Budget (~ £350) gaming rig.

ukbrainstew

ukbrainstew

ukbrainstew

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So after a little bit research, I've come up with a provisional basket:

32582614mg3.jpg


For the price, I'm really quite happy. I've never done any overclocking before but just want to run the CPU at ~ 2.8ghz which seems very acheivable judging by other posts. So can anyone improve on this setup given a similar sort of budget?

Edit: Looks like I cut the price off, it comes to £351 after postage.
 
I would probably go for a better quality PSU, you want something reliable and when I think of quality hiper definitely doesn’t spring to mind! Maybe grab the OcUK Value IP35 over the cut down poor overclocking gigabyte P31 board.
The rest looks top though!
 
Hiper's are fine nowadays I think. Built by a different OEM or something.

Only thing I would note is that that motherboard has no VRM cooling, not good for running O/Ced for months on end, I would assume?
 
Yeah, I don't think 425W is going to cut it with a 8800GT graphics card and an overclocked CPU. I mean, it MIGHT do, but personally I'd get something with a bit more oomph just to be sure. You can actually physically damage your stuff if it doesn't get enough juice.

I use an EZcool PS-900 Tornado PSU at 600W which seems to work a treat on my system at least. Only cost £35.25 from my local computer shop, but I don't think OCUK sell them.
 
No idea about OCing with stock cooler but yeh 2.7-2.8 shouldn't be a big problem.
And 250gb for gaming nowadays is definitely not enough unless you want to delete every game after you played it for 2 weeks ;p.

Get some 400-450w quality PSU. Corsair 450 or OCZ 500 are pretty cheap ( 40-50range ).
 
Chimerical said:
Dell PC's manage to run 8800GTX's and Quad's on 400W PSU's.

But yeah, overclocking might change things.
Click to expand...

Many didn’t manage, dell had a few psu issues with the Vostro's spec'ed with q6600 and a gtx card. supplied PSU was not nearly adequate enough.

A decent brand 400 watt should be fine with his setup though, but if there’s one thing you shouldn’t do is skimp on the PSU purchase.

PWM circuits are generally very tough, I've never had an issue with overclocking boards that dont run heat sinks on the ic's
 
PhoenixUK said:
No idea about OCing with stock cooler but yeh 2.7-2.8 shouldn't be a big problem.
And 250gb for gaming nowadays is definitely not enough unless you want to delete every game after you played it for 2 weeks ;p.

Get some 400-450w quality PSU. Corsair 450 or OCZ 500 are pretty cheap ( 40-50range ).
Click to expand...

Well I can get the same spec at a competitor but with a 500GB HDD and a case with better airflow for the same price which is probably what I'll do. I was actually planning on changing the stock cooler and included a better one in my basket at said competitor.

With regards to the PSU I'm thinking of spending a bit extra and going with either the Corsair 450w model or an Antec Earthwatts 430w PSU. I assume these would be worth the extra £20 investment?
 
A Corsair VX450W would take a good few upgrades along the way, yup 20 quid extra well spent imo.
For less than £400 you should have a quality setup that can play all the modern games out there :)
 
SlyReaper said:
Yeah, I don't think 425W is going to cut it with a 8800GT graphics card and an overclocked CPU. I mean, it MIGHT do, but personally I'd get something with a bit more oomph just to be sure. You can actually physically damage your stuff if it doesn't get enough juice.

I use an EZcool PS-900 Tornado PSU at 600W which seems to work a treat on my system at least. Only cost £35.25 from my local computer shop, but I don't think OCUK sell them.
Click to expand...

It'll easily manage it. I've overclocked an almost identical system on a 380W PSU and it was absolutely fine.

One thing you might want to consider (perhaps in the future) is getting a decent, silent CPU cooler and VGA cooler.
 
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