£400 gaming spec

mere_immortal · 26 Oct 2006 at 06:56

Going to build a pc for a friend and need some spec advice.

He already has monitor, keyboard etc. so only needs the system and has £400 to spend. Will be using it for gaming mostly so the more powerful the better.

Any ideas?

Supercow · 26 Oct 2006 at 09:30

That's a tad tight for a gaming spec.
What's his current spec? For £400 i reckon he should rather buy a Xbox 360

kmistry · 26 Oct 2006 at 09:36

yes true, if he could stretch it to maybe 500 it might be better, as RAM prices are crazy atm, and given current games he will ideally need 2GB Ram.....

z0mbi3 · 26 Oct 2006 at 09:50

AMD Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - £84.95

MB-014-DF DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) - £54.99

HIS ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI - £175.00

Samsung SpinPoint P SP0812C 80GB SATA 8MB Cache - £29.95

Asus DRW-1608P3S 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - £24.50

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 - £139.99

Subtotal: £509.38
VAT: £89.15
Total: £598.53

People will disagree, but that's roughly how I'd do it.

You could cut corners by looking at 2nd hand goods. Your mate could really do with spending a bit more though tbh.

Thing is if he's already £200 over budget on a rig thats not based on the latest socket, then he really needs to think things over.

edit: I think them most important thing here is to geet a good gfx card and base the rest of the system around it.

pastymuncher · 26 Oct 2006 at 10:04

That's easily do-able with all the bargains on 939 going around at the moment. I did one on 754 for £250 and that was a nice little pc. Most of it bought brand new from auction though.

You can get a 939 3700+ retail boxed for £58.50 inc vat , not from here though. Even cheaper if you get one from auction.

£64.61 for a DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D from OCUK. That should give you some decent clocking ability.

£76.36 for OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200, can't do much better for the budget.

£93.99 for a BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 7600 GT 256MB .

£46.99 for a Antec SLK1650B Black Quiet Mini Tower Case - 350W SmartPower PSU . You could get cheaper (and nastier) elsewhere though.

£42.29 for a Samsung SpinPoint P HD160JJ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache (good drives).

£19.96 for a Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter (Black).

Thats a grand total of £402.70 plus delivery of course. Also not taking into account if he needs a copy of XP. If he does add on another £50, although i got one last week brand new and sealed for £43.

You could save a considerable amount by getting the likes of the memory, Cpu and motherboard from auction but it is do-able.

t31os · 26 Oct 2006 at 10:09

z0mbi3 said:
AMD Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - £84.95

MB-014-DF DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) - £54.99

HIS ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI - £175.00

Samsung SpinPoint P SP0812C 80GB SATA 8MB Cache - £29.95

Asus DRW-1608P3S 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - £24.50

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 - £139.99

Subtotal: £509.38
VAT: £89.15
Total: £598.53

People will disagree, but that's roughly how I'd do it.

You could cut corners by looking at 2nd hand goods. Your mate could really do with spending a bit more though tbh.

Thing is if he's already £200 over budget on a rig thats not based on the latest socket, then he really needs to think things over.

edit: I think them most important thing here is to geet a good gfx card and base the rest of the system around it.

£200 over budget, plus its likely he'd need a new PSU in that spec, so its pushing it up even further, so no help for someone looking for a £400 spec.

Respect for posting to help out anyway.

Perhaps mere_immortal could list what hardware the person in question currently has, as to help in knowing what can and cannot be carried over.

z0mbi3 · 26 Oct 2006 at 10:14

t31os said:
£200 over budget, plus its likely he'd need a new PSU in that spec, so its pushing it up even further, so no help for someone looking for a £400 spec.

Respect for posting to help out anyway.

Perhaps mere_immortal could list what hardware the person in question currently has, as to help in knowing what can and cannot be carried over.

Yeah I know it's £200 over budget, that's why I commented about thinking things over

Thing is he needs that gfx card if he wants it to be a gaming rig with some umpf.

If his friend takes half meassures he'll only be dissapointed in the long run.

t31os · 26 Oct 2006 at 10:19

You could say the same about other parts though, you'll always have a bottleneck.

Depends really what res he plays at and wether he wants full eye candy in all his games or what, we havnt been provided specifics.

I wasnt putting down your post, hence the

....

The OP wasnt clear on what the guy currenly has and exactly what parts he needs, making the budget very unclear and what it needs to include.

