cheap gaming pc spec

clocka · 22 Aug 2011 at 22:49

Hi

I'm building a gaming pc for a friend, who wants to be able to play battlefield 3 when it comes out. He wants to go down the AMD route, so i came up with the items below. If anyone has any suggestions that would be great, he may try a small over clock if he's brave enough.

a strict maximum budget of £400 i have been told. Also does anyone know if the Agility 3 (below) is stable enough? as I only want to build this once.

OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £109.99

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 840 "95W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail - £83.99

OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-60G) - £75.98

MSI 870A-G54 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard - £65.98

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) - £26.99

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1155/ 1156 / 1366) - £21.98

case, psu, dvd, mouse, keyboard OS already owned.

thanks in advance

stulid · 22 Aug 2011 at 22:51

What case and PSU is it?

clocka · 22 Aug 2011 at 22:54

stulid said:
What case and PSU is it?

Its the Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU)

stulid · 22 Aug 2011 at 22:57

clocka said:
Its the Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU)

Well you need to make sure you dont use anything to power hungry on the PSU as its not the greatest thing ever.

A sandybridge setup will consume less power and be faster than AMD,

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2120-2100_5.html#sect0

SO,

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99
(£91.66) £109.99
(£91.66)
Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £94.99
(£79.16) £94.99
(£79.16)
Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £82.99
(£69.16) £82.99
(£69.16)
MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99
(£19.99) £23.99
(£19.99)
Sub Total : £314.13
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £64.73
Total : £388.36

Does you friend have a HDD?

The other important question is the DVD drive, is it SATA or IDE?

clocka · 22 Aug 2011 at 23:07

come to think of it the hdd i think is an 80GB IDE - which this mobo doesn't support.

dvd drive is sata so thats all fine.

stulid · 22 Aug 2011 at 23:12

clocka said:
come to think of it the hdd i think is an 80GB IDE - which this mobo doesn't support.

dvd drive is sata so thats all fine.

I kinda see two options then,

1) Get a new 500GB HDD instead of a SSD, this then means you can get a i5 2500K and P67 board, so you can overclock the CPU.

But its £20 over unless you buy it?

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £172.99
(£144.16) £172.99
(£144.16)
OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99
(£91.66) £109.99
(£91.66)
Asus P8P67 LE Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** B3 REVISION ** £70.98
(£59.15) £70.98
(£59.15)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £30.98
(£25.82) £30.98
(£25.82)
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99
(£19.99) £23.99
(£19.99)
Sub Total : £340.78
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £70.06
Total : £420.34

2) The same H67 as in post#4 with a non overclockable quad core, but 8GB of RAM,

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £142.99
(£119.16) £142.99
(£119.16)
OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99
(£91.66) £109.99
(£91.66)
MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £47.99
(£39.99) £47.99
(£39.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £30.98
(£25.82) £30.98
(£25.82)
Sub Total : £330.79
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £68.06
Total : £408.35

To be able to overclock Sandybridge, you must have a "K" cpu and either a P67 or Z68 board

clocka · 22 Aug 2011 at 23:13

i have an old sata he can have actually, so i think ill go with your suggestion Stulid. thanks for the input!

stulid · 22 Aug 2011 at 23:31

clocka said:
i have an old sata he can have actually, so i think ill go with your suggestion Stulid. thanks for the input!

I think you got some food for thought and also now see that sandybridge is a better chip

The other thing to remember is that the Phenom 840 you mention is based on an Athlon core, so it doesnt feature any L3 cache like a real Phenom does.

Think of it as a AthlonII X4 650'ish