£600 Gaming Machine.

plasmahal

plasmahal

plasmahal

Soldato
Joined
5 Feb 2006
Posts
5,486
My lad wants a new gaming machine and I want him to learn to build it himself.

Our budget is for around the £600 pound mark.

I have a spare cooler (Arctic cooling Freezer pro 7), 1.5Tb storage drive and DVDRW to re-use.

I have specced up an initial build, would appreciate any comments or advice and if it is all compatible.


Your basket
Product Name
Asus GeForce GTX 560 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £151.99
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1055T 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £119.99
Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £92.99
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 £60.00
OCZ ModXStream Pro 500w Silent Modular Power Supply £53.99
G.Skill RipJawsX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL7D-4GBXM) £49.99
Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £33.98
OcUK Value 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter £16.99

Sub Total : £483.27
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £99.00
Total : £594.02
 
You would probably be better off going with an i5 2500k over the 1055t despite having six cores. A comparison can be seen here.

I am sure others will suggest it as well. I would spec a build but I am a novice compared to most of the people on here and probably to yourself as well. I wouldn't be surprised if someone is already on the case ;)

EDIT: You qualify for free shipping if you link your OcUK account to your forums account.
 
Quite a nice spec BUT Hexcore for gaming is OTT. A quadcore 955BE would be more than adequate (u can make this a 965BE in the bios). Trouble is the AM3 socket is at the end of it's life. An i5 2500K rig is possible in that budget if you drop the SSD and would be more "futureproof".

The antec 600W supply was on offer for £50, not sure if its still in stock or infact still on offer. The Bequiet 530W is £45 and would be fine and save you a couple of quid (not modular though).

As a gaming rig I would personally drop the CPU down to a quad and put the money saved into a better GPU. While an i5 rig would be a better "all round" system, for gaming it's all about the GPU and when on a budget AMD is usually the way forward.
 
Last edited:
I was thinking something like:
speckl.png


However I just realised I didn't include a SSD. I suppose I gave another option...

EDIT: as you already have a cooler you could go for this i5 which takes £20 off the total. That leaves us about £50 under budget. If a little money was added then the SSD could be included :/ at the end of the day it's up to you
 
Last edited:
DJmartin said:
I was thinking something like:
speckl.png


However I just realised I didn't include a SSD. I suppose I gave another option...

EDIT: as you already have a cooler you could go for this i5 which takes £20 off the total. That leaves us about £50 under budget. If a little money was added then the SSD could be included :/ at the end of the day it's up to you
Click to expand...

Would prefer the benefit of the OS on a SSD.
 
hmm if we also went for the GTX 560 you first spec'd over the 560 ti we would be £70 under budget. This leaves even more money for the SSD and as far as I can see, would be a better system than the one first spec'd again, it's your decision though.
 
I did say the SSD would need to be dropped for an i5 build. Although as you have a cooler you can buy the OEM i5 2500K ok it's not a massive saving but every penny counts.

I was hinting more towards AMD. £500-600 is a tricky price point for a gaming rig. We have tried helping DJ spec a build (he has £500 to play with).

Games are only just starting to use 4 cores, 6 is't necessary and the 955 is £90 (this can be a 965 with some bios magic as i said). I can well imagine that the AMD with SSD would "appear" more powerful than an i5 without. I can see why you want an SSD and why you chose AMD for the build, to be honest I would have done the same for your boy just not spent as much on a CPU, would put that price difference into the GPU
 
Last edited:
That's what i was talking about fella! Is that antec psu not on offer anymore? Or do you really want a modular power supply?

Now all you need to do is up the multiplier in the bios by 1 and you have a 965BE for nothing more than a few button presses ;) In fairness you should expect atleast a 3.8 OC on that chip.

It really is tricky balancing the base system and also getting a good gpu for gaming at your budget. I think that is the best option by far. All the parts are good and you can swap the mobo and cpu later on if you feel the upgrade itch.
 
Last edited:
Makes sense.

That is very close to what i suggested to DJ. He had £500 so obviously no SSD and we opted on a "budget" mATX mobo so he could afford a HDD.

That will make an excellent gaming rig, good luck with the build/father son bonding ;)
 
It's always a compromise. That is a good system, to change the cpu and mobo to i5 is adding £100 give or take. For gaming purposes that AMD build is perfectly ok, you have to draw a line in the sand at some point.

Plasma you should qualify for free delivery if you link your account, then you are easily under budget. Not sure if that £10 can go back into the psu funds for a slightly more powerful modular one......worth a look is it?
 
honosuseri said:
It's always a compromise. That is a good system, to change the cpu and mobo to i5 is adding £100 give or take. For gaming purposes that AMD build is perfectly ok, you have to draw a line in the sand at some point.

Plasma you should qualify for free delivery if you link your account, then you are easily under budget. Not sure if that £10 can go back into the psu funds for a slightly more powerful modular one......worth a look is it?
Click to expand...

Yeah, been getting free delivery for a while now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom