Double check my budget gaming system...

jarvis82

jarvis82

jarvis82

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Joined
10 May 2008
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285
Location
Sandhurst, United Kingdom
Sometime in the next month I'll be wanting to build a budget gaming system for my son's birthday - Will be his first PC.

Have keyboard/mouse/Win7 and 7200rpm SATA3 hard disk (he can do without solid state for now I think).

Will be used for Minecraft mainly, but also some other slightly more graphically taxing games - racing/shooters etc.

Budget is £450 (and must include monitor!).

So, all input gratefully received!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus HD 7770 GHz TOP 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99
1 x BenQ GL2055 20" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £83.99
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor **FREE SIMCITY PC GAME** (AD560KWOHJBOX) £71.99
1 x Gigabyte F2A85X-D3H AMD A85X Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £68.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £43.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £37.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case - Black £28.99
1 x Alpenföhn Civetta CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £12.98
Total : £480.34 (includes shipping : £17.85).

 
I've modified your spec a little bit to something much more powerful for gaming, £15 above yours.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7790 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x BenQ GL2055 20" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £83.99
1 x MSI 990XA-GD55 AMD 990X Chipset (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £39.95
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £37.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case - Black £28.99
1 x Alpenföhn Civetta CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £12.98
Total : £495.25 (includes shipping : £17.85).

 
He'll only need faster ram if running the APU on it's own. Even then it's debatable what the benefit would be, especially when working to a tight budget
 
 
teppic said:
That b-grade 7850 is certainly a good buy for the budget.
Click to expand...

Not a 1gb 7850 it isn't..

Id rather have the 7790 for £100.

I like teppic's spec, though id get the 970 motherboard from pottys spec.

Id also change the case to the asgard pro. And get 8gb of RAM.
 
Doomedspeed said:
Not a 1gb 7850 it isn't..

Id rather have the 7790 for £100.

I like teppic's spec, though id get the 970 motherboard from pottys spec.

Id also change the case to the asgard pro. And get 8gb of RAM.
Click to expand...

But the 7790 is still 1GB?

The Gigabyte would be all right for the 6300, I put a higher end board in because the cheaper one wouldn't cope well at all with any future upgrade to an 8320/8350.
 
teppic said:
But the 7790 is still 1GB?

The Gigabyte would be all right for the 6300, I put a higher end board in because the cheaper one wouldn't cope well at all with any future upgrade to an 8320/8350.
Click to expand...

That's my point really. The 7790 bridges the gap between the 7770 and 7850, the only reason id pay more than £100 is if im getting a 2Gb GPU. I think the VRAM limit will be more of a factor, especially when you can get a better overall rig and a card with a decent warranty.

The 990x is a better for the 8xxx series but if he's not going to upgrade in the next 2 years it'll be fine with a 970 motherboard.
 
The 1GB 7850 is still a really big performance bump over the 7790 - something like 20-30%. That's very good for just £20 extra.
 
Doomedspeed said:
That's my point really. The 7790 bridges the gap between the 7770 and 7850, the only reason id pay more than £100 is if im getting a 2Gb GPU. I think the VRAM limit will be more of a factor, especially when you can get a better overall rig and a card with a decent warranty.
Click to expand...
Actually the 7790 is still quite hugely behind even the 7850 1GB, mostly due to not only the slower GPU, but also the much lower memory bandwidth because of the lowly 128-bit memory bus, comparing to the 7850's 256-bit bus.
 
I'll say this now that Civetta cooler isn't worth a rub ;)

Potty27 said:
At 1080p that 1GB version will perform far better than the 7790 and around on par with the 7850 2GB version for most games, due to the factory OC at stock it will do better than some 7850 2GB cards.
Click to expand...

Well what everyone seems to be forgetting is the panel the OP has picked and you are all sticking with is low res (1600x900) which will obviously make life easier on the GPU. So you could argue using a lower end GPU is "ok". However I agree with my buddy Doomed. Personally I wouldn't buy lower than a 2GB 7850, infact I would skip over that and head straight for a 7870LE as they are priced soooo close. Being a Tahiti core it OCs to trade blows with the stock 7950 which is a good £80 more atleast. That's amazing bang for buck and AMD have this lovely habit of throwing in a few free games with their GPUs.

