£500 gaming rig

Soldato
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My brother is wanting to put together a gaming rig on a budget of £400, but i don't think it's possible to get what he wants for that.

He's using an old amd 4400+ x2, 2gb RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 4550 at the moment so really needs a full system.

spec1.jpg


Any feedback? I know some of the bits are the cheapest going but it's not for maxing out Crysis or BF4, he mostly plays Rift.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 270 "BF4 Edition" 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £139.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £85.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £39.95
1 x BitFenix Comrade Midi-Tower - Black £29.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
2 x OcUK Tech Labs Zaward OEM 120mm Golf Ball Fan £2.99 (£5.98)
Total : £510.85 (includes shipping : ).



and sell the copy of bf4 to bring it back down to sub 500 quid

edit: have you thought about going the 2nd hand route (as you have access to the MM), you could nab quite a few bargains that can potentially give you more mileage for your $$$
 
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Thanks, I've passed both over to him and tbh, i'd probably pick up in store for him, I work 10 mins away from the new warehouse.

I'm now going to have to argue the case of intel vs AMD and Nvidia vs Radeon because

Price is a bit more manageable on those but the guys I spoke to warned me off AMD/Radeon things

:(
 
Thanks, I've passed both over to him and tbh, i'd probably pick up in store for him, I work 10 mins away from the new warehouse.

I'm now going to have to argue the case of intel vs AMD and Nvidia vs Radeon because



:(

Then they don't know what they are talking about.

Most hardware manufactures will go through periods where drivers have issues, nVidia have had their fair share just like ATI. There is nothing wrong with the AMD cards, they are most certainly better on a price vs performance comparison with Nvidia.

The 270x is a great choice and you'll be pleased with it.
 
Thanks, I've passed both over to him and tbh, i'd probably pick up in store for him, I work 10 mins away from the new warehouse.

I'm now going to have to argue the case of intel vs AMD and Nvidia vs Radeon because



:(

If you can fit a 3570k in your budget, or better yet a 4670k, then you definitely will want one, especially over an fx-6. I know what the person you're quoting means, because I was unlucky enough to have a 7950 during the period where their drivers were awful (graphical artefacts etc) but that is just driver issues, their cards are really quite good. They aren't always as good as the equivalent Nvidia cards (usually very small gaps, bar the 780ti) but are much better pound for pound, literally.

The 270x is one of the best cards for the money I've seen out, you'd be silly not to get it over the 650ti as it's a 20% faster card easily. Although I've heard nothing but awful things about the coolers that the 2xx series seem to be shipping with, so you may want to check the vendor of the 270 you order and see what people have said. Gigabyte seem to be the only company releasing tolerable 2xx cards. Imagine a jet engine choking on it's own fuel, sums it up. :p

So yeah, 3570k or 4670k with a 270x is a cracking machine.

Very pleased with it when you see the performance gains Mantle will add in BF4 and future titles ....

Lol, mantle is only worthwhile if you have an awful CPU, don't think the OP's friend is going to notice any difference with a 8320 or especially an Intel chip.
 
Thanks for all the advice. I've been speaking to him more in depth today and i am wondering if we should scrap the HDD idea and go for a similar priced 120GB SSD drive to really boost speed.

Its mainly going to be RIFT and internet, maybe some coding as I teach him.

Then we can turn his old 4400+ into a server and later on bang in some 2/3TB hdds.

This a good idea? will it work? I know nothing about SSDs.
 
Thanks for all the advice. I've been speaking to him more in depth today and i am wondering if we should scrap the HDD idea and go for a similar priced 120GB SSD drive to really boost speed.

Its mainly going to be RIFT and internet, maybe some coding as I teach him.

Then we can turn his old 4400+ into a server and later on bang in some 2/3TB hdds.

This a good idea? will it work? I know nothing about SSDs.

Does it work? Yes. Just depends on your needs. Some find they need/want more than 120GB on their boot/OS drive. Worth trying imo.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Boost OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card £149.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £85.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £39.95
1 x Aerocool V3X Advance Black Edition Midi-Tower - Black £25.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
Total : £510.88




Optional aftermarket cooler as stock is noisy, and for a bit of overclocking:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Deepcool GAMMAXX S40 CPU-Cooler - 120mm £19.99




Also, a decent Intel build would be possible, if he used integrated graphics for now and added a discrete GPU later.
 
....

The GFX card includes a BF4 and a Ruby voucher allowing you/your brother to pick from an additional four games.

spec turned up this morning, took an hour to build and get running, set up the SSD properly. Windows score of 7.9, very fast and he's very impressed with it.

No haribo though :(


And the GFX card 4 game ruby voucher was out of date from the start of the year! :(
 
They don't even do the ruby offers now, just gold to bronze, nowhere to enter it from what I can find on my phone.


Posted from Overclockers.co.uk App for Android
 
They don't even do the ruby offers now, just gold to bronze, nowhere to enter it from what I can find on my phone.


Posted from Overclockers.co.uk App for Android

Overclockers APP?! (Lies? :o )

spec turned up this morning, took an hour to build and get running, set up the SSD properly. Windows score of 7.9, very fast and he's very impressed with it.

No haribo though :(


And the GFX card 4 game ruby voucher was out of date from the start of the year! :(


I wouldn't rely on Windows score, it only goes to 7.9 and it's pretty much redundant now, WEI isn't much to go by - but still it will be very fast, yeah :D
 
You can sell the voucher on or..

Redeem it at amd site and pick the four good games such as thief and dirt etc.

You get individual steam or uplay codes for each of the four games.

Keep the games you want for yourself and sell the other individual codes you don't want.
 
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