£500 to spend - Spec needed

jamiecottonuk

jamiecottonuk

jamiecottonuk

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39
Hi all,

I have £500 to spend on components to build my self a new PC.

I do not need a monitor, OS, speakers, DVD drives, Keyboard, mouse etc etc

I do not really play high end games but I want it to be able to cope with Vista (the version with the new super duper new look).

Cheers

Oh yea if it comes under £500 then thats even better! :D
 
Hyper said:
I have not got time to spec you a full pc but here is a small hint, conroe :D
Click to expand...


yes conroe is good choice

its amazing how amd were cheaper alternative to intel years ago but now its opposite. conroes are now cheaper but more powerful then amd cpu.
 
going to be tight there, to get a suitable system to run vista... also if conroe is a must - its even tighter


s-
 
I agree with Syk3, its a tall order to budget that to 500 if you want it to run Vista - List EXACTLY and ONLY the parts you need and no doubt we'll all have a crack at a spec for you. ;)

Regards

Andy OCuK
OCuK Tech :cool:
 
The reason it will be tight is:

Vista needs 2GB of RAM for it to be smooth
Vista needs a high end graphics card, which ive heard minimum should be 7600 GT (Could be wrong here)
Also Conroe is fairly expensive for the £500 budget.

s-
 
Just had a go my self conroe system, with 7600gt and 2gb ram...


Went to £422 without mobo,soundcard,hdd's etc... Very tight can you stretch to £600 I beleive that will be doable


I chose the cheapest conroe cpu too :( ..
 
Syk3 said:
The reason it will be tight is:

Vista needs 2GB of RAM for it to be smooth
Vista needs a high end graphics card, which ive heard minimum should be 7600 GT (Could be wrong here)
Also Conroe is fairly expensive for the £500 budget.

s-
Click to expand...

Bit overkill! Vista will run fine with 1Gb RAM and nearly any DX9 card
 
Hamish said:
Bit overkill! Vista will run fine with 1Gb RAM and nearly any DX9 card
Click to expand...

i've heard reading on vista websites that 1GB is minimum and 2GB is suitable and mostly needed.


s-
 
Syk3 said:
i've heard reading on vista websites that 1GB is minimum and 2GB is suitable and mostly needed.


s-
Click to expand...

MS reccomends 512 to 1Gb, but the beta didn't run any slower than win XP on my machine with 1Gb RAM
 
Hi all thanks for all your comments.

I will need motherboard, memory, graphics card, CPU, £500 to spend

I all ready have 2 IDE 160gb hdd's but if there is change 2 spare i would like 2 buy a SATA if not i am not 2 bothered.

Can it be done with £500

Cheers
 
As you don't need too many components, you can just about squeeze in a conroe, 2 gig, and a lovely graphics card at the same time!

I don't know if this mobo is any good, cheapest one I could see. :D

REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST REMOVE
MB-163-AS Asus P5VD2-MX Micro ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-163-AS)
£44.95 £44.95
CP-126-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-126-IN)
£129.95 £129.95
MY-012-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 LA PC2-5300 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA) (MY-012-GS)
£99.95 £99.95
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£136.95 £136.95
Subtotal £411.80
VAT £72.07
Total £483.87

Edit: and if you want to go £13 over budget, you can step up to a E6400 instead of the E6300.
 
Last edited:
Will you be overclocking at all? If so then I'd recommend the pc2-6400 g.skill ram which is about £15 more but will give you higher overclocks on your conroe.

Mind you that mobo might stop you from OCing a bit.
 
Burly said:
what would you get if the budget was £650?
Click to expand...

For those same four components? Probably a better motherboard for OC'ing, faster memory, and a faster conroe. For example:

REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST REMOVE
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£136.95 £136.95
MY-014-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 NR PC2-6400 (2x1GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit (F2-6400PHU2-2GBNR) (MY-014-GS)
£114.95 £114.95
CP-128-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-128-IN)
£214.95 £214.95
Subtotal £466.85
VAT £81.70
Total £548.55

That leaves £100 in the budget for a better motherboard. Might not be enough though, I see the conroe mobos go up to £150. I don't really know enough about them to recommend a good one for overclocking though. The E6600 has extra cache as well as being faster, it looks to be the most popular conroe at the moment. If you aren't OC'ing you can get the cheapo £50 mobo into that budget, drop the ram down a speed and bump up the graphics instead.


Losing any real chance for some decent overclocking, you could get this (£30 over budget though!). Although the X1900XT is mega overkill if you don't play games.

REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST REMOVE
CP-128-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-128-IN)
£214.95 £214.95
MY-012-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 LA PC2-5300 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA) (MY-012-GS)
£99.95 £99.95
MB-163-AS Asus P5VD2-MX Micro ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-163-AS)
£44.95 £44.95
GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£219.95 £219.95
Subtotal £579.80
VAT £101.47
Total £681.27
 
Last edited:
To get all the feature micrsoft recommends: 1gig of ram and a directX 9 graphics cards with 128MB of memory.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/evaluate/hardware/vistarpc.mspx

So lets try and double this and see what we get :)

MB-163-AS Asus P5VD2-MX Micro ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-163-AS) 1
£44.95 £44.95
GX-109-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1300 Hyper Memory 512MB DDR2 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-109-SP) 1
£36.95 £36.95
MY-012-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 LA PC2-5300 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA) (MY-012-GS) 1
£99.95 £99.95
CP-128-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-128-IN) 1
£214.95 £214.95
Subtotal £396.80
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.25
VAT £70.89
Total £475.94

Couldn't get a decent SATA hard drive in. Whats is your PSU? Just like to check its capable.
 
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