£400 machine for a friend

phatboy

phatboy

phatboy

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Joined
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Oxfordshire
Hi all

Friend at work has asked me to put together a 400 quid machine so he can play total war and c&c games on his steam account as his surface isn't up to it...

So far been looking at the g3220 haswell with a cheap matx board (he wont oc it)

Then 30gb ssd boot for w8, 1tb for steam drive, 4gb ddr3 and then something like a 7770 or gtx650/750

Any other thoughts on a better / alternative system greatly received.

Cheers

Ben
 
Regarding the gpu.

Has been said before but look into the amd r270 i think the cpu would bottleneck it but for the price difference compared to the 650ti, the r270 would be a clear winner.
 
 
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The prodigy is an awful case and not much smaller than a ATX Mini Tower, You'd be better off getting a Silverstone Sugo SG05 HTPC Case with 450W Power Supply for £99 if you have any Mini-ITX aspirations!

I'd go with i3 Haswell and R9 270 combo and try and get a 250GB SSD for around £80
 
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pumaz said:
The prodigy is an awful case and not much smaller than a ATX Mini Tower, You'd be better off getting a Silverstone Sugo SG05 HTPC Case with 450W Power Supply for £99 if you have any Mini-ITX aspirations!

I'd go with i3 Haswell and R9 270 combo and try and get a 250GB SSD for around £80
Click to expand...

Yeah I cannot understand the popularity of these Micro ATX cases as big as an ATX & Mini-ITX barely smaller than Micro - ATX towers.
If I'm going to make the compromises for a smaller system it should be significantly smaller. Just made a rendernode with the SG05 & it's tiny imo that's what you want from mini itx

OP, if you want pure gaming power on a budget that tight, I just don't think you can beat danewesley's spec :
Budget is so tight I think you should exclude SSD for now. In my experience, SSD smaller than 256gb is a pain in the butt. Especially if your mate is not too tech-savy - he won't be capable of managing where his data goes & will ring you up every time he fills his c: drive, which with 120gb will be often.
 
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i have an sg05 and have had a prodigy and not all people go for itx purely for the size, the prodigy is a nice looking case, i list the black for no reason, i had it in red and like it in green. Itx doesnt have the limitations it used to have now with extremely good boards being made which have all the features of high end atx boards.

Ive had,

Sg05
Sg06
Sg07
Prodigy Red
Lian li q07b

so quite a few different itx builds in my time.
 
So we came to a decision with:

G3220 3ghz CPU
4GB XMS3
H81-P33 MSI Board
Fractal Core 1000
Coolermaster 500WB PSU
DUO TURBO R9 270 2GB
Windows 8.1
Seagate 1TB SSHDD

Total: £416 :)
 
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