Budget Gaming PC Build ~£400-430

Sekonda

Sekonda

Sekonda

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Joined
26 May 2012
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32
Hey,

My friend is looking for a gaming computer - no monitor,speakers,keyboard,mouse. His budget is £400-430 including optical drive. I would build him a spec and then ask you guys what you think, but I trust you guys to recommend me a build which is better than mine, if you don't mind!

So thanks for any recommendations, if no recommendations then I'll be back to ask you to look over one I've done!

Thanks guys,
SK
 
Yeah he has an OS he can use but not a HDD and well the latest games, so graphics as good as possible for the budget I'd of thought (i.e battlefield 3)

Cheers!
 
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £83.99
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £77.38
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £59.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £31.99
1 x Kingston Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £455.40 (includes shipping : £11.75).



or

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £83.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £59.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £31.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £446.02 (includes shipping : £11.75).



The i3 is your best bet as a CPU. It would be nice to have the Z77 mobo (it has more RAM slots than the H61 mobos so you could add more RAM later). That MSI example has THX rated audio and has Lucid MVP which boosts the GPU performance and is a very reasonable price.

The 6850 you could overclock with MSI afterburner and get it close to 6870 performance (that's a £120ish GPU). I spec'd a slightly faster HDD than Idleman and a H61 alternative which has SataIII for a few quid more.

We are both over budget, sadly you have just missed last weeks offers on the CPUs which would have helped us get in your budget :( Hope this helps
 
Idleman said:
An extra £2.01 for .4ms faster seek time, OMG how did i miss that.:p
Click to expand...

honosuseri said:
Just pointing out the differences bud incase the OP wonders. You can rib me over the HDD but opting out of sataIII on the mobo for the sake of a few quid is questionabubble ;)
Click to expand...

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) - PassMark Disk Mark 753

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) - PassMark Disk Mark 801

Make of it what you will.
 
Surveyor said:
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) - PassMark Disk Mark 753

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) - PassMark Disk Mark 801

Make of it what you will.
Click to expand...

Well to be fair it was cheaper, yes only just, but Idleman did use the slightly faster CPU which was marginally more expensive. So it averaged out in the end, when working to a tight budget every penny can and does count :)
 
 
Thanks

Thanks guys for the recommendations, they all look pretty good though just in case my friend isn't keen on going over the budget (which I should think he wont really mind by £10 or £20) would you say the AMD build by Bacon? was good?

Not that I don't trust you Bacon?! It's just good to have second opinions and to know what, if any, are the major differences between this AMD build or one of the intel builds.

I'm just guessing processing speeds?

Thanks again guys!
 
Avoid AMD like the plague.

The i3 is a dual core but with its hyperthreading it is just as good as the phenomII quadcores. Even if you overclock the AMD CPU it's still on par with the i3.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=102

The AMD CPU does do media encoding slightly better but if you use software that supports quicksync the intel CPU would win this hands down. Also the AMD CPU is 125W, so drawing more "juice" than the i3 at 65W (almost double infact). If you want to overclock the AMD CPU it's going to draw even more power and don't forget you really would need an aftermarket heatsink as well adding to the cost.

The bulldozer CPUs from AMD are just as bad so you don't want to be on that mobo socket. With the Z77 or H61 mobo you have a wide choice of decent intel cpus from the pentium G, SB i3/i5/i7 and the IB i5/i7.

Bacons spec would work, it's just false economy at the end of the day.
 
Cheers

Cheers for the advice, I'll stick with the intel builds then - I was more prone to side with it as I would be building the computer for my friend and the builds suggested are very similar to build I just made - therefore should be easy enough!

Once again thanks for the recommendations and advice, I know what to purchase now. Thanks!

Sk
 
Sekonda said:
Cheers for the advice, I'll stick with the intel builds then - I was more prone to side with it as I would be building the computer for my friend and the builds suggested are very similar to build I just made - therefore should be easy enough!

Once again thanks for the recommendations and advice, I know what to purchase now. Thanks!

Sk
Click to expand...

No worries fella, good luck with the build :)

It would be nice to get the Z77 mobo. Yes i know i only spec'd 4GB of RAM alongside it due to the budget but you can see how relatively cheap RAM is. It's such an easy upgrade, I'm sure he could cop another 4GB of RAM as a gift sometime through the year ;)
 
Just make sure its the same RAM :D

Hono is right that an I3 will perfom like the AMD I specced, however if you have programs that use 4 cores like web designer, music maker, video encoder and some office programs then its worth if.
However the Phenom is still a good PCU and will perform decently, AMD only screwed up on the Bulldozer chips.
 
Idleman and honosuseri recommended different motherboards and was a £30 price difference, is the performance reflected in the price or are they fairly similar? Im making my own system and shaving off money where possible would be good.
 
T1ggZ said:
Idleman and honosuseri recommended different motherboards and was a £30 price difference, is the performance reflected in the price or are they fairly similar? Im making my own system and shaving off money where possible would be good.
Click to expand...

If you start a thread bud, tell us what you need for how much, we can spec you some components for your consideration.

The Z77 mobo will allow overclocking of K series CPUs and can make clever use of the CPUs integrated GPU and also boost the graphics card performance with lucid MVP. Thats a budget version, you can pay more for SLI/Xfire support, integrated wifi and so on.

The H61 is a more basic mobo. No overclocking options or lucid MVP and limited RAM slots (2). My choice of H61 was slightly dearer because it had sataIII over idlemans choice with sataII. COnsidering SSD prices are coming down it would be nice to have the sataIII to use these SSDs at full speed :)
 
I made a thread and got some really good feedback but i saw this thread earlier and the motherboard choices confused me a little. Im pretty happy with the build sparx has made for me but ill be changing the hdd to a 500gb version. Which mobo would you suggest for this build?
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £83.99
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £77.38
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £74.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £40.99
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £39.95
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.98
Total : £486.22 (includes shipping : FREE).
 
T1ggZ said:
I made a thread and got some really good feedback but i saw this thread earlier and the motherboard choices confused me a little. Im pretty happy with the build sparx has made for me but ill be changing the hdd to a 500gb version. Which mobo would you suggest for this build?
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £83.99
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £77.38
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £74.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £40.99
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £39.95
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.98
Total : £486.22 (includes shipping : FREE).
Click to expand...

I found your thread.....check it ;)
 
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