Sub £300 gaming build

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I'm looking into building my first computer for some gaming on a pretty tight budget, sub £300! I quickly threw together this combination which looks respectable for the money, just wondering if anybody has any comments regarding either compatibility or improvements.
Is there a better graphics card anyone could recommend for a similar amount?
I already have DVD drive, monitor, keyboard & mouse and Windows 7 CD so don't need them.

Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 £49.99

Processor: AMD FX 6100 £68.16 (after cashback promo)

RAM: 8gb Kingston Ram £25.62

Hard-drive: Seagate 1TB Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 7200RPM Hard Drive £64.99

Graphics card: Asus AMD Radeon HD 6670 £54.99

Case & PSU: Black Micro ATX Case + 500Watt Power Supply £26.98

= £290.73



Cheers :)
 
It would play games on low to medium settings, but a 500w power supply is almost guaranteed to be bad quality for £26 on its own let alone bundled with a case.

Also you may be better off looking for a cheap 6770 or 5770 as I'm sure I've seen them around for about £50 new...
 
SouthEastBlue said:
It would play games on low to medium settings, but a 500w power supply is almost guaranteed to be bad quality for £26 on its own let alone bundled with a case.

Also you may be better off looking for a cheap 6770 or 5770 as I'm sure I've seen them around for about £50 new...
Click to expand...

Will the graphics card be the limiting factor with regards to quality settings with the above setup?

With the PSU - bad quality in what sense - unreliable or simply not providing the quoted wattage?
I've seen cheap PSUs like this that seem to generally get good reviews..but I guess they've skimped on something when there are others at the £100 mark.
 
The graphics card would be the real limiting factor for most game settings, although the general and fact based opinion would be to get Intel for gaming as not to hold back higher end graphics cards and boost minimum/average frame rates. AMD is still fine though really for playing games , and for £65 that CPU is well priced. Having said that, a cheap Intel 1155 system with a Pentium dual core processor may be pretty equal in gaming situations of you don't overclock, and would offer better future upgrade possibilities.

As for power supplies the one you linked it terrible. Cheap power supplies are unreliable (inferior weak components), don't put out the stated power, and also usually have limited cables for powering multiple devices.

The cheapest power supply you should go for would be something like this or this.

The power supply is seen as probably the most important part of a system, and cheap power supplies can take out multiple computer components if they happen to blow up under load. Don't take the risk!
 
Cheers for the help guys.
Have read the article and some other threads on here RE: the PSU and realise the sense of spending a bit more!

So if I switch to this:

Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 £49.99
Processor: AMD FX 6100 £68.16 (with cashback promo)
RAM: 4gb Kingston Ram £12.81
Hard-drive: Seagate 1TB Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 7200RPM Hard Drive £64.99
Graphics card: Asus AMD Radeon HD 6670 £54.99
Case: Casecom MA-1199 mATX £14.99
PSU: OCZ CoreXtreme 500w £32.99
= £298.92


4GB ram seems sufficient for now..I could drop the HD to 500GB but it barely seems worth it for the £10-15 it would save :rolleyes:

I realise 'futureproofing' is probably pretty moot on a system at this sort of price, but which would provide better performance into the future, a dual core Intel or the AMD 6100? I would probably swap out to a higher graphics card maybe 12 months down the line, so which processor would be best in that situation?
 
For me this is more intersting than most spec me threads as it is surprising just how much performance you get for so little money.

I would personally go intel £100 will get you an 1155 chip and board G840 is excellant.
£75 on case psu , ram.
Get a smaller H drive and spend more on the Graphics card £75 gets a second hand 5850 that is a huge chunk faster than a 6670.

A 5850 paired with a half decent chip will still play almost any game well at 1080.
 
Cheers guys..after a bit more reading most people seem to prefer Intel for gaming, which also means I could get a cheaper motherboard.

So this is where I'm at:

Motherboard: ASRock H61M-VS £34.99 (any better options than this?)
Processor: Intel Core i3 550 Dual Core 3.2GHz £71.85
RAM: 4gb Kingston Ram £12.81
Hard-drive: Seagate 1TB Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 7200RPM Hard Drive £64.99
Graphics card: Asus AMD Radeon HD 6670 £54.99
Case: Casecom MA-1199 mATX £14.99
PSU: OCZ CoreXtreme 500w £32.99
= £287.61

A saving of ~£10 yet halving the capacity of the HD seems a bit uneconomical to me? I imagine I would manage to fill 1tb eventually. Most likely I would just spend a tenner over the budget and could pick up a 2nd hand card.
Would you recommend the 2nd hand 5850 at that sort of price point Domi? Would that be my best bet?

Cheers
 
I personally think Eurogamer made a mistake not going for the better Graphics card ok its £50 more a lot on a £300 budget but the performance over for instance lowering the cpu cutting corners on the Mboard would have given much better performance imo.

to be fair to them prices of course continually drop and what is the case now may not have been when they wrote the article.

For now of course windows 8 is free until mid January :)
 
Firstly that processor will not fit in the motherboard as it is a socket 1156.

A 5850 is a good card, my housemate uses a 5830 for gaming and it gives him good results, BF3 runs well at medium setting but he only plays at 720P. Just make sure the card is in good condition if you are buying it second hand.
 
 
A 5850 is sooo much faster than a 6670 that absolutely yes.

People will argue this but in all honesty CPUs are so good these days that almost any newish chip paired with a good graphics card will perform very well.

To be fair not everybody will buy 2nd hand and the replacement option for new is the 6870 shop around and your talking £110-120 for about the same as a 5850

paired with that 550 a fairly awesome machine for the price.
 
Thanks firefly, looks decent :)

Would I notice much benefit from upgrading the Intel 6840 to the i3, and then clawing back some dollars with a used graphics card?
 
Just to clarify you want an 1155 board and chip NOT an 1156.

The pair Firefly listed are what you need , you can go upper G850 and there are several lower but they all will do fine.
 
Yeah thanks Domi - realised that now, just lazily plucked the board off the linked article! :p

I'm amazed how well the G840 performs for that money!
Found the G850 cheaper still, so that would make sense.

Gives me:
Motherboard: MSI H61M-P31-G3 £32.99
Processor: Intel Pentium G850 £53.99
RAM: 4gb Kingston Ram £12.81
Hard-drive: Seagate 1TB Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 7200RPM Hard Drive £64.99
Graphics card: Asus AMD Radeon HD 6670 £54.99
Case: Casecom MA-1199 mATX £14.99
PSU: OCZ CoreXtreme 500w £32.99
= £267.75

So for my £300 I could stretch to just shy of £90 for a graphics card, so either the 6850 new or something slightly higher spec 2nd hand.

Is starting to look quite nice for the money :)
 
Yep the one I've bookmarked is.

HD6850 looks to be sub £80 2nd hand, which brings me in at under £293..great stuff!

Thanks for the help, really appreciate it :)
 
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