£700 Gaming Build

[Leitchy]

Hello all,

Looking for a gaming spec made up for £700 for a friend. Ideally it should have atleast a 19" monitor, and a keyboard/mouse and speakers can be left out for now, and everything else is required (case, mobo, ram, cpu, dvd-rw etc).

He will be using it 90% for games, and 10% the other pass time the internet is usefull for.

Thanks

 

[semi-pro waster]

How about this? I included an OS since you said everything was needed.

OcUK Value Hanns-G HC194D 19" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black £99.99
(£117.49) £99.99
(£117.49)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £42.99
(£50.51) £42.99
(£50.51)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (21119-00-40R) £149.99
(£176.24) £149.99
(£176.24)
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £41.99
(£49.34) £41.99
(£49.34)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A33423) £34.99
(£41.11) £34.99
(£41.11)
NEC AD7170S Serial ATA 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.99
(£18.79) £15.99
(£18.79)
Abit IP35-E (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £64.99
(£76.36) £64.99
(£76.36)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £67.99
(£79.89) £67.99
(£79.89)
Sub Total : £578.91
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £103.58
Total : £695.44

 

[mishima]

I would go with what semi has suggested under the budget. Thats a great setup for the price.

 

[Leitchy]

Lets just say I have a "spare" copy of Vista, so that doesnt need to be included. Is it worth going with one of the 8800 variants now theres another 70 pound to spare? Or do they offer similar performance

 

[Teaf]

If you had £70 to spare on semi pro's build then I would spend a chunk of that on the monitor to get a better one. Or maybe change the Sonata for a Corsair 520W + Lian Li PC-7.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Take a quick look at the benchmarks on Tom's Hardware for one view, at the native resolution of that TFT, the 2900XT (a slightly quicker clocked 2900pro really) seems to be on a par or ahead in all but one game. It isn't a comprehensive test but it suggests to me that it will be pretty similar performance overall with slight leads appearing depending on the games picked.

So given that I'd probably spend the extra money on perhaps a separate case and PSU such as the Akasa Zen and Corsair HX 520w with maybe a larger hard drive as well.

//edit, flibbys advice is sound as well, that was simply the cheapest monitor I could find at the time.