£600 Gaming Machine.

plasmahal · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:16

My lad wants a new gaming machine and I want him to learn to build it himself.

Our budget is for around the £600 pound mark.

I have a spare cooler (Arctic cooling Freezer pro 7), 1.5Tb storage drive and DVDRW to re-use.

I have specced up an initial build, would appreciate any comments or advice and if it is all compatible.

Your basket
Product Name
Asus GeForce GTX 560 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £151.99
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1055T 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £119.99
Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £92.99
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 £60.00
OCZ ModXStream Pro 500w Silent Modular Power Supply £53.99
G.Skill RipJawsX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL7D-4GBXM) £49.99
Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £33.98
OcUK Value 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter £16.99

Sub Total : £483.27
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £99.00
Total : £594.02

plasmahal · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:30

That will go over the budget unless there is a really cheap mobo to go with it.

plasmahal · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:36

honosuseri said:
What will? The i5?

Yes....

plasmahal · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:37

DJmartin said:
I was thinking something like:

However I just realised I didn't include a SSD. I suppose I gave another option...

EDIT: as you already have a cooler you could go for this i5 which takes £20 off the total. That leaves us about £50 under budget. If a little money was added then the SSD could be included :/ at the end of the day it's up to you

Would prefer the benefit of the OS on a SSD.

plasmahal · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:54

How about this for an AMD build:

plasmahal · 1 Jun 2011 at 14:02

PSU wise, I want to go modular to keep cabling to a minimum.

I think it will make it easier for my lad to build it.

plasmahal · 1 Jun 2011 at 19:46

honosuseri said:
It's always a compromise. That is a good system, to change the cpu and mobo to i5 is adding £100 give or take. For gaming purposes that AMD build is perfectly ok, you have to draw a line in the sand at some point.

Plasma you should qualify for free delivery if you link your account, then you are easily under budget. Not sure if that £10 can go back into the psu funds for a slightly more powerful modular one......worth a look is it?

Yeah, been getting free delivery for a while now.

plasmahal · 5 Jun 2011 at 15:55

Hi again,

Well I got my son to choose a case and with some items on offer this week got the below spec on order:

Order Status: In our warehouse queue

Product Name Price Qty Line Total
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99 1 £149.99
Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £77.49 1 £77.49
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £74.99 1 £74.99
Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit £54.99 1 £54.99
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard £50.00 1 £50.00
Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus Case - Black £47.49 1 £47.49
OCZ ModXStream Pro 500w Silent SLI Certified Modular Power Supply £44.99 1 £44.99
TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter (TL-WN851N) £13.25 1 £13.25
Akasa 8-Pin 30cm PSU Extension Cable £3.99 1 £3.99
Dirt 2 Game Voucher £0.00 1 £0.00
FREE SHIPPING (DPD Next Day): £0.00
VAT: £103.44
Order Total: £620.62

We have stretched the budget a little, despite saving a little also.

He's using close to the limit of the 4gb ddr2 he has now, so I opted for the 8gb set of corsair which was on offer. Also read up that some ppl have cable length issues with the 8 pin mobo connector, so ordered an extension. I'm hoping the 500W OCZ will enough power.....

When we come to build, I will post a build thread.

plasmahal · 15 Jun 2011 at 18:33

£600 machine is now built....

Hi all,

The Gaming machine has been completed and running for a few days now.

Here are some details and pictures.

I got my son to put everything in. The only thing he didn't want to do was fit the CPU and HSF. I probably put him off by emphasising how important it was to get it fitted correctly and not bend any pins. He also struggled with the GFX card.

All in and tested.

It took about 20mins to install Windows 7 x64 from a USB stick.

Once everthing was installed and tested, the cabling was tidied up. The only issue we found was Windows BSOD'd every few minutes. After looking into the error messages that suggested a memory issue, I set a BIOS memory setting from unganged (default) to ganged and problem solved.

All done!!!!!