Build me a system £400

LoopyLee

LoopyLee

LoopyLee

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Joined
27 Nov 2005
Posts
155
I have been using my laptop for last 18months and have decided to get a new desk top. Last upgrade was when Nvidia TI4200 was a top end card (see im out of date).

I play games online like SOF2 & medal of honour. I burn a lot of DVD'd & CD,s and also need large storage space.

I want AMD 64 bit as cheaper and better value, with a fast graphics card Think best are now PCI not AGP & good memory DDR2 (that ment to be fastest), as dont want to keep upgrading every year.

I not to bothered on a top end board as long as it supports a fast CPU large amount of fast ram and is SATA (think that what they called) hard drive.

Thanks for taking time to help.
 
lol i didnt even notince that^^ any how here is the cheapest i can do for you requirments

AMD Athlon 64 3000 Newcastle 130nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-070-AM)
£79.95 £79.95
MB-121-AS Asus A8V-E SE VIA K8T890 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-121-AS)
£47.95 £47.95
MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK)
£44.95 £44.95
HD-091-MD Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 160GB 6V160E0 SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-091-MD)
£45.95 £45.95
CD-036-LG LG GSA-4167BRL 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - Retail (CD-036-LG)
£25.85 £25.85
CA-004-AS Asus TA-210 Series Midi Tower (Black) - 360W PSU (CA-004-AS)
£34.50 £34.50
GX-054-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-054-PC)
£94.95 £94.95
Subtotal £384.10
VAT £65.47
Total £449.57

opps sorry about the proccesor. It was late
 
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Hi guys,

Yes its only the tower im after. I plan on getting an 19" TFT next month. Sorry its under memory thats my lack of posting knowledge.

Specks sound good apart from the CPU and board sckt compatability.

Ram & harddrive sounds great and so are the other bits, what does the CPU run at as I have only ever used Pentiums and know the clock speed the be the speed of the CPU. AMD different?

If poss could I add the other £30 on the CPU to make a big difference, VAT not a problem and coverd.

Thanks for replys.
 
AMDs are different (the 3700+ actually runs at 2.2GHz for example...AMD do more work per clock cycle)... give me a while and I'll do you a spec :)
 
How about this? All compatible, and you can get the 256MB version of the card for an extra £30. Has a larger HD than Harttys...

Antec SLK3800BUK Black Quiet Midi Tower Case - 400W SmartPower PSU (CA-048-AN) - £63.69
Asus A8N5X nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-120-AS) - £61.04
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 250GB 6V250F0 SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-088-MD) - £70.44
OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK) - £52.82
AMD64 3000+ Venice Socket 939 Retail - £106.99 (from an unnamed competitor, OcUK dont stock this right now so not competetive)
PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-PC) - £82.19
LG GSA-4167BAL 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-033-LG) - £29.38

Total inc VAT £466.55

Didn't spec Sempron (quite nippy for budget chips tbh) as you stated you wanted AMD64, 250GB HD as you wanted lots of HD space, and GTO as you wanted something nippy, but your games are a bit older, and that card will last for a year or so on medium settings and decent res :) (can run decent res, and high settings really right now)

You could cut a few corners off (perhaps 30-50) by going Sempron, and changing to an asus case/psu combo, but I thought the PSU would likely be a bit weaker on asus, and its a nice looking case and psu :)
 
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That sounds good Alexrose1uk.

Would a AMD samprom 64 outperform the 3000+ if you spent the same money on it?

Or is there a big difference in the quality of the chip?

All others look real good and have large storage and I think the graphics card would do me fine for a couple of years, as my old TI4200 run my games and was fine at the time.

Take the card is like a budget one like the TI4200 was compaired to the TI4600 @ the time?

I have had a look around and looking at things the PCI Express is the latest things so if the card needed upgrading in 3years that would be good too.
 
Hi, sorry about the delay in replying, I was working (Bank Customer Service Lines...ugh)
You would get a slightly lesser chip with a sempron, as its the AMD equivalent of a Celeron, however, compared to Celeron and P4, the Sempron is a far superior chip, and performs a lot faster than a Celeron does.
I would have to spec you a new motherboard, as sempron is socket 754 right now, but a sempron 3400+ costs £95 approx inc VAT, and would have very comparable, if not slightly better performance than the 3000+ Venice, the main difference being the onboard cache (which is meant to equate to about 200Mhz difference) and as it is socket754, your ram would run in single channel.

Here is a link so you can see some benchmark scores
3400+ Review Sempron
(FYI a socket 462 chip as mentioned in that review, is a Socket A processor)
As it states, the chip is basically a slightly cut down 3200+ Athlon64, and it is meant to overclock well, so price performance wise, for the same price, you get a little more speed, and both chips are 64bit compatible, its just not as powerful as later AMD64 chips. The 3400+ Sempron chip is the fastest Sempron chip out right now, but there are plans to bring faster chips out in the future.

The graphics card isn't actually a budget one, its a mid end card, capable of running pretty much everything out there not too badly, if you opted to spend a little more and get the 256MB equivalent, it would run things quite happily for you for another year or so.
Here's a review of the card I have specced, compared against the 256MB version :), testing with Battlefront 2 and FEAR.
Benchmark Review

As it states however, the 256MB version, is superior.

Alex
 
thanks for the info that looks great.

Well still going to stick with the AMD 3000+ not the Sampron. I would probley go for the 256 card as no messing around in a years or so.

Thanks for all coments. If anyone can offer any different soultions would be good for me to compaire.
 
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