£800 Gaming Rig

[lolage]

Hi, i have £800 to spend on all the components + the monitor.

It must play games like Crysis and UT3. I will also be doing a bit of photo and video editing. I'd just like to see what you can come up with really, thanks in advance.

 

[Teaf]

Do you need an operating system, keyboard, mouse and/or speakers with your spec?

 

[lolage]

Just a keyboard.

 

[Cupra]

 

[Kanifee]

you wont do any better than his spec for the money including a monitor

 

[Teaf]

you wont do any better than his spec for the money including a monitor

True, but it's £40 over budget and doesn't have a keyboard.

Spec'd you something up below. It's not going to be as good as a quad for video editing that's for sure, but it will play games a lot better and you have a bigger (22") monitor / higher spec motherboard / better case / better graphics card / modular power supply / a keyboard. If you can live with waiting longer on the video editing but get higher FPS for games as a trade-off, then the below is great, but if you really wanted a quad you'll have to sacrifice the parts in the machine a lot of compensate for the extra £150 worth of CPU.

Also, bang on £800.00 .. howzat!

 

[SS-89]

with photo video and gaming on the cards id say a q6600 really should be in the spec, otherwise a very nice spec.

 

[semi-pro waster]

£8 over but does include quad core, if that money is really important then pick a smaller hard drive, a cheaper DVDRW or wait until the Sapphire 2900pro comes into stock.

LG L204WS 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver/Black £129.99
(£152.74) £129.99
(£152.74)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £67.99
(£79.89) £67.99
(£79.89)
Logitech Deluxe Keyboard (Black) - OEM £5.99
(£7.04) £5.99
(£7.04)
Samsung SH-S203BEBN 20x20 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£19.96) £16.99
(£19.96)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD3200AAKS) £41.99
(£49.34) £41.99
(£49.34)
HIS ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £149.99
(£176.24) £149.99
(£176.24)
Abit IP35-E (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £64.99
(£76.36) £64.99
(£76.36)
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £36.99
(£43.46) £36.99
(£43.46)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £159.99
(£187.99) £159.99
(£187.99)
Sub Total : £674.91
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 : £120.38
Total : £808.24

 

[krisbutler]

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
HIS ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £149.99
(£176.24) £149.99
(£176.24)
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A33423) £33.99
(£39.94) £33.99
(£39.94)
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK) £57.99
(£68.14) £57.99
(£68.14)
Saitek PZ30AU Eclipse Illuminated Keyboard - Blue £21.99
(£25.84) £21.99
(£25.84)
LG L204WS 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver/Black £129.99
(£152.74) £129.99
(£152.74)
Abit IP35-E (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £64.99
(£76.36) £64.99
(£76.36)
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £36.99
(£43.46) £36.99
(£43.46)
Akasa AK-ZEN-01-BK Zen Black Case - No PSU £26.99
(£31.71) £26.99
(£31.71)
Asus DRW-1814BL 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - Retail £16.99
(£19.96) £16.99
(£19.96)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £159.99
(£187.99) £159.99
(£187.99)
Sub Total : £699.90
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £14.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £125.10
Total : £839.95


a little over

 

[lolage]

Thanks for all the specs so far. What would change if i were to buy a cheap C2D and overclock it?

 

[Teaf]

Thanks for all the specs so far. What would change if i were to buy a cheap C2D and overclock it?

There would be little or no difference if you overclocked say a E2160 to 3Ghz compared to something like a E6750 @ 3Ghz, at least not a massive notibable difference. The difference between the E2160 @ 3ghz and a stock Q6600 however is still quite large because there are 4 cores. I guess it depends on what you do more - if you game more than you video encode then get the E2160, overclocked to 3Ghz and get a nice graphics card... however if you edit video more than you game, then get the quad and a 2900 pro. If you gamed a lot more you *maybe* could squeeze in a 8800 GTX and an E2160 but some components would obviously take a hit in the process (in comparison to the spec I posted above), such as:

• Less feature motherboard
• No DVI port on monitor
• Case is slightly worse
• DVD Writer is slightly worse

 

[lolage]

There would be little or no difference if you overclocked say a E2160 to 3Ghz compared to something like a E6750 @ 3Ghz, at least not a massive notibable difference. The difference between the E2160 @ 3ghz and a stock Q6600 however is still quite large because there are 4 cores. I guess it depends on what you do more - if you game more than you video encode then get the E2160, overclocked to 3Ghz and get a nice graphics card... however if you edit video more than you game, then get the quad and a 2900 pro. If you gamed a lot more you *maybe* could squeeze in a 8800 GTX and an E2160 but some components would obviously take a hit in the process (in comparison to the spec I posted above), such as:

• Less feature motherboard
• No DVI port on monitor
• Case is slightly worse
• DVD Writer is slightly worse

I like that.. i have just found 2x 20gb hard drives in my room so i could use those i suppose. Not sure if they are sata though. They are old..

 

[Teaf]

I like that.. i have just found 2x 20gb hard drives in my room so i could use those i suppose. Not sure if they are sata though. They are old..

If they are very old they might only be PATA and 2MB cache if that, which would really hurt the system. Might be worth at least trying to pick up a 8mb cache SATA hard drive, maybe second hand so you get a reasonable price.

 

[semi-pro waster]

I like that.. i have just found 2x 20gb hard drives in my room so i could use those i suppose. Not sure if they are sata though. They are old..

I don't think they could possibly be SATA, the smallest SATA drive size I've seen is a Raptor at 36gb so they will almost certainly be IDE. The motherboard only has one IDE port which means that you need to change the DVDRW for a SATA version if you wanted to use both hard drives. While you are at it, match the colour to the case or vice versa.

I wouldn't re-use such old hard drives though, a hard drive is the slowest component in a PC on average and has been for years, using an old hard drive to save a little bit of cash really doesn't do you much in the way of favours.