YOUR BASKET
1 x
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ FARCRY3, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £155.99
1 x
BenQ GW2250HM 22" Widescreen LED Professional Monitor - Black £99.98
1 x
Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £83.99
1 x
MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - FREE Alpenföhn Civetta Cooler!! £69.98
1 x
Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA100) £54.98
1 x
XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £43.99
1 x
Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual CHannel Kit (PV38G213C1K) £39.95
1 x
Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x
Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24B5ST SATA ReWriter - Black (Retail) £17.99
Total : £616.34 (includes shipping : £13.75).
Gone over a little but stay with me as I explain.......
We have the Z77 mobo here, it's voltage locked which isn't ideal for overclocking an i5K but you can't afford that CPU really on this budget. Not being able to adjust the voltage stops you going for the high overclocks but you should manage say ~4.2Ghz if you did the upgrade down the road to even the i5 2500K 2nd hand. It does come with a cooler which is better than the i3s stock jobbie.
The RAM is actually too fast really for the 1155 socket, however as RAM has a lifetime warranty it does make sense to buy the fastest kit you can afford. It's £5 more than the 1600mhz kits, so you can save a little cash here if you wish.
PSU is a rebranded seasonic so is of excellent quality, 5 year warranty as well which is nice. Has more than enough power to run the GPU which has a 3 year uk based warranty and some nice free games. You can't OC the i3 CPU but we can talk you through OC'ing the 7850 to get more bang for your buck.
The HDD is 1TB, I know you think that's too high but in my experience it's better to have more than be left wanting, doubling the capacity for the sake of £10 is a no brainer in my eyes. Please note it has double the cache (and warranty) of the 500GB drive you like. Although my buddy Idleman has 64MB of cache on his HDD but that's £5 more than my choice. I figure mine is a nice compromise between the two no?
The BenQ I have used is a nice price for 22inch. It's a VA LED panel, they produce a good black and tend to have good brightness. An IPS panel would be more cash and offer better colours but we are trying to balance things to the budget here.
READ THIS it might well help you make a decision yourself on the screen and always look for reviews
Another option might be to consider a 2nd hand GPU. Now you don't get access to our MM sadly but we see the 1GB 460 and the 6850 go for ~£50, I have the 1GB 460 which overclocks well too (mines at 900mhz). Whilst not as good as the 7850, it's on par with the 6870 when oc'd and it is MUCH cheaper this way and with nvidias new drivers I'm still finding it capable for gaming. Nvidia also adds CUDA support, which many software suites can use to speed themselves up with, so that £50 is making a nice double whammy upgrade over the CPUs internal graphics.
YOUR BASKET
1 x
Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x
BenQ GW2250HM 22" Widescreen LED Professional Monitor - Black £99.98
1 x
MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - FREE Alpenföhn Civetta Cooler!! £69.98
1 x
Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA100) £54.98
1 x
XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £43.99
1 x
Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual CHannel Kit (PV38G213C1K) £39.95
1 x
Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x
Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24B5ST SATA ReWriter - Black (Retail) £17.99
Total : £542.86 (includes shipping : £12.50).
You now have the i5K CPU which you can overclock and also has a better IGP than the i3 3220. The IGP is used by quick sync to boost video encoding (its like CUDA just not as widely supported) so it's nice that you have the HD4000 IGP and a quad core CPU. There is ~£60 in change to help buy a 2nd hand GPU if you can find one. Swapping the GPU later on is going to be much easier than doing a CPU upgrade
