£500 budget :0

Phildebeest · 6 Nov 2011 at 14:13

Afternoon folks, im gonna have a bash at building my own system ive got a £500 budget and am after something that can play the latest games such as bf3 i understand im not gonna be zooming at the speed of light in fps with this budget but im due a new pc and thought id put it to you guys to see whats the best to go for. i was going to get the titan krypt, had one before and loved it. what do you guys think?
monitor, keyboard and mouse and OS are not needed within the budget.

cheers guys

wkingsnorth · 6 Nov 2011 at 14:20

A Titan krypt is £100 under your budget, why not get the titan iridium or triceratop?

Phildebeest · 6 Nov 2011 at 14:27

hi there thanks for the quick reply i was going to go for a prebuilt one as a last resort if i didnt get many replies. i would really like to try and build it myself its something ive always wanted to do.

moody89 · 6 Nov 2011 at 14:40

I think that's going to be pretty tight on that budget. Ideally an i5 2500k would be the way to go but it's £180 for the retail version. The Asus P8Z68-V LX is on offer this week for £71 and say £30 for 4GB Corsair XMS3 memory - you're talking £280 before you think about a case, PSU, HDD, graphics card, optical drive etc. Is there anything you can salvage from your old system?

Zynck · 6 Nov 2011 at 15:22

It would be ideal if you had an old HDD to re-use, since, as you probably already know, their prices are pretty crazy right now.

With a 1TB drive, you're looking at something like this

Slightly over budget, but everything's been on the rise lately.

P8Z68-V, as moody recommended, at a pretty sweet price. You could even run a 4x/4x SLI at a later point for a performance boost. SLI'd 460s are known for being better than any single current GPU, I believe.

The i3-2100 is better than the X4-640, although you can't overclock with it.

Modular Power Supply. 550W is too much for a single 460, but, as I said, you can add another a some other point, and this is a pretty good brand PSU that'll power them both nicely. Bring it down to ~450W if you're sure you won't SLI and save some money there.

Everything else is pretty 'default'. Go ahead and pick another case if the Merc is not up to your taste.

If you do happen to have a spare HDD that you can re-use - maybe even an IDE one that you could use a converter with (Hey, desperate times for HDDs right now!) - then it would really help. If you did, then this build could even have a HD 6950, that would completely crush the 460.

Good luck, and I hope I've helped somehow.

moody89 · 6 Nov 2011 at 15:36

Zynck, your build was very similar to what I had thrown together, apart from I went with the Samsung F1 1TB for the faster speeds. You could even swap out the i3 2100 and motherboard and go the AMD route - Phenom II 955BE and Asus M5A97 PRO mobo. I'm not sure if games such as BF3 benefit more from multiple cores or faster clock speeds since obviously the i3 is faster clock for clock. With the 955 and mobo the build comes in at £549 so not a lot of difference either way, just depends what would suit your needs better.

chrisarm · 6 Nov 2011 at 15:46

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £145.99
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £113.99
1 x Cooler Master Silencio RC-550 Case and GX 650W Power Supply with Hyper-TX3 Cooler Bundle £109.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD253GJ) £62.99
1 x MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £61.99
1 x OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low-Voltage Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3G1333LV4GK) £25.99
1 x LG GH24NS70 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.98
Total : £553.43 (includes shipping : £11.25).

Added the i5 to the system but you could add an i3 when they are back in stock to drop price down to around £500, also added a smaller hard drive for price but hopefully you could use the one from your old rig. I went for the H67 mobo just for price and for the fact you can't overclock the 2300 or the 2100 much anyway

NinetyOne · 6 Nov 2011 at 15:50

At the £500 budget mark you would definitely want to go with an i5-2500k, then buy graphics and HDD 2nd hand.

Phildebeest · 7 Nov 2011 at 06:01

thanks for the respnses folks i understand that 500 is a small budget and a tight one at that. partner has kindly chucked in another 150 into the coffers so i think im going the i5 route.
also is the 6870 better than the 460? im totally out of touch with todays graphics cards.

thanks again guys

scrlk · 7 Nov 2011 at 07:35

Phildebeest said:
thanks for the respnses folks i understand that 500 is a small budget and a tight one at that. partner has kindly chucked in another 150 into the coffers so i think im going the i5 route.
also is the 6870 better than the 460? im totally out of touch with todays graphics cards.

thanks again guys

Have a look for yourself.

Overall, the 6870 appears to be better than the GTX 460.

Phildebeest · 7 Nov 2011 at 09:08

Hi guys, im considering the following setup on finance and buying a 460 seperate with money i have got to go sli setup. how does this configuration look.
kind regards

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Phildebeest · 7 Nov 2011 at 10:23

im ready to buy folks are these component compatible swapping out the p8z68 for the msi p67a for sli support?

NinetyOne · 7 Nov 2011 at 10:28

I would never buy anything on finance. :S

I still think you should go down the 2nd hand lane for graphics and the HDD, 320gb for £70 makes me cry.

Try find a 560TI 2nd hand.

Phildebeest · 7 Nov 2011 at 10:35

hehe just buy now pay may so i can get xmas out the way

are the parts gd to go?

chrisarm · 7 Nov 2011 at 12:03

I'd say pay the extra tenner and get the K version of the 2500 mate. You might not want to overclock now but you will probably kick yourself later if you don't get it

NinetyOne · 7 Nov 2011 at 12:09

chrisarm said:
I'd say pay the extra tenner and get the K version of the 2500 mate. You might not want to overclock now but you will probably kick yourself later if you don't get it

Didn't notice that, yup you should 100% go for the 2500k over the 2500.

Phildebeest · 7 Nov 2011 at 12:24

So go for the k version. all other parts compatible?

chrisarm · 7 Nov 2011 at 12:40

Yip every thing else seems ok mate

fowler002 · 7 Nov 2011 at 23:00

if you haven't hit the buy button yet I'd suggest changing the psu to

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-117-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

or even dropping to 500/550w as from what I've read the sli/xfire performance on the chosen motherboard isn't very good due to the pcie not being x8/x8 at least in xfire/sli you'd want one with x8/x8(such as the z68xp-ud3 @£110).

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-007-XF&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= the antec 550w is out of stock

or even http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-003-LA&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= stulid seems to suggest this in budget builds

change the cooler to http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-001-GD&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395 cheaper and good to 4.6ghz, don't think you'll get 5ghz with the chosen mb(even then think the antec kuhler 620 will struggle at 5ghz)

Change the graphics card to a 6870.

Greavesy · 7 Nov 2011 at 23:03

A quick google search and youl find 500gb HDD's for like £45