£600 to spend.. please help!

[Badfish]

Hiya

I'm currently looking for a new PC mainly for playing games, watching movies, and using some standard applications, but I dont have a huge amount to spend... Is it possible to build a good gaming PC for around £600 considering I need all parts in the case?

I would be happy with 1GB of memory for the moment as I can afford to add to it in 2 months time. I need a harddisk of atleast 80GB, new motherboard, graphics cards, sound card, cooling, case, PSU etc, just not a monitor, keyboard, mouse.

Can I get anything good for gaming for around £600? Or do I just need to save more money and look again later? I spent some time looking at other builds people have made, but still am a bit confused at to whats best... I've usually been a big AMD fan, but it seems like Intel are better at the moment so I dont mind which I use.

Thanks in advance for you help/advice

 

[lee87]

This should be a good gaming system, it has a E4300 which overclocks very well and a great DX10 graphics card.

edit: I'd switch the ocuk 8800GTS for the BFG one as it's only a pound more.

 

[melbourne720]

Basically I'd agree with the above, my own selection would be:-

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C5 800MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400DC)
(£111.61)

Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£82.24)

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK)
(£72.84)

Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 NCQ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A32727)
(£30.54)

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£193.86)

NEC AD7170S Serial ATA 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
(£22.31)

Intel Core 2 DUO E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail
(£112.79)

Akasa AK-ZEN-01-BK Zen Black Case - No PSU
(£29.36)
Total : £668.42


Although it is quite over budget, the 2GB will make a difference in games and windows.

 

[Badfish]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, some great stuff there for a great price I am wondering though, does the processor you both posted come with a good fan which is good enough to cool the processor even if overclocked? Or would a different fan be better?

 

[melbourne720]

I'd get a tuniq tower or scythe ninja (any of the scythe range really), failing that you can get good results with an ac7 pro. E4300 comes with a stock HSF which will do, and many people get good clocks, you'll just get faster & quieter ones with an aftermarket one