£500 Gaming PC

TheSkateyBird · 5 Dec 2011 at 16:30

Hey All,
My friend has requested that I help him put together a gaming PC for around the £500 mark. He has simple needs, the ability to play WoW, CoD 4, BFBC2, L4D2 and a few other current generation shooters at around high to maximum settings. I've started looking into the possibilities of an i3 2100 + GTX 550 Ti but I need an experienced opinion on what would be best for him.
We may be willing to push the budget up to a maximum of around £550.
Cheers.

beejjacobs · 5 Dec 2011 at 22:06

Does he need an OS, monitor, keyboard, mouse, HDD?

TheSkateyBird · 7 Dec 2011 at 07:30

He needs a full system (including OS/HDD) but he already has a monitor, mouse and keyboard.

honosuseri · 7 Dec 2011 at 11:50

i3 2120 with H67 mobo and 4GB of kingston genesis grey RAM. Nvidia 460 superclocked edition with a budget case and PSU should come in on budget. Adding the cost of windows 7 might just edge it over though.

Trouble is HDDs are stupidly expensive at the mo and are certainly eating into the budget

You used to be able to get the OS bundled with a HDD not sure if they still do that.

That 460 would be the minimum GPU i'd use in a budget gaming rig. You can overclock it even more yourself, so your looking at 6870 level of performance for less £.

TheSkateyBird · 7 Dec 2011 at 18:02

Ok, thanks for the insight. Could I save money by buying a H61 board as the i3 doesn't have an unlocked multiplier?

beejjacobs · 7 Dec 2011 at 18:19

Yes you can:

YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK ATI Radeon HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.98
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD253GJ) £77.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £46.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £39.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £19.98
Total : £525.00 (includes shipping : £11.75).

£20 off too:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18347004

To get a better GPU, a "worse" CPU will still be fine:
YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 460 Superclocked 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD253GJ) £77.99
1 x Intel Pentium G620 2.60GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £52.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £46.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £39.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
Total : £518.02 (includes shipping : £11.75).

This has 8GB of RAM too, bare in mind £20 off again.

bobbyspangles · 7 Dec 2011 at 18:50

Not sure if the GTX 460 is worth the £20 premium.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/291?vs=313

Also 40-60W extra draw under load than the 6850.

TheSkateyBird · 7 Dec 2011 at 18:55

Okay, thanks for the good info guys. I'll probably go with the first build specced by Beejjacobs. Thanks again forumers