Can someone check this before I buy?

hypochondriac · 2 Oct 2009 at 16:57

Hi I'm going to build a PC with a budget of £500 (including a monitor, but no keyboard/mouse/speakers)
Will be used for some word processing, itunes, browsing and gaming.
This is what I've got at the moment:

http://i33.tinypic.com/153oavn.jpg

Is there any way I could improve that for my budget?
I understand some of the graphics cards get quite big, will it fit in the case?
I went for a budget motherboard, will it bottleneck my system?

Or alternatively can someone spec me a system with a monitor for £500 budget.

Cheers in advance.

KingZeddy · 2 Oct 2009 at 22:34

I would always start with a quality mobo and add to that, otherwise you might end up frustrated by the budget mobo's limitations and stability.

hypochondriac · 3 Oct 2009 at 19:03

What mobo would you reccomend? I'm never sure what to shop for in a mobo, that one seemed to have everything I need, anything more like extra sata ports, extra pci ports etc wouldn't get used and i'd feel like i was wasting my money.
Also when you say it's instable, would the pc crash etc.
What should i compromise for more money for a better mobo?

thevet · 3 Oct 2009 at 23:23

forget the whole build..start again and go intel spec

lvmedas · 3 Oct 2009 at 23:44

My first post. This LG DVD±RW has some 5 star ratings and I would chose it over the samsung.
The Colermaster 330s cases look good as well, but they're a few £ more than the one you have selected.

dangerstat · 4 Oct 2009 at 00:05

I quite like that spec for what you want to use it for. Budget motherboards are great if you don't want to OC much. Personally and I stress personally, I'd go for a Phenom II over the new Q Athlon II's, and perhaps get a slightly less powerful GPU.

Otherwise I think that's quite nice

I take it your planning on using a 64bit OS?

JoeCooper · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:58

personally i would get 4x1GB ram instead of 2x2GB. shares the load across 4 modules instead of just 2. would be quicker. although you will need 64bit OS to run all 4, otherwise only 3 will work

TipTop · 4 Oct 2009 at 02:32

hypochondriac said:
What mobo would you reccomend? I'm never sure what to shop for in a mobo, that one seemed to have everything I need, anything more like extra sata ports, extra pci ports etc wouldn't get used and i'd feel like i was wasting my money.
Also when you say it's instable, would the pc crash etc.
What should i compromise for more money for a better mobo?

This is a great mobo: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-357-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1482

hypochondriac · 4 Oct 2009 at 17:22

dangerstat said:
I quite like that spec for what you want to use it for. Budget motherboards are great if you don't want to OC much. Personally and I stress personally, I'd go for a Phenom II over the new Q Athlon II's, and perhaps get a slightly less powerful GPU.

Otherwise I think that's quite nice I take it your planning on using a 64bit OS?

I shan't be OCing at all.
I assume the phenom iis are a lot better judging by the price. I can only afford a dual core phenom ii. will the speed make up for the loss of 2 cores?

so taking on board all your advice I've now got this setup in the basket.

http://i34.tinypic.com/15gs2o5.png

Any improvements to this?

I didn't make it an intel rig because i assumed amd would be cheaper but if i could make a better intel one for the same price it'd probably be preferable. I dunno which is better though and don't want to spark a debate.

***edit***:
according to cpubenchmark.net the athlon is better than the phenom should i switch back?