£500 budget

ragingdrxp

ragingdrxp

ragingdrxp

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Hi there,

I'm after a new PC and have around a £500 budget. I'll mainly be using the PC for gaming and as i'm into InfoSec, I will be doing a lot of virtualisation.

Thanks.
 
Hello and welcome to the forum.

Are you looking for a prebuild or will you be building it yourself?
If the latter, have you any components from an existing Pc you can reuse. Sata hdd, Psu, case or OS for example.
 
Idleman said:
Hello and welcome to the forum.

Are you looking for a prebuild or will you be building it yourself?
If the latter, have you any components from an existing Pc you can reuse. Sata hdd, Psu, case or OS for example.
Click to expand...

I'm going to build it myself. And no, i'm afraid I don't have any old components really.

Also, for the case, I will go for the bog-standard looking one. I don't really want any flashing lights/transparent bits going on.
 
 
 
 
Not sure if Amd will be better for virtualisation, but the I-3 is a potent gaming cpu. Maybe others can elaborate for you.

Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 may need a bios update to take Ivybridge cpu.
 
 
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This is what I'd probably do personally:

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x MSI 990XA-GD55 AMD 990X Chipset (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £71.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G160C9K) £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £48.95
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £34.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £439.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).



You will need to buy a used Graphics card, such as 5870/5850/gtx560 ti/6870 or so. ( easily for under £60)

Includes an SSD.
 
RJC said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £149.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £49.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020047-UK) £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £48.95
1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £45.95
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £502.84 (includes shipping : £12.50).

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Yeah I quite like that. I'd go with the Patriot Mamba RAM as it CAS 9 for the same price though. Apparently the Z68-D3 mobo is a Rev.2 so is ok for Ivy, might be worth the OP double checking with customer services though. Being a Z series it will happily take an i5K CPU as an upgrade (even if it is sourced 2nd hand) and allow overclocking :)

I must confess I find it difficult to recommend a 2GB 7850 or 7870. The 7870LEs are a Tahiti core and @£160 it sits amongst it's rivals mocking them. Being a Tahiti core it OCs to trade blows with a stock 7950 which is a much more expensive GPU....it's worth the extra £10
 
The i3 is a poor choice for virtualisation. Not only the lack of cores, but the lack of full hardware support. i5 (non-K version) or AMD is better.
 
He might be better off sourcing the GPU 2nd hand. You can find bargains like the 1GB 460 or the 6870 around £50ish. That leaves more cash for the CPU (i5), upgrading the GPU as necessary is less faff.
 
On the virtualisation front, the 8320 would be by far the best choice at this budget. On the gaming front, it depends on the games. If it's mostly FPS then there's no question AMD's the most suitable here, if it's full-time WoW then an i5 with a cheaper graphics card.
 
Is a tight budget especially if he has NO parts at all :(

A monitor could well be needed. Ok he can use the windows 8 trial for free for 3 months but the OS will need paying for at some point if he doesn't have one. Peripherals don't have to be expensive but the costs mount up.

Ok the i3 isn't ideal but the Z68 mobo is a bargain and has the potential to take SB and IB i5Ks to overclock. The intel CPUs do have an IGP, whilst useless for gaming they do allow the rig to be used until a dedicated GPU can be installed.

We really need to hear back from the OP as to what is really what.
 
honosuseri said:
I must confess I find it difficult to recommend a 2GB 7850 or 7870. The 7870LEs are a Tahiti core and @£160 it sits amongst it's rivals mocking them. Being a Tahiti core it OCs to trade blows with a stock 7950 which is a much more expensive GPU....it's worth the extra £10
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Agreed, but like with most other components, these is always that "for an extra £x you could get a much better..." Then after that for only a little extra you could get...

:D
 
Potty27 said:
Agreed, but like with most other components, these is always that "for an extra £x you could get a much better..." Then after that for only a little extra you could get...

:D
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Yes you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere lol That's the real "art to spec'ing" being able to balance good parts for the requirements while staying on a budget.

He has said mainly gaming. Now obviously there has to be a balance between CPU and GPU but the GPU really is key to gaming performance. As the 7870LE can do a good impersonation of a £240 GPU whilst being only £160, it's not hard to justify the extra £10 over the 2GB 7850.

PSUs are also very important. Most of us here see that OCZ 500W as "scraping the bottom of the barrel" to be fair. The XFX 450W is a good minimum to aim for, RJC used the Corsair CX500 which is a budget range but still good. The modular version is £5 more, it's nice to have a modular unit but that extra £5 isn't so easy to justify.

I look forward to hearing exactly what parts he does need and seeing the recommendations that come in :)
 
The OCZ is indeed "scraping the bottom of the barrel", but it is in "the barrel" and is worlds better than the cheap non-name PSU's. For a low budget gaming PC I think the 500w OCZ is great value for money, I'd be happy to buy one if I needed a cheap/good PSU anyway.

PSU's are important, but I think a lot of people go over the top (more so on the other computing forums than on here to be far).

For this budget the £15 saved over the Corsair could make a decent improvement in performance if spent elsewhere.

Just my opinion anyways :)
 
Yes sadly people do go OTT. If you look on the anandtech GPU benchmarks even with a single high end GPU the total system draw for the rig rarely hits even 400W.

a lot of the PSUs are just rebadged. That OCZ is made by HEC iirc, while not utter rubbish they aren't great either. Seasonic is arguably the best makers of PSUs. As the XFX 450W is made by seasonic for £40 it makes for a good basic PSU, it has better efficiency as it's bronze rated too :)
 
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honosuseri said:
Is a tight budget especially if he has NO parts at all :(

A monitor could well be needed. Ok he can use the windows 8 trial for free for 3 months but the OS will need paying for at some point if he doesn't have one. Peripherals don't have to be expensive but the costs mount up.

Ok the i3 isn't ideal but the Z68 mobo is a bargain and has the potential to take SB and IB i5Ks to overclock. The intel CPUs do have an IGP, whilst useless for gaming they do allow the rig to be used until a dedicated GPU can be installed.

We really need to hear back from the OP as to what is really what.
Click to expand...

Hi mate,

I already have a monitor and other peripherals such as mouse, keyboard, etc.
 
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