£400 spec check

Associate
Joined
13 Dec 2006
Posts
142
Hi all,

I've got a non-techy friend who wants my help to put together a reasonably decent gaming rig on a budget of £400.

I suggested saving the i5 2310, 8gb RAM and optical drive from his old, bricked Dell pc, getting a cheap sandybridge motherboard, and putting it together in a Lian-Li case of mine which I no longer require.

That leaves money for a decent GFX card, PSU and an SSD for his copy of Windows (can get a cheap HDD for volume storage later).


With that in mind, my suggested remaining spec looks like this. A quick glance to suggest any glaring errors or hardware conflicts would be appreciated.

pcspec.jpg
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Nov 2012
Posts
17,934
Location
Close to Swindon, but not Swindon
I would suggest this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7850 IceQ 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H785Q2G2M) £161.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HG5D Series THNSNH 7mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - (THNSNH128GCST) £91.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 530W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £67.99
1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £45.95
1 x Alpenföhn Civetta CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £12.98
Total : £392.90 (includes shipping : £10.00).



G/Card gets you £150 worth of free games
SSD is quicker
PSU is modular
Cooler is cheaper and allows you to add more fans or swap them out.
 
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Associate
OP
Joined
13 Dec 2006
Posts
142
Thanks for the responses guys, from your suggestions I will definitely:

- Switch the Freezer Pro 7 for the Alpenfohn Civetta
- Switch the Samsung SSD for the Toshiba

Think I will also switch the Corsair for the Be Quiet as it has 2 12v rails and a newer/more efficient/quieter design and is modular (though I believe the Corsair is also modular?)


Obviously a nice cost benefit to go with either of the ATI cards at £50 less than the 760, but out of curiosity, is that purely an issue of budget? I would have though the 760 would outperform the 7850 / 7870 but haven't been following many benchmarks lately. Though I do appreciate that it's the old CPU which will be the limiting factor in this build :)


Thanks very much for all your help guys :)
 
Soldato
Joined
22 Jul 2010
Posts
6,460
Location
Kent
I'm not sure it's really even worth gettting a cooler TBH. I only added the Matterhorn in case he was thinking of upping the CPU to an i5/i7K down the line. If you are going to buy one atleast get a decent one, the Civetta is pretty pants to be honest.

Yes the Corsair is semi-modular. I own the 630W Bequiet L8 and am more than happy with it, I used the TT 550W as it's a cheaper alternative.

The 7870LE I used is a Tahiti core so it's closely related to a 7950. Overclock and you will be trading blows with a stock 7950.

YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D HD 7870 Black Boost Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £167.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HG5D Series THNSNH 7mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - (THNSNH128GCST) £91.99
1 x XFX Pro 850W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £74.99
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-GEN3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 (MB-380-GI) £52.00
Total : £398.96 (includes shipping : £10.00).



Mobo is still B grade but this Gen3 is Sli/Xfire capable and can have it's BIOS updated to UEFI. Upped the PSU to allow for dual GPUs but it's not modular I'm afraid. Toshiba SSD is faster as you now know and i've ditched the heatsink as he won't really need it.
 
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