£400 Gaming PC Spec?

Buchanan0204

Buchanan0204

Buchanan0204

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I put this together pretty quickly. I'm quite lazy and tend not to bother reading all the reviews and the latest and greatest, that's what you guys are for :p

Friend is looking for a £400 gaming pc. Base only. How does this look? I would like to avoid the 430 with bundled PSU, hence the BeQuiet.

I realise I'm a little over, not much room to play with on the £400.

Will never overclock or do Xfire, the board supports full PCI-E x16.



I'm sure you guys can do a lot better than that.
 
Is tricky at that price point.

Myself i would probably compromise on the GPU. The 6870 isn't really any better than a 5870 (uses less leccy i know). You could opt for the 5850 (lets hope it comes back on offer at a good price) and OC it to close to 5870 spec.

That mobo is very basic but does the job. I would consider a £50 AM3+ mobo and spend another £10 for the 955BE then do the 965 upgrade trick, I know you said no overclocking but it's very simple to do.

I feel for the money it would be a better all round system, certainly more futureproof.
 
The system isn't for myself, and overclocking wouldn't be ideal as it really has to be a 100% maintenance free system.

Any reason to get a more expensive board?

I was wondering if the Phenom 965 would be worth the extra, looking at the comparison it appears to be worth it.

If the 6870 isn't any better than the 5870 performance wise. I'll definitely go with that. I looked for the 5850, shame it's went up. Was great for 100 quid.
 
That mobo is very basic and the socket is at the end of it's life. One of the forum members opted for it recently and was pretty disappointed with it. He basically wanted a 560 GPU and it's cost meant compromises much like your build.

The AM3+ 760 chipset mobos are £20 more but will support BD CPUs once released. They have better audio and output options e.g optical output and overclocking features.

Now I know you said no overclocking but the 955BE is £10 more than your spec'd athlon. The phenom has L3 cache which helps with gaming especially, by going into the bios and upping the multiplier by just 1 you get the 965 CPU and can still use the stock heatsink. A £10-15 more expensive CPU for just a couple of button presses be rude not to really ;)

*edit* N.B you can't do that 955 "trick" on that mobo you spec'd, was part of the reason DJ was dissapointed with it. Might be wise to show your friend the revised changes and explain if he waits to see if the 5850 comes back on offer even £10 cheaper it will help him get a better "core system".
 
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I know the mobo doesn't support overclocking, there is no intention to upgrade the CPU. I would have course go for it personally, but you can't argue with budget unfortunately. If you start adding an extra tenner here and there to all components to get a better one, it destroys the budget.

I will never overclock, ever ever... the difference between a 955 and 965 is minimal to be honest and doesn't justify an extra 20 quid to do this. Optical out will never be used, either will any overclocking features. As long as it supports PCI-E at x16 and supports the phenom It'll be fine.

I will of course change the athlon over to the phenom. The difference definitely seems justified.
 
I know what you mean fella. I keep saying that myself in budget gaming build threads.

I meant that if the 5850 could be bought around the £110-115 on offer, that difference in price from the 6870 pays for the better mobo and 955BE CPU. So he would still be paying out the same as your spec just have more cpu "grunt" and have better features from the mobo. £20 more for 8 channel HD audio, HDMI,DVI and RGB from the IGP, overclocking features, better cpu support, USB3 ports etc etc you get a fair bit for the price increase.

I would sooner have the option there and not need it than one day regret not paying that lil extra. I certainly wouldn't buy a 965 when a 955BE is essentially the same CPU. You simply up the multiplier, you don't have to spend hours faffing around with FSB changes.

Just put the changes i suggested to him and see what he thinks. Either build should see him to the end of the year, come then he may regret not atleast having the option to push the CPU just a lil harder or upgrade. I'd imagine the am3+ mobo could well auto set an overclock of 3.8Ghz if asked to.
 
 
Yeah pretty much :)

I know the 460 is on par with the 5850, although I know that some 460 cards are "cut down" versions so was hesitant to suggest one, certainly on a £100ish budget. Definately an option though if it's a "good" card and the 5850 is dearer.

Infact the only reason you are dearer is that you included a DVD drive when Buch didn't ;) So that comes to what £407 if you remove it from the spec. Does anyone else think i'm talking sense here?
 
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That last spec does look good. I just feel a lot of compromise is being given to the GPU, when I could in fact compromise on the board and get a significatly better GPU with a 6870 or something similar.
 
Is tricky I know. Had you managed to swing a 6950 GPU into spec by going with a "back to basics" mobo I would probably agree with you.

In truth the 6870 is no real advantage (at the mo) over a 5870 and the 5850 we know is a good card and can be pushed close to 5870 spec once you feel it's lacking.

Now you've said you'll up the CPU to a phenom your build has become DJmartins recent build essentially. I did infact suggest the GB S2 mobo to him some time ago because he really really wanted the 560 GPU over a 5850 and needed to cut costs.

Although he has built the rig and seems "reasonably" happy with it last I heard, he did admit to wishing he had just spent that extra £20 on the mobo. I don't want your friend feeling the same way after spending £400.
 
honosuseri said:
Is tricky I know. Had you managed to swing a 6950 GPU into spec by going with a "back to basics" mobo I would probably agree with you.

