£300 gaming spec

YoungBlood

YoungBlood

YoungBlood

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Joined
19 Feb 2006
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West Mids
Good afternoon guys, I have a budget of around £300-350 to upgrade.
I only need ram, cpu, motherboard and gpu though, so I hope its possible.

Here is what I have spec'd for myself, I think at this budget AMD is the way to go and it leaves me with a good upgrade route in the future, please correct me if im wrong though!
image.jpg

Here is what I currently use now, it has served me super well and has only started falling over this year. I can't run COD:AW, looks like FarCry wont run either and the same with The Crew, shame as Titanfall and Battlefield 4 run great!

pc1.jpg

As you can see im on old socket with no upgrade path, I considered going Q6600 and just upgrading the graphics but even then im still stuck on 4gb of ram, and I will just be throwing money away for a short term fix.

Open to better suggestions for as close to £300 as possible!, thanks guys.
 
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Fewer cores but better upgrade path.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280 TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £155.99
1 x MSI Z97-G55 SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £84.6
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV "Frost Edition" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £49.99
Total : £360.17 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Can get a cheaper Z97. I know you're probably going to run Radeon now but you never know in future, so picked an SLI-capable one as it's not far off budget. If you go Z97, the i5/i7 Broadwells next year will probably be your upgrade route. But if they don't fit Z97 for same reason, the i7-4790K is already a decent upgrade path. Better than anything AM3+ has to offer.
 
Danny75 said:
Fewer cores but better upgrade path.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280 TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £155.99
1 x MSI Z97-G55 SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £84.6
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV "Frost Edition" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £49.99
Total : £360.17 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Can get a cheaper Z97. I know you're probably going to run Radeon now but you never know in future, so picked an SLI-capable one as it's not far off budget. If you go Z97, the i5/i7 Broadwells next year will probably be your upgrade route. But if they don't fit Z97 for same reason, the i7-4790K is already a decent upgrade path. Better than anything AM3+ has to offer.
Click to expand...

What concerns me with going 2 core is that some games system requirements seem to need 4 to even launch the game, as example

pc3.jpg

And The Crew is one reason for this upgrade, I do believe though that its unlikely to not work, and most likely just wrong minimum requirements, but im still very sour after COD:AW not running, 1st time I have never been able to run a game, would hate to upgrade and still have that problem.

Also I should have mentioned I strongly favour Gigabyte motherboards as its what I run now (P35C) and it has been fantastic, I have had a lot of issues with ASUS in the past and wont go back to them, plus I dont think I could ever work on a micro atx board, I need at least 2 x PCI and 1 x PCIe x1 (soundcard) I have a large tower so a full size board is no problem and absolutely prefered.
 
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Not having the specified cores won't stop you from launching either of those titles.
It's referencing a very old Intel Processor (4 generations) ago, so you will be fine.

tamzzy's spec is favourable in your position.
 
Thanks for the input guys, I did look at tamzzys bundle but it's micro atx and does'nt have the slots I need.

How about this, a poor mans version of Danny75 offering.
As I game at 1920x1200 I assume this will be ok?

I have a love for gigabyte boards, it's a cheaper gpu but I think at 1920x1200 it would still do ok? I would oveclock the CPU.
If its foolish to not go for a R9 280 let me know! £60~ super well spent or not worth it at this resolution?
Or is there a better performing £110~ Nvidia card?

Would they all play nice together? Im concerned mostly about the memory, a lot to choose from...

pc3.jpg
 
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For £20 more I'd get this...

Maybe add in an aftermarket cpu cooler, nice overclock. The 280 is much much better than 270's and in the games you want to play the extra cores and higher end gpu will be of much more use. Why buy components as an upgrade path when you can have something for a little more that will smash those games?

image.jpg
 
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You could get on the members market and bag yourself a second hand 290 for the new price of the 280 or 270 series (you have enough posts to use it). If you get a new Pentium K and overclock it this combo should last you quite a while before starting to struggle.
 
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Yes, that 280 is a steal. But I would still go with a pentium K for a tenner less (almost a score without shipping) and a much better upgrade route.

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £129.95
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV "Frost Edition" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £49.99
Total : £311.52 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Young blood, what PSU are you going to use with this?
 
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YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Rev2.0 WindForce 3X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Battlefie (GX-122-GI) £129.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2133HC11ADC01) £65.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £49.99
Total : £317.52 (includes shipping : £8.00).




This 280X is the same price as the b-grade 280, so obvious choice is 280X :)

Also, low profile RAM which will fit under an air cooler should you ever get one

or even a 760 + i3?

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** KFA2 GeForce GTX 760 EX OC 2048MB PCI-Express G (GX-049-KF) £99.95
1 x Intel Core i3-4150 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £92.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2133HC11ADC01) £65.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
Total : £330.52 (includes shipping : £8.00).




But overall Tamzzy's is probably best for the price imo
 
Threepwood said:
Young blood, what PSU are you going to use with this?
Click to expand...

OCZ 500W StealthXStream, super old but still going strong.

Shivy011 said:
But overall Tamzzy's is probably best for the price imo
Click to expand...

Its good but the motherboard is unsuitable

YOUR BASKET
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2133HC11ADC01) £65.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV "Frost Edition" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit £59.99
Total : £197.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



The two different speeds of memory shown above, does it matter which I use, will the 2133mhz kit limit upgrade routes in the future, or is it not relevant?
Good call on the low profile ram, did'nt think about that. I do like big coolers.

Seems the motherboard and memory is decided, just need to think about the cpu/gpu combo.

How are you guys finding the **B Grade** Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X on the site? The link from your basket shows 10+ in stock (rare for B grade) but I cant find the item via Clearance > graphics cards.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Rev2.0 WindForce 3X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Battlefie (GX-122-GI) £129.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2133HC11ADC01) £65.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £49.99
Total : £317.52 (includes shipping : £8.00).



I know it's a much better cpu but it just feels sideways to my E8400, but budget is a budget and this gives me excellent upgrade options in the future.
would have liked quad (do I need it? proberly not) but most are pushing me away from AM3+ and thats the only socket to get quad in this budget.

Least I have the option for some serious upgrade in the future if I go 1150.
 
Just to check, what case do you have? That GPU is long, so might not fit if you don't have a big enough case
 
Hmm, I can't find the max gpu length for that case - any chance you can measure this?

The PSU *should* be okay, but seeing as it is old and PSUs degrade over time you might need to be thinking about replacing it in the near future/now
 
Not mine, but taken from the Akasa Eclipse 62 mega thread (credit to marlos)



You could park a bus inside, a great case to work in.
Hopefully the PSU will hold out, least its a very low powered cpu!
 
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