£600ish games system help

mark180uk · 11 May 2008 at 10:46

Morning,

Far too nice outside for specing up a new pc, guess I am just sad like that!

I have a monitor, keyboard, mouse and OS already...

Looking at spending around £600, maybe a touch more for a gaming setup. Will be looking at some mild overclocking but nothing too extreme. Any ideas would be very much appreciated!

semi-pro waster · 11 May 2008 at 10:49

This is under budget but you could easily change the hard drive and/or case and PSU for something else if you wanted to.

Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Abit IP35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £64.99
(£76.36) £64.99
(£76.36)
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3320613AS) £37.99
(£44.64) £37.99
(£44.64)
OcUK GeForce 8800 GTS Extreme 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £117.99
(£138.64) £117.99
(£138.64)
Samsung SH-S203DBEBN 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
(£17.61) £14.99
(£17.61)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 2.40GHz Guaranteed to run at 3.00GHZ (1333FSB) - Retail £115.99
(£136.29) £115.99
(£136.29)
Sub Total : £471.93
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £84.50
Total : £567.38

Glaucus · 11 May 2008 at 11:00

If your never going to go sli, you could get a p35 mobo and save some money.

mark180uk · 11 May 2008 at 11:02

Thanks for the reply!

Is the OcUK GeForce 8800 GTS Extreme 512MB better than the BFG GT OC 8800 GT 512MB? I was under the impression that the GT was the one to go for but am frequently wrong

Glaucus · 11 May 2008 at 11:11

you can see a table here
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/graphics-cards/3dmark06-v1-0-2-hdr-sm3-0-score,538.html

so yeah an OC 8800 gt is better, but why not overclock the 8800gts?

mark180uk · 11 May 2008 at 11:23

Is it easy to overclock a GTS? I have only done mild overclocking on processors before.

Glaucus · 11 May 2008 at 11:37

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-graphics-card,1916.html

Best to ask in the overclocking section to see how hard it is and what your likely to get.

aproctor · 11 May 2008 at 11:43

oc a gpu is easier than a cpu but you dont get the same results, you need good cooling in the case and the bfg 8800gt use a single slot cooler so you cant really push those at all, but the gts 512 with the double slot cooler should not be too bad, but as most games are slightly bottleknecked by the cpu you would be better off investing time in ocing that.

for the record i have a bfg 8800gt and i am very happy with it.

neoboy · 11 May 2008 at 11:46

In case you're wondering about the motherboard, this is essentially a rebadged P35 Platinum that's missing a firewire and a few other bits and bobs, however, it has pretty much identical performance and overclocking ability. This is also slightly underbudget leaving you with few other options like maybe getting a better heatsink, more storage, faster RAM, etc.