A gaming system for £350? Is this even possible?

To run the two 7950s you'd be looking at about 750W PSU, of which a decent one is about £80 in itself. Could you ask your mate if he'd consider selling just one of the 7950s, or could you sell on one of them? Otherwise, that's a bargain and grab it anyway lol

Yep, I think you'd need case, RAM, HDD, PSU and possibly a couple of fans as those 7950s will run quite hot
 
At *NEW* prices this would be pretty much the cheapest I'd recommend, the case + fans need to be half decent for crossfire 7950s as they probably will dump air into the case and you need to exhaust that out

YOUR BASKET
1 x Antec TruePower Classic 750w '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £72.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £65.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £44.99
1 x Raijintek Agos Midi Tower - Black £39.95
2 x Arctic F12 Case Fan - 120mm £3.98 (£7.96)
Total : £241.44 (includes shipping : £8.00).





Also assumes the bundle comes with a CPU heatsink - this (as you can see) is a decent chunk over £100 so used is your best option, or if you go for 1x 7950 and sell one on or something like that, as a single 7950 is still no slouch at 1080p
 
dh3jr.jpg
 
Feek said:
Again, thanks all for the advice. On the second hand scene, a friend at work has recently upgraded and has offered him the following for £250:

2 x AMD Radeon HD7950
Intel i7 3770
Asus P8Z77-V LX2

I assume this is a good deal?

If so, what do I need to add to build a workable system? Is it just memory, case, PSU and HDD? Can I get those for £100?
Click to expand...


YOUR BASKET
1 x Avexir Core Red Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16001104G-2IR) - Red Light £59.99
1 x EVGA 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (100-B1-0500-KR) £43.99
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) HDD £36.95
1 x Aerocool V3X Black Edition Midi-Tower - Black £16.99
Total : £157.92 (includes shipping : ).




I'd ask OcUK if they can round it off to £150. Then see if your son's friend can remove one of the 7950's from the deal and come down to £200.

Case is basic but the vents on side panel will help out, and he can add some fans to help with cooling as time goes on, or save up for a nicer case (the latter would probably make more sense).
 
Hi varkanoid, you sir might just have saved me loads of trouble!

Have been given a ridiculous task with just over half of that budget, (i found out 4 hours ago that it's for Battlefield 4, needs Windows too!), maybe giving them that copy of PC Format will make them see sense, we'll see.

A very many thanks to you as i can't send you a packet of Haribo :)
 
Feek said:
Again, thanks all for the advice. On the second hand scene, a friend at work has recently upgraded and has offered him the following for £250:

2 x AMD Radeon HD7950
Intel i7 3770
Asus P8Z77-V LX2

I assume this is a good deal?

If so, what do I need to add to build a workable system? Is it just memory, case, PSU and HDD? Can I get those for £100?
Click to expand...

That's a really good deal.
 
Feek said:
Again, thanks all for the advice. On the second hand scene, a friend at work has recently upgraded and has offered him the following for £250:

2 x AMD Radeon HD7950
Intel i7 3770
Asus P8Z77-V LX2

I assume this is a good deal?

If so, what do I need to add to build a workable system? Is it just memory, case, PSU and HDD? Can I get those for £100?
Click to expand...

Bite his hand off, that's a good deal! sell one of the 7950s on and you should have a nice little pot of money left for the other bits.
 
MSTRBKR said:
This is surely based on used parts, no?
Click to expand...

Nope.

Bear in mind they use just 4GB of 1333MHz RAM, the OS is Windows 10 Technical Preview so you still have to purchase it at some point, the PSU (and keyboard and mouse) comes with the case, and they have selected the cheapest prices available for the items without including shipping costs.

Still, fair do's. That's one way to go about it, and not (too) much "cheating" lol.

The PSU appears to have a combined output of 32 amps on the 12v rails. That's if the PSU is the Gigabyte Greenmax 450W I suspect it is. They didn't go into detail on the model or its specifications. Anyway, the recommended amperage for a GTX 770, which is now considered a mid-range card, is 42 amps. It'd be okay with a bit less, as would the R9 280/280X, but you'd still want more than 32 amps. So PCFormat's claim that the PSU will handle upgrades of "all but the most powerful video cards" was a bit of a stretch.

Unfortunately (or fortunately? :D ), OcUK are no longer selling some budget case +PSU combos anymore, but I did have a go at replicating it with OcUK parts:

YOUR BASKET
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 750Ti OC "Low Profile" 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Retail (75IGH8HX9KXZ) £99.95
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £57.59
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) HDD £36.95
1 x MSI H81M-E33 Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £34.99
1 x Antec VP350P 350W '80 Plus' Continuous Power Supply £28.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Single Channel Module (TED34GM1333C901) £26.99
1 x Aerocool V3X Black Edition Midi-Tower - Black £16.99
1 x Gigabyte KM5300 Compact Keyboard Set £8.45
Total : £310.90 (includes shipping : not counted ).




That's basically it - 750Ti, Pentium-K, etc, with some different parts (same performance).

The PCFormat spec is a bit better to be honest, as it includes a B85 motherboard instead of H81, and the Zotac 750Ti comes with a 5 year warranty and doesn't need a bracket as the KFA2 in mine, does (haven't included it). The PSU is also just 350W but Antec internals could be better, who knows.
 
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Pretty sure I've got some xms3 corsair ram you can have. 4gb still in its blister pack unused just need to find it.

Might have a SSD as well but I need to have a play with it as the sata port snapped off but I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron.
 
Do you still need a CPU cooler ?

I have one of these from a competition win at another forum that i've fitted briefly before swapping for a different one.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-001-RT

It has some very small damage to the fins on one corner because the retail packaging offers little to no protection, but once fitted it is fine, just don't manhandle it too roughly during fitting, or you'll be straightening out fins lol !


I would be happy to let you have it for the cost of postage if you could use it.
 
Ooops, apologies for not noticing your post Mynight, I'd not been in here for a while.

If you've got the memory and the SSD, they would be perfect, thanks.

Gunslinger, I appreciate the offer but we've got an OEM cooler which should do the job perfectly well. He won't be overclocking so it should be OK with the stock fan.
 
I built a machine for well under £300 using the members market and a well known auction site before Christmas.

ASRock H81 mobo £18
7850 £75
4GB RAM £18
640GB HDD £12
Antec 500W PSU £20
Cheapo case £20
Pentium K £35
Freezer 7 £15

£213 plus Windows and great performance with the pentium clocked to 4.6GHz
 
Feek said:
Ooops, apologies for not noticing your post Mynight, I'd not been in here for a while.

If you've got the memory and the SSD, they would be perfect, thanks.

Gunslinger, I appreciate the offer but we've got an OEM cooler which should do the job perfectly well. He won't be overclocking so it should be OK with the stock fan.
Click to expand...

ok, well the offer stands, if you change your mind throw me a message via the trust thingy so i get an email, and if i still have it (likely) then it's all yours.

Good luck with the build

EDIT:
last build i did i had to pick up OS, grabbed an OEM key and COA from ebay, £25 for Win7 Pro, key immediately via email with download link and the COA by post the following day, worked a treat
 
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Im gaming On Pentium G3258 and GTX 285 its still is good and used cost £30 same with Pentium if you get second hand one, then it's easy to upgrade to i3 or i5
 
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