£350 build

[Shikarilol]

Hello all, first time poster... long time lurker here!

My brother is looking for a few parts to upgrade his system. He will use it purely for casual web browsing and playing WoW. However, he only has £350 to spend. I can recycle his HHD and I will be using a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler from a spare PC I have. All that I need is a case, gpu, cpu, psu, ram and mobo.

Here is what I think would be the best choice for the budget. Please bare in mind that going over budget isn't really an option!



I made some choices with some help from anandtech.com, but I don't really have that much knowledge when it comes to hardware. If you could suggest any different parts etc, please let me know. The only thing that I'm really unsure about is the PSU which comes with the case.

Thanks for any help!

 

[sk82jack]

At exactly the same price this would be your AMD alternative:


OcUK Value GeForce GTX 460 "Green Edition" 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £83.99

Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99

Asus M4A78LT-M 760G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £49.99

Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £33.59

Total : £354.55 (includes shipping : £10.00)




PSU will be able to handle these sorts of rigs fine.

 

[kristmace]

Looks like a good build to me. That MSI mobo is very good value. Not a lot in it between the i3 and the Phenom suggested.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=88

i3 is generally better, but the Phenom does better in the applications where a true quad core is needed. I'd go with the i3 personally cos on the 1155 socket you've got good upgradability options with the i5s and i7s that are out, whereas AM3 socket is pretty much end of life now.

There have been some better value graphics cards at OCUK recently. 5850 for £99 is better when its on offer again (which I'm sure it will be!).

 

[Shikarilol]

Thankyou for your feedback, i'm going to stick with the intel build I think. Newer tech and the chance to upgrade sounds quite appealing!

 

[hybrid572]

The intel seems to be the better value proposition, even without the upgrade path. WoW can technically use as many threads as it wishes, but it barely makes use of more than 2 cores. An i3 2100 will demolish WoW.