New PC - Very Budget

Ruprekt79

Ruprekt79

Ruprekt79

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24 Feb 2013
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82
Hi Everyone,

This is my first post on here but was hoping for some help.

I used to build PC's back in early 2000's but been out of the PC gaming scene for quite many years and am wanting to get back into it again.

I am building a gaming PC, but wanting to spend no more than £300 (don't laugh) for the MB, RAM, CPU and GPU. I know I am not going to get a top spec PC powering Crysis 3 at 2000fps for the amount of money I am spending, but hoping to achieve a budget gaming PC nonetheless.

Although I am initially only spending around £300, I am wanting to upgrade it in the near future to something a lot more substantial (better AMD processor and GPU as well as more RAM), here's where I need some advice please.

Spec I am Buying in the next week or so:-

AMD Phenom ii 965 BE
ASUS HD6670 GPU GDDR5 1Ghz
8GB Corsair RAM 1866Mhz
Appropriate motherboard

Please could anyone advise on a good budget (sub £50) motherboard which will house the above, but also be able to upgrade to something like a A10 8350 CPU and powerful GPU?

Many thanks and sorry if I am being vague above, but am having to re-learn all this 'new' technology.

Dan.
 
I think Trinity will be your best bet with this. It would be worth however, making sure you can get a board which support 2400RAM, this would give a massive boost over the graphics compared to 1866.
 
 
You seem very mixed up in what your saying mate.

Firstly, the A10 8350 isn't a real CPU, you've mixed up two. The A10 5800k and the Fx 8350.

What snips is saying is, don't buy that phenom bundle you mentioned and buy a trinity bundle instead. I agree with that statement.
 
You can go with trinity, the main problem with that build is that it is not as future proof as an intel build, as soon as you slap in a discrete GPU you instantly waste the idea of the 5800k and suddenly an i3 would have been a better idea. So it really depends how soon you want to upgrade:

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A10-5800K Black Edition 3.80GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD580KWOHJBOX) £99.95
1 x ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 AMD A85X Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £91.99
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1866C10DC) £39.95
Total : £242.69 (includes shipping : £9.00).




If you want to drop an i5 later on in the year you could get this for now:

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showd (GX-100-GI) £129.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Intel Pentium G860 3.00GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £63.95
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £35.99
Total : £331.27 (includes shipping : £9.50).




I am not sure though if the 7850 will bottleneck with such a CPU. If it doesn't you pretty much have the motherboard, RAM and GPU for another couple of years and the i5 can easily be added.
 
Thanks for all this everyone and yes I realised I had mixed up the AMD cpu names as soon as I posted. :)

I have looked at benchmarks etc online but is the i3 significantly more powerful for games than the Phenom I mentioned?
 
Ruprekt79 said:
Thanks for all this everyone and yes I realised I had mixed up the AMD cpu names as soon as I posted. :)

I have looked at benchmarks etc online but is the i3 significantly more powerful for games than the Phenom I mentioned?
Click to expand...
Gaming performance wise, a Phenom II X4 overclocked to 3.6GHz-3.9GHz is around as fast as a i3, IF the Phenom II's performance is not crippled by game engines that use less than 4 cores...(which is vast majority of them).

A Piledriver FX6300 would be quite a bit faster than the i3 in games that use 6 cores or more, but there still very few of games properly benefit from 6 cores (you can probably count the titles with the fingers on just one of your hands :P)
 
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Gibbo, thanks for the help. I never even contemplated a Pentium processor so will look into that more. Is there a motherboard that houses that cpu which is under £50 that will also take an i5 in future? I really need to keep the cost down anywhere I can. Cheers.
 
 
Is the i3 worth around £30 more than the G860 when it comes to gaming performance or am I better investing the difference in a better GPU? Can I bottleneck a GPU with the G860 or should I say is there a limit on which GPU you would put with a G860?

Also, do I need 8GB for gaming or will 4GB be enough as long as it's fast memory?

Can you tell I am on a tight budget yet!? :)
 
Ruprekt79 said:
Is the i3 worth around £30 more than the G860 when it comes to gaming performance or am I better investing the difference in a better GPU? Can I bottleneck a GPU with the G860 or should I say is there a limit on which GPU you would put with a G860?

Also, do I need 8GB for gaming or will 4GB be enough as long as it's fast memory?

Can you tell I am on a tight budget yet!? :)
Click to expand...

Massive difference between an i3 and G860 but the G860 is still more than capable of running games along side a decent GPU.

You are going to get 50+fps in Skyrim, Ultra settings @ 1920x1080 with a G860 + 7850 GPU, same goes for BF3. Have a look at some benchmarks.

YOU NEED 8GB, it's cheap as chips bud, get it before the prices change:

YOUR BASKET
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £35.99
Total : £39.90 (includes shipping : £3.26).

 
Ruprekt79 said:
Is the i3 worth around £30 more than the G860 when it comes to gaming performance or am I better investing the difference in a better GPU? Can I bottleneck a GPU with the G860 or should I say is there a limit on which GPU you would put with a G860?

Also, do I need 8GB for gaming or will 4GB be enough as long as it's fast memory?

Can you tell I am on a tight budget yet!? :)
Click to expand...

That's a tricky situation. The i3 is worth the extra though the G860 will run happily with your 7850.

What the i3 will give you is less of a bottleneck when adding a newer/another gpu.

Im not sure on this but if a G860 did bottleneck a 7970 lets say, the i3 would either have less of a bottleneck or none atall.

To summarise:

If your not going to upgrade your gpu for a while the G860 is perfect.

If your going to use the 7850 as a stepping stone to a £300+ card, go with the i3.

Just so you know the 7850 will easily accomodate all your needs, but us tech savvy's do get the upgrade itch a little too often :)
 
Thanks.

I think I will stay with the 7850 for a while and upgrade the CPU first, so will for this build go for the G860.
I used to get the upgrade bug when I was into PC's years ago, but since then I'm afraid family life and all its money and time sapping ways will mean my days of luxury buys are over. Hence the really low budget.
 
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