cheap but fairly decent pc to upgrade in bits

[silent]

hi

my mate gave me a pc he got for free which is a time athlon duron 800mhz with 128 mg ram.

i said i would build a fairly decent machine if i could for around £250 but now can buy bits and peices as and when.

i need a mobo, cpu, g/card and ram first up. i want to get a fairly good gaming machine, nothing majorly fantastic but one which can play half life 2 etc. my 3000 and 9800pro setup with 1 gb ram can easily.

can i do it and what bits should i get first. there is no graphics apart from onboard in his current pc. if i could he wants a tv in/out card preferably to.

has anyone got any 2nd hand bits going for sale at the present time (can't access the sales bit yet)

any help recommendations appreciated. i have the asrocxk dual sata2 and am well happy so i was going to go for that with a a64 chip on it. good upgradability on that board.

 

[semi-pro waster]

I'm assuming here that you have a decent PSU and case to put this in since you only request a motherboard, CPU, Ram and graphics card. If you don't then knock the CPU down to a Venice 3000. I'm concentrating on core components and the graphics card is onboard but isn't too bad, it will easily play Half Life 2 at lowish details, you can upgrade it simply as/when more money becomes available. There aren't many graphics cards that you could buy with around £50 that would significantly improve on the onboard or at least not enough that you wouldn't want to upgrade very quickly.

MB-042-GI Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 nForce 6100 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-042-GI)
£44.95 £44.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£126.95 £126.95
MY-005-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
£44.95 £44.95
Subtotal £216.85
VAT £37.95
Total £254.80

//edit have another option, B grade motherboard so you may need to buy cables etc but the graphics card is pretty decent.

MY-005-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
£44.95 £44.95
GX-053-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-PC)
£59.95 £59.95
BG-068-AB **B Grade** Abit AX8 VIA K8T890 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (BG-068-AB)
£20.00 £20.00
CP-118-AM AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3200BPBOX) (CP-118-AM)
£91.95 £91.95
Subtotal £216.85
VAT £37.95
Total £254.80

 

[Dureth]

CP-117-AM AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3000BPBOX) (CP-117-AM)
£84.95 £84.95
MB-041-GI Gigabyte K8NMF-9 nForce4 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-041-GI)
£41.95 £41.95
MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK)
£42.50 £42.50
GX-053-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-PC)
£59.95 £59.95
Subtotal £229.35
VAT £40.14
Total £269.49

£20 over but it gets you much better graphics by dropping to a 3000 CPU. This really isnt a problem as the CPU wont be the limiting factor on this system for a while (RAM and Grahpics will be). This system will play any current game at 1280x1024 at medium-high settings easily.

 

[silent]

thanks guys, some good ideas.

semi-pro: has that mobo got integrated graphics as this could be the way forward for now. is it a good mobo?

 

[semi-pro waster]

semi-pro: has that mobo got integrated graphics as this could be the way forward for now. is it a good mobo?

The Gigabyte has got integrated graphics based on the Nvidia 6100 chip and uses the Nforce4 chipset so will also be stable with a good range of options in the bios. It is microATX so it only has a couple of extra PCI slots apart from the PCI-E slot that the graphics card can use but since most features are onboard now not having lots of PCI slots isn't much of a disadvantage. It seems to be a reasonable motherboard, the graphics won't be great and they do use system Ram but for a bit of gaming it won't be a problem.

The Abit I know little about beyond it is based on a VIA chipset, doesn't have onboard graphics although it has a PCI-E slot.

 

[ACESHIGH]

MB-042-GI Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 nForce 6100 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-042-GI)
£44.95 £44.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£126.95 £126.95
MY-005-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
£44.95 £44.95
Subtotal £216.85
VAT £37.95
Total £254.80

This is really good, considering later you can always upgrader to a better graphics card if you wanted to & you still have this great CPU.

 

[silent]

This is really good, considering later you can always upgrader to a better graphics card if you wanted to & you still have this great CPU.

yes i was thinking that to.

i did some research today and got a review on ***** etc and the foxxcomm seems good to but gigabyte are a reliable brand.

is it worth considering the foxcomm based on a better gpu - 6150?

 

[ACESHIGH]

from what i know foxxcomm build many mobo's for other companies.
so they must have a good manufacturing base, though never owned one of their boards. but if you have seen a good review on it, then go for it would be my advice

 

[wattsy]

just what i was thinking

 

[silent]

i may do that. then he can upgrade the processor to a x2 if he wants and the graphics.

i'll let him know.