Another Build thread! £360 - £400

[newfan4585]

Hi all,

I've been on this forum before but forgot my login details...

Anyway, My mate would like to upgrade his pc but on a budget.

Current specs:

Intel E7500
4GB Ram
ATi 5770 (1gb)
500GB HDD
Asus P5Q Pro Motherboard
(Big brand manufacture case)

Max price willing to spend is £360 all in... may go to £400 all in.

Will keep the following:
HDD (500GB but not far from been full)
4GB DDR3 RAM (spare from my old build)
Case
Optical drive

So we're looking for the following things to upgrade:

CPU
Motherboard
Graphics card
PSU

Runs games on a 22" tft - 1680x1050

Just a very quick look i got the following spec:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-143-OK - OcUK ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB - £139.99 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-303-AM - AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 850 "95W Edition" 3.30GHz - £91.99 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-134-MS - MSI 870A-G54 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard - £65.98 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-230-CM - Cooler Master Elite Power 500W Power Supply - £40.99 inc VAT

Total : £350.95


Maybe add another HDD (I may get this for him for Christmas... If so then it'll be setup by raid).

But i think another good improvement would be to get windows 7 64 bit (running vista 32bit at the moment).

I'd like to ask for peoples thoughts, suggestions in regards to the best performance for the money... intel, nvidia, ati, amd... anything... but we do need to quoted selected parts to do an upgrade.

Play all types of games, wow, battlefield series inc bf3. grid, gta4....

Normal pc usage.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Liam

 

[stulid]

The PSU is awful on all kinds of levels and a i3 2100 is faster - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2120-2100_5.html#sect0


So how about,




Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Deus Ex PC Game £139.99
(£116.66) £139.99
(£116.66)
Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £94.99
(£79.16) £94.99
(£79.16)
MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £61.99
(£51.66) £61.99
(£51.66)
Lepa W-Series 500W '80 Plus' Power Supply - with FREE LEPA Hard Drive Enclosure £47.99
(£39.99) £47.99
(£39.99)
Sub Total : £287.47
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £59.49
Total : £356.96

There are cheaper motherboards but this one has SATAIII and USB3.0

 

[newfan4585]

Hi Stulid,

Thanks for the reply... Ah, thought the PSU was good... fair enough i'll go with the one you say. Now that i3 does look good... but would it not be better to get a quad core maybe? i know bf3 is more GPU dependant... but i don't want to blow my mates money for the rig to be useless in no time at all...

I had a i3 when i went from a Q6600 and clocked it to 4GHz had a noticeable jump in performance.

No other AMD phenom 11 alternative at all?

If not i'll be looking to the intel route if it's no concern of the computer been made redundant in 2 years. But then again, an i5 in a year or 2 will drop, should still be powerful enough for mid / high setting... sell the i3 and slap in a i5 2500k or something!

Thanks,

Liam

 

[stulid]

To put it bluntly,

The i3 is faster.
Uses less power.
Runs cooler.


Now for a little fact about that PhenomIIX4 840, it isnt a real Phenom and lacks L3 cache as you would find in a 955BE for example.

 

[honosuseri]

Stulid is right (as per). Bulldozer/Phenom(AM3/+) isnt really a viable socket to invest in to be frank.

HDDs are stupidly expensive compared to what they were not long ago! Maybe it would be wise to put the build off till after xmas?

The 6870 is the minimum GPU I would recommend too. If I was expecting cash for xmas I would put that plus the £50 stulid saved to a better CPU and chipset mobo.

Not that anything is wrong with stulids suggestions for the price you pay. I'll attach a link at the end to help you compare cpus as well as gpus. I'll compare the i3 to a "budget" i5 cpu. If you like the look of the "K" revision i5 you would ideally want a Z series mobo......which is of course more money.

Good luck with the refit. Any more questions or probs come back to us. Hope the link is useful reading.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=363