Build it or bundle - advice appreciated

tantexas

tantexas

tantexas

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3 Jun 2011
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So my son is a keen game player he wants a new PC. Funds are very limited (£500 tops) so I’m trying to find a way to get as much as possible for as little as possible (me and the rest of the world I know). From what I can see of the advice on here, this would probably involve a custom build your own option.

Now, I’m good on software and have a programming background. I’m not afraid of the hardware as I’ve done some stuff on that too although not for many many years. But I’m busy and son is impatient. Is a BYO option really feasible for me? If it’s going to take a whole week and tons of reading it’s not going to happen. But if it takes the best part of a day that’s OK and would be fun.
 
Build it yourself, it's easy and fun. It won't take more than a day and if you're not too sure you can do a bit of reading up while you wait for the componants to arrive :).
 
Building it is easy. You ask for help here, Stulid specs you an excellent system, you buy it, it turns up the next day, and you spend a few hours bolting bits and bobs together. Then spend another few weeks trying to make the cabling look tidy. :p As long as you're careful it's a piece of cake.
 
From what others have said. Building can be as quick as half an hour to an hour. There is tons of videos of how to do it. It's just a case of putting all of the components into the motherboard and then plugging a lot of the components into the PSU. I have obviously simplified it a lot but it seems easy enough. People will probably spec you a full list of components inside your budget pretty quickly. I'm doing something very similar (trying to build a gaming rig for under £500). Good luck

Ps: if you click my name and go to statistics>threads started by me>gaming build (£500 budget) you could look through some of the specs suggested to me with a similar budget.
 
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Here's an AMD setup if you can't go over budget.
 
I'd recommend waiting for Stulid to post before making any decisions. He generally gets the best specs for the money you want to spend
 
Gosh - what a wonderful and helpful group of people you are. I'm reassured, and this will be fun to do.

On the spec you've all recommended (although I'll take the advice and wait for Stulid) all looks great, but just one amend. Son would like the case to be 'interesting' - presumably he means lighting up or something. Also a monitor recommendation - up to 22" would be appreciated.

I'm also going to need Windows aren't I? From what I've read with 4Gb he'll need a 64bit version. He's 14 so qualifies for academic rates, but I looked on software4students and it only offered upgrades. (Suddenly £500 looks like just the start of the expense.)
 
Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £139.99
(£116.66) £139.99
(£116.66)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £114.95
(£95.79) £114.95
(£95.79)
MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £89.98
(£74.98) £89.98
(£74.98)
Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD753LJ) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
(£12.49) £14.99
(£12.49)
Sub Total : £407.39
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £83.58
Total : £501.47
 
Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £145.99
(£121.66) £145.99
(£121.66)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £114.95
(£95.79) £114.95
(£95.79)
Gigabyte H67M-UD2H-B3 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £84.98
(£70.82) £84.98
(£70.82)
Antec High Current Gamer 620W Power Supply £49.99
(£41.66) £49.99
(£41.66)
Antec 100 One Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £43.99
(£36.66) £43.99
(£36.66)
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD753LJ) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
(£13.32) £15.98
(£13.32)
Sub Total : £433.22
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £89.14
Total : £534.86

Closer to budget.

Everything is in stock.

Ignore the lack of overclocking from the H67 chipset and non "K" CPU.


A i5 2400 CPU will kill anything AMD has - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i5-2500-2400-2300_7.html#sect0
 
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £114.95
(£95.79) £114.95
(£95.79)
Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
(£57.00) £68.40
(£57.00)
Options applied to the above product:
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £59.99
(£49.99) £59.99
(£49.99)
Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus Case - Black £56.99
(£47.49) £56.99
(£47.49)
OCZ StealthXStream 2 500W Power Supply £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low-Voltage Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3G1333LV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.16) £16.99
(£14.16)

Sub Total : £432.72
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £13.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £89.29
Total : £535.76

Windows 7 included ;)

Change the case if you want to make it cheaper to either one of those suggested above!
 
Just to point out guys, I think the OP wants a monitor and OS within the £500 which narrows down what can you get a lot. If not correct me ;)
 
Would have liked the OS included, but I did know that including the monitor in a £500 would have been too big an ask, so have budgeted for that separately.

So I've just been through a comparison of the three suggested options listed above and have just one (hopefully) final question. Moothead had suggested a case which had the PSU included, whereas Stulid and RJC had recommended a separate case and PSU. The first case had clear sides so we could later add a led strip to jazz it up, and was £30 or so cheaper. I am (of course) over budget already but should I stretch to a separate PSU or not?

Thanks
 
The current price of the Antec PSU is to good to miss, with the system being a gaming machine this would allow the him to upgrade in the future without worrying about the PSU.
 
Last edited:
Many thanks. We discovered today the highend laptop that my son overheated (and so motherboard is now defunct) will still fetch around £70 on ebay so giving us that little bit of extra budget and I'll take your advice and go for the separate PSU.

One final question - really this time - is I forgot to include a wireless card. His room is too far from the router in my home office to cable direct. Would this one be OK as it's on special with OC: TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter (TL-WN851N). Bband is fibre so pretty fast speeds not that I know if that makes any difference to which card I should choose.

Thanks again.
 
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