99
(£74.99)
Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
(£57.00) £68.40
(£57.00)
Options applied to the above product:
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) £32.99
(£27.49) £32.99
(£27.49)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
AMD Athlon II X3 Tri Core 450 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £59.99
(£49.99) £59.99
(£49.99)
OCZ Special OPS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK) £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
MSI GF615M-P33 GeForce 6150SE (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £32.99
(£27.49) £32.99
(£27.49)
Blaze BL-6700 2.4Ghz Wireless Desktop £18.98
(£15.82) £18.98
(£15.82)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
(£13.32) £15.98
(£13.32)
Sub Total : £434.41
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £13.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £89.63
Total : £537.79

Still need speakers.

Simon1988 · 11 May 2011 at 13:05

Would this all be set up or would i have to put it together myself?

stulid · 11 May 2011 at 13:06

Simon1988 said:
Would this all be set up or would i have to put it together myself?

You have to build it yourself.

honosuseri · 11 May 2011 at 13:13

That's gonna be tough to top stulid

I don't imagine speakers would be an issue since he said he wanted to run some decks through the system he must have some decent headphones for the mixer. Just plug them in the front of the case. The mixer can be outputed to a hifi or whatever that said so could the pc. Till budget allows some cheapish 5.1 speakers

Bwaaa · 11 May 2011 at 13:23

You could definitely downgrade the GPU for that build, WoW runs fine on mid-high graphics on my 512mb 4800 series.

stulid · 11 May 2011 at 13:38

Dont downgrade the GPU, the 5830 is in a great price to performance placement, a card like a 5770 is only £10 less, but the drop in performance isnt worth it

5770 vs 5830 - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/172?vs=171

You never know when you want the extra power, you may want to play a more demanding game, you dont want to be upgrading the graphics card sooner rather than later.

DJ_Hughesy · 11 May 2011 at 13:58

which is the cpu you can unlock to quadcore? wouldnt one of those be a slightly better idea?

or is one of those out of his price range?

stulid · 11 May 2011 at 14:01

DJ_Hughesy said:
which is the cpu you can unlock to quadcore? wouldnt one of those be a slightly better idea?

or is one of those out of his price range?

This is how it performs against the £90 AthlonII X4 645

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/189?vs=188

Bit of a bargain

DJ_Hughesy · 11 May 2011 at 14:05

stulid said:
This is how it performs against the £90 AthlonII X4 645

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/189?vs=188

Bit of a bargain

im guessing its just a 645 with a core disabled anyways?

but yea not much of a diference between them, do athlons overclock as well as phenoms?

stulid · 11 May 2011 at 14:09

DJ_Hughesy said:
im guessing its just a 645 with a core disabled anyways?

No idea without hunting through websites.

DJ_Hughesy said:
but yea not much of a diference between them, do athlons overclock as well as phenoms?

Should overclock just fine, you will find many tri-core Athlons getting serious speed on, in here - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18106677

DJ_Hughesy · 11 May 2011 at 14:12

ah sweet, i learned something new

thanks stulid

marcus_667 · 11 May 2011 at 14:13

how about that acer desktop ocuk sells just add gpu and a big monitor away you go ? maybe a suggestion

honosuseri · 11 May 2011 at 14:31

Nooooo! Don't drop the gfx spec. If anything raise it, the 5850 is only £20 or so more expensive and can be overclocked to really give the 5830 a bloody nose.

The 5830 is actually the same price as the 5770. This confused me, I had assumed it would be cheaper and still have a fair bit of grunt when i suggested it for an eyefinity work rig. SHould have known better than to fiddle with the spec stulid had posted for it.

The OP has to realise that many of us already have an OS when we build/upgrade. I would suggest that yes budget £500 tops for the rig and just accept he needs to pay extra for an OS. That £60-70 for an OS really does affect the spec of the build, remember stulid even had to ommit the speakers to keep it even close to budget and was still over in the end.

olivier renault · 11 May 2011 at 14:58

marcus_667 said:
how about that acer desktop ocuk sells just add gpu and a big monitor away you go ? maybe a suggestion

PSU probably not able to cope. Maybe motherboard doesn't accepts PCI-E graphics (OEM have weird motherboards). As a rule of thumb, it's bad to buy a OEM with the intention of modding it. Might as well build the whole thing yourself

OEMs mass produce their machines, so their components are often proprietary, non standard, with features cut down to a bare minimum, and cheaply made. BIOS most likely restricted, that kind of stuff

Fine if you just want a desktop box for mum, but not so good for more enthusiast uses.