In truth the 6870 is no real advantage (at the mo) over a 5870 and the 5850 we know is a good card and can be pushed close to 5870 spec once you feel it's lacking.

Now you've said you'll up the CPU to a phenom your build has become DJmartins recent build essentially. I did infact suggest the GB S2 mobo to him some time ago because he really really wanted the 560 GPU over a 5850 and needed to cut costs.

Although he has built the rig and seems "reasonably" happy with it last I heard, he did admit to wishing he had just spent that extra £20 on the mobo. I don't want your friend feeling the same way after spending £400.
Click to expand...

Looking at this http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/290?vs=295

It would seem it's not really worth the premium.
 
That's what I've been saying all along lol Sorry I usually post a link to that benchmark page, I'm tired and forgot about it.

I think a chat and a lil wait to watch that 5850 to see if it comes back on a good offer, is the way forward. You can check the benchmarks but i think the 5850 is closer to the 6870 than the nvidia 460 1GB will be (at stock).

I honestly believe that AM3+ mobo with the 955BE and the 5850 is the best overall compromise on that budget for all the reasons I've already stated. That's my opinion anyways.
 
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honosuseri said:
That's what I've been saying all along lol Sorry I usually post a link to that benchmark page, I'm tired and forgot about it.

I think a chat and a lil wait to watch that 5850 to see if it comes back on a good offer, is the way forward. You can check the benchmarks but i think the 5850 is closer to the 6870 than the nvidia 460 1GB will be (at stock).

I honestly believe that AM3+ mobo with the 955BE and the 5850 is the best overall compromise on that budget for all the reasons I've already stated. That's my opinion anyways.
Click to expand...

I wonder if and when it will come down in price.
 
Well I am the one that got that motherboard and apart from overclocking I had some other issues. One being that it only included 2 RAM slots, not a big deal really and I did know this but it was over a week between me ordering the parts and building. I ordered with hardly any knowledge of components and learnt a lot over those 1-2 weeks. Also the CPU is quite close to the PCIe x16 slot. As I bought the Corsair A50 which is a pretty big cooler it would only go on one way which Stulid informed me was not the best way for it to go. Although you will be using the stock cooler these are all limiting factors when an AM3+ board which appears to also fix all these problems is less than £20 more. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-466-AS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=1481
For what you're saying you will use it for then maybe the cheaper mobo is better suited but if I ordered my parts now I know what I would be going for.
 
Well remember that the 5850 even at RRP is still cheaper than the 6870 which frees up just enough cash to upgrade the mobo and possibly CPU together.

The weekly offers drive me mad. The lowest i've seen it is £100. It seemed to be going regularly for £110-115 most weeks. I would personally want the 5850 over the 460. It will grate if you buy it and the following week its on offer but thats life.

*edit* Hey DJ, had hoped you would drop in (seeing as I spoke of the devil lol). How is the rig? Proven dad wrong yet? You can see the similarities with this build and yours can't you? If you could do it again would you compromise on that 560 and get a 5850 to help fund an AM3+ mobo? Or would you just have paid the extra money out?
 
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I am a little wary about having a conversation on this thread, feels a bit like hijacking but I suppose it's on topic. I think my dad was just being annoying tbh. If I could buy again I don't know if I would compromise on the 560 Ti. I realised I was on a budget and wanted one component that I could replace 6 months - 1 year down the line and one that I could keep for at least 2 years. (By components i'm talking about CPU+mobo and GPU) I felt that for me to get a CPU as future proof as that I would have to go 2500k and the best GPU I could get then was a 5830, whereas with AMD I could get a 560 Ti. i felt that the latter combo would be better for the time being and with new CPUs coming out soonish it would be better to consider that as the one to replace soonest.
Would I go for the AM3+ board though? yeah, I could have made some cuts to what I bought really, I didn't have to get an aftermarket cooler then, I also idn't need the 1TB HDD. Overall though I am not too disappointed. Also the only thing I have used and probably will use the Optical drive for is installing the OS which could have been done via pen drive. I could've made quite a saving with hindsight.
 
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I am all for a balanced system. No point gimping the motherboard and CPU (and those nforce motherboards are really not worth mentioning imo) if it's gonna limit your GPU anyway and force too many compromises.

And no point going for a cheapo PSU as well. You have to find a a common ground I suppose. a 955BE and GTX460 / HD5850 is very 2010 or even 2009, but it will still perform. I had a HD5850 for a long time, and never really had problems gaming at 1920 x 1200.

£400 sounds about right for a system built around a HD5850. It's still the most expensive component (usually you go GPU > CPU > mobo for gaming :)). £500, and I would still go with HD5850 and 2500K. £600 and you can start dreaming.

my $0.02.
 
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Because you asked me nicely in that message.


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I've ben informed the PC will be used for world of warcraft 95% of the time. I have no experience with this game at all. Would this effect anything?

I see the i3 specced by Stulid significantly better for WOW than the 965BE.
 
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