Brace yourself for some waffle boys and girls ;)
All well and good but we are on a pretty tight budget here and those GPUs are out of reach really. I dislike the 7770 because it's just poor value for money, simply because you can buy 2nd hand bargains for pretty much half the price that can actually still top it. The 1GB Nvidia 460 and AMDs 6870 are still in anandtechs GPU13 benchmarking for a reason ;)

I would suggest a good sized panel @1080p but that's only gonna leave us £350ish for the rest. So I would look to make good use of an APU alone and then eye up a dedicated GPU as his next gift (crimbo even) or something to work towards anyway.

If the APU is done right then he can look to have a very good HTPC for 1080P playback and we are talking current gen console gaming performance which isn't sad for the price. Yes the panel ideally wants to use it's native res but if he really had to, he could drop the in game res to help the APUs IGP out. Once the dedicated GPU is dropped in the 1080P panel can really be put to good use.

AMD has new GPUs out around October(ish), the higher end cards should have BF4 bundled with. I imagine this is when most people will look to trade up (that's when I'll upgrade from my OC'd 460), so you'll probably find more 2nd hand bargains floating around at that time to consider. Next gen consoles land later on towards the end of the year. They are using a better custom APU which let's say is around 7870 performance or more. Cross platform games should perform much better for us in the future as consoles are now basically "talking our CPUs language".

If I could cop a 2GB 7850\650Ti Boost for sub £100 at the end of the year. I could overclock that pretty well for more ommmpff and with the A10/A8s being roughly on par with the current intel i3s that's a pretty well balanced CPU/GPU combo. Of course AMD might have better lower-mid range GPUs out to consider by then so which GPU to buy can be argued much later on.
 
Last edited:
honosuseri said:
However I agree with my buddy Doomed. Personally I wouldn't buy lower than a 2GB 7850, infact I would skip over that and head straight for a 7870LE as they are priced soooo close.
Click to expand...

I do agree with most you've said, but we are in effect talking about a under £370 budget (excluding monitor) and that extra £42 for the 7870 does make a huge difference.

So for the OP's budget I think the 1GB 7850 is good value for money and something I would spend my money on, if I had the same budget.

Getting a used card would be a good idea too, 5850/460/560/560 ti/6870 should be fine for the OP's needs and cost around £60 or so.
 
 
Potty27 said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £124.99
1 x Samsung S23B300BS 23" Widescreen LED Monitor - Glossy Black £101.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3 AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G160C9K) £49.99
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £34.99
1 x **B Grade** BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - White/Black £34.99
Total : £406.94 (includes shipping : FREE).




With this build the OP could probably get a fairy decent used card and be around budget. Includes a bigger screen.
Click to expand...

The CPU isn't listed on the boards CPU support list, there are three revisions of the board and I've checked all three.

Certain AM3+ boards having compatibility issues with newer Piledriver CPU's is common.
 
Potty27 said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £124.99
1 x Samsung S23B300BS 23" Widescreen LED Monitor - Glossy Black £101.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3 AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G160C9K) £49.99
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £34.99
1 x **B Grade** BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - White/Black £34.99
Total : £406.94 (includes shipping : FREE).




With this build the OP could probably get a fairy decent used card and be around budget. Includes a bigger screen.
Click to expand...


^ That board and CPU wouldn't be happy together.
 
stulid said:
The CPU isn't listed on the boards CPU support list, there are three revisions of the board and I've checked all three.

Certain AM3+ boards having compatibility issues with newer Piledriver CPU's is common.
Click to expand...

Yup, same thought, same time.

The board supports up to 95W TDP, the 8320 is above that. It'd run it but probably throttle it all the time.

- Actually it does support higher, but the 8320 would still put too much strain on it.
 
Last edited:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650Ti WindForce 2X Boost 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £137.99
1 x Iiyama ProLite E2278HD 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £99.95
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £39.95
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 (MB-364-GI) £35.00
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34096M1600HC11DC) £29.99
Total : £468.85 (includes shipping : FREE).



If I was doing CPU and GPU together that's what I'd shoot for. Mobo is B grade (it's £45 new) so might need some sata cables (check in Customer services). Hopefully it's BIOS can take the Ivy CPU but check again with CS. Being a Z68, i5K upgrades are do-able down the line and you can overclock them. This spec is probably the best option all in.

I know he is supposed to be doing an ITX APU build for his parents. That's using 1600Mhz RAM but if he built that first he'd get a good idea of what it can do and know his way around them.
 
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