£250 "gaming" PC

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
Posts
29,265
Location
Cornwall
Not my budget, so don't shoot me just yet :p

I'm hitting £250 without buying the gfx card yet... sooo, I'm wondering how good the IGPs are, if that's a decent route to go down.

His current rig, that I built some time in pre-history, is an AMD 1800 (circa 1999?), 768 RAM, 9600XT gfx. Needless to say, he doesn't have much success with newer games ;)

£250 is what he has, no more, no less.

Here I'm adding things up (all bought new).
cpu £50 for athlon ii x2 250.
mobo £50 with 760 chipset (radeon 3200)
psu £40 for 400w corsair
case £30 ish anything will do.
ram -- here's where the money goes bye bye -- £70 for 4gig.

well, there's £240 gone, and for the life of me I can't find a 5770 for £10 anywhere :p

is this mission impossible? anything will be an upgrade on his ancient rig, but what should we sacrifice?
 
what are the chances of being able to get two exactly matched sticks if I do that? for the whole dual channel thang.
 
To be honest if you buy second hand, for that budget you could get a e2140 c2d/8800gts 320mb type setup which would be MASSIVELY better than the type of parts you were looking at......

It'd be over 10 times faster than the rubbish listed new and be very capable of running even the latest games (crysis/cod etc) on reasonable settings.

Sorry, to elaberate and be more helpful.. :)

(all second hand)
Brand new Corsair 400w psu = £40
P31 or maybe even P35 gigabyte motherboard = £30-35
E2140 that will oc to 3ghz = £20
8800gts 320mb = £30
2 gigs of 1066mhz ram off a well known auction site = £30-35 (still sealed)

Thats practically a whole pc so far...
 
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had no idea c2ds were so cheap used :p worth knowing.

and you'd say a e2140 is a safer bet than an x2 250? just wondering if you're 10x faster estimate was based on moving from IGP to 8800GTS or if you were considering the CPU choice as part of the reason.
 
All of the changes really but especially the 8800gts vs any of the older cards is a massive difference.

Yea theres even E6600's that are good for 3.4/3.6ghz (C2D's) going in the overclockers members market currently for £45, E2180's have gone for £20 in the past, nevermind E2140's. You've got enough posts for access to have a nosey i think :)
 
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Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Asus M4A785TD-V Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £72.99
(£62.12) £72.99
(£62.12)
AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 240 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £46.99
(£39.99) £46.99
(£39.99)
Kingston HyperX 2GB (1x2GB) DDR3-10666CL7 1333MHz (KHX1333C7D3/2G) £43.99
(£37.44) £43.99
(£37.44)
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) £38.99
(£33.18) £38.99
(£33.18)
Western Digital Caviar Blue 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (WD1600AAJS) £29.99
(£25.52) £29.99
(£25.52)
Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
(£15.31) £17.99
(£15.31)
Sub Total : £213.56
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £39.04
Total : £262.10

Re use his old case and there you have a fully functioning system with onboard radeon 4200 running DDR3, new sata hard drive even new dvd writer :) Built a very similar system to this for my mate and its very snappy indeed. Dont get me wrong its not a gaming monster but a good base system to stick a second hand 4870 or the like in, Using the money he gets from selling his old bits :)
Plus a further 2gb of ram could be added down the line
 
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bobert50 said:
To be honest if you buy second hand, for that budget you could get a e2140 c2d/8800gts 320mb type setup which would be MASSIVELY better than the type of parts you were looking at......

It'd be over 10 times faster than the rubbish listed new and be very capable of running even the latest games (crysis/cod etc) on reasonable settings.

Sorry, to elaberate and be more helpful.. :)

(all second hand)
Brand new Corsair 400w psu = £40
P31 or maybe even P35 gigabyte motherboard = £30-35
E2140 that will oc to 3ghz = £20
8800gts 320mb = £30
2 gigs of 1066mhz ram off a well known auction site = £30-35 (still sealed)

Thats practically a whole pc so far...
Click to expand...

e2140 is actually worse than that athlon and 320mb gts is crap as well, i ditched 4830 for 40inc last week and you can get the 3870xt/8800gt 512 for around 35-40 now.


But yeh anyways back @ op, it's either setup for around 350gbp new, like this:

Patriot Sector 5 Viper II 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-12800 1600MHz Dual Channel + 3D Mark Vantage (PVV34G1600LLKB) Patriot Sector 5 Viper II 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-12800 1600MHz Dual Channel + 3D Mark Vantage (PVV34G1600LLKB) £82.76
(£70.43) £82.76
(£70.43)
AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail £71.99
(£61.27) £71.99
(£61.27)
Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £69.99
(£59.57) £69.99
(£59.57)
Corsair VX 450W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-450VXUK) Corsair VX 450W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-450VXUK) £55.99
(£47.65) £55.99
(£47.65)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £39.99
(£34.03) £39.99
(£34.03)
Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Black Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Black £31.67
(£26.95) £31.67
(£26.95)
Sub Total : £299.90
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £54.54
Total : £366.19

Integrated GPU still but its 4200 which is quite decent for starters and then you could add another cheap gpu like 46xx series for around 40quid.

So around ~380-400 total for whole new build.

Could possibly go around 100 cheaper if you ditch 2gb of ram, get x3 425 instead of 550BE and cheaper motherboard without integrated gpu and less OC options and maybe smaller hdd.
 
bobert50 said:
To be honest if you buy second hand, for that budget you could get a e2140 c2d/8800gts 320mb type setup which would be MASSIVELY better than the type of parts you were looking at......

It'd be over 10 times faster than the rubbish listed new and be very capable of running even the latest games (crysis/cod etc) on reasonable settings.

Sorry, to elaberate and be more helpful.. :)

(all second hand)
Brand new Corsair 400w psu = £40
P31 or maybe even P35 gigabyte motherboard = £30-35
E2140 that will oc to 3ghz = £20
8800gts 320mb = £30
2 gigs of 1066mhz ram off a well known auction site = £30-35 (still sealed)

Thats practically a whole pc so far...
Click to expand...

To be honest for £250 I think this is the only option if you want a half decent gaming PC.
 
Thanks for the suggestions all.

I asked him what he thought of a 2nd-hand rig, and he mysteriously found another £50 to bump the budget to £300 :p

Personally I don't have a problem buying 2nd-hand, but he'd rather have a DDR3/AM3 build that's upgradable when he's a bit more flush. I say AM3 because I'm assuming no Intel i3/i5 build will work out anywhere close to £300 :p
 
at that budget you must be joking lol his mate had an old one lying around ;)

second hand is the way forward with limited funds like that, it will need a hell of a lot of overclocking too. just look at my spec is still is enough to allow to play most games at 1920x1200.
 
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