As a side note though, you could make a cheap 775 setup with a Pentium 4 upgradable to Conroe later, and spend more on a vid card, but since as i said already, whats needed isnt entirely clear, makes it hard to spec up.

He could also get away with getting the memory on the MM (Members Market) or somewhere else that sells 2nd hand hardware, which would help with the current stupid memory prices.

z0mbi3 · 26 Oct 2006 at 10:40

Yeah I definitley agree about going 2nd hand.

I'm fairly confident the OP needs everything other than dispaly, mouse & keyboard.

Thing is unless he goes really old on the rest of the hardware I don't think he'll get any bottleneck with the specs I've suggested.

edit:

AMD Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-141-AM) £84.95

Samsung SpinPoint P SP0812C 80GB SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-010-SA) £29.95

OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK) £64.99

**B Grade** DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (BG-005-DF) £45.00

LG GSA-4167BAL 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-033-LG) £22.95

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-CO) £139.99

Subtotal: £387.83
VAT: £67.88
Total: £455.71

Again no PSU or case, but it's starting some real barrel scraping dropping down to 256 meg on the vid card and 1 gig on the ram.

z0mbi3 · 26 Oct 2006 at 10:49

double post

mere_immortal · 26 Oct 2006 at 11:54

Thanks for all the replies everyone. Been trying to get him to up his budget, not having much luck.

Hes upgrading from a laptop he bought a while back, was second hand then so any upgrade will be quite a difference.

Will see if he will up the budget then will get back.

wildman · 26 Oct 2006 at 12:02

CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-121-AM)
£74.99 £74.99
MB-101-AS Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS)
£54.99 £54.99
MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK)
£64.99 £64.99
GX-033-BG BFG GeForce 7900 GS OC 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-033-BG)
£121.99 £121.99
HD-111-WD Western Digital Caviar RE 160GB 1600YS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-111-WD)
£39.99 £39.99
Subtotal £356.95
VAT £62.47
Total £419.42

thats 20 quid over budget and assumes that your geeser will already have a case with suitable PSU, floppy and optical drives. He might have to throw down another fiver to get a sata cable.

before everyone says what no 2gig Ram, and cuss me for only putting in a 256mb 7900, I would like to say thie guy was working on a tight (probably too tight budget).

My old machine was a barton 2500 @ 3200 with 1 gig geil ddr3200 and a rad9800 gfx card. Addimtedly I couldn't run games at the highest res or with all eye candy on but it was fully able to give me enough juice to be able to play and enjoy all the current FPS games aswell as wow and a lot of RTS games (although there was some slowdown with a ot of units on the screen).

Games like HL2, DoD source, CS source, Fear, Rome total war, oblivion IV etc ran fine on my old machine with some of the settings cranked down a bit.

z0mbi3 · 26 Oct 2006 at 12:11

You just need to say to your mate that if he spends £400 it's not going to be top of the range and will struggle with the newer titles.

He really needs to be looking at ~£600 for that.

taz488 · 26 Oct 2006 at 14:10

why do people constantly post overbudget systems? his budget is £400, he isnt expecting an uber gaming machine with that. give him something in budget then work with it, not something that he will never stretch to, pointless.

fester · 26 Oct 2006 at 19:42

CP-176-AM AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-176-AM)
£32.99 £32.99
MB-017-DF DFI LanParty UT RDX200CF-DR Crossfire (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-017-DF)
£29.99 £29.99
MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK)
£64.99 £64.99
CD-041-NE NEC AD5170 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-041-NE)
£18.99 £18.99
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£13.99 £13.99
CA-052-AN Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-052-AN)
£41.99 £41.99
GX-062-HT HIS ATI Radeon X1650 Pro ICEQ Turbo 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (RX1650P-256ICEQT) (GX-062-HT)
£79.99 £79.99
HD-079-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-079-SE)
£51.99 £51.99
Subtotal £334.92
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £10.95
VAT £60.53
Total £406.40

pastymuncher · 26 Oct 2006 at 20:55

There's a review in this months CustomPC mag about the X1650 Pro and it is'nt very good at all. 7600GT is a much better buy, or even a 7600GST which is between the GS and GT, if you can find them that is.

z0mbi3 · 27 Oct 2006 at 15:48

taz488 said:
why do people constantly post overbudget systems? his budget is £400, he isnt expecting an uber gaming machine with that. give him something in budget then work with it, not something that he will never stretch to, pointless.

No but he does say the more powerful the better. Just making him aware the bare minimum he could spend to get a powerful machine.

Then again power is relative.