Gaming PC for £600-ish

ReplaceMyDell

ReplaceMyDell

ReplaceMyDell

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Joined
21 Mar 2008
Posts
10
Hello all

Been lurking for a while now but decided to register and get some expoert opinion. As my username might suggest, the time has now come to replace my Dell Dimension 8300 after 4 years of trouble free use. Having read a fair few posts I've come up with the following spec and would appreciate someone having a look and checking it's all ok:

specru8.jpg


Total: £641.36

Main thing I'm after is a machine for gaming for a few years, capable of CoD4, Crysis, HL2 etc etc. Budget is ideally somewhere around the 600 quid mark but can go abit higher for an increase in performance. Currently I'm thinking more RAM would be a good idea, 4GB instead of 2 may as I may as well get it now rather than later.

I've gone for a motherboard that I've seen recommended on here quite abit and decided to go for a Wolfdale rather than a quad core but can be persuaded otherwise on these (or any other components) if you think I'll get more bang for my buck, so to speak.....

I'd be overclocking it too, maybe not straight away though.

All yours, and thanks in advance for any advice \ suggestions
 
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Can't really fault it, looks a good machine. I'd go for Vista these days, unless you'll be doing anything that might not have the drivers (complex sound work etc).

I've built a PC using that motherboard and it is a joy to work with, very well made and easy to use BIOS. Don't know about the case but I'm sure it's okay. memory is good, but you'll be limited to a 400 x 8 = 3.2 GHZ top speed (without clocking the RAM) so you could either get a cheaper CPU (e2180, e2200), faster RAM, or a CPU with a higher multiplier if you want to go for 3.5-4GHz speed.
 
Cheers for the quick reply, still abit of a noob at this so.....

By "faster RAM" I take it you mean 8500 instead of 6400? Any preferred manufacturer or are they all pretty similar?

And in terms of a higher multiplier you're talking about a Wolfdale 8400 / 8500 as opposed to the 8200 I've specced?
 
Yep, 8500, although what you've specced there is good. OCZ, crucial, corsair, Gskill are all good.

The only possible weak point (and it isn't that weak really) is that you'll be limited by the 8x multiplier of the 8200 and the 400 MHz (800 DDR) of the RAM, as on P35 motherboards the Front side bus (which multiplies with the multiplier to make the processor speed) won't go faster than the RAM. So with that setup 8 x 400 = 3200MHz, or 3.2 GHZ.

That is a perfectly acceptable speed (indeed my e6600 in my games machine is on that config right now) but it is whether you want to spend all that money on a e8200 in order to get that speed.

It won't make a lot of difference in games if you have a 4GHz chip or a 3GHz chip tbh, its mostly limited by graphics card (have a look at the crysis scores in the graphics forum, and see how well my rig does against some much faster CPUs) but it might make sense to buy some faster RAM, then you have some more headroom should you want to push you chip more in the future (e.g. 8 x 450FSB = 3600MHz, 8 x 500FSB = 4000MHz).

edit: Oh, and welcome to the forums :)
 
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Melbourne720,

Cheers for the welcome and the continuing guidance :)

I've had a look at the Crysis thread as you suggested and it seems your set-up using a 6600 is a popular one. Have I just picked a new CPU or are people choosing 8400s \ 8500s as there is a big difference over and above an 8200?

As it stands at the moment I reckon I'll get the quicker RAM and stick with the 8200. Whatever I pick it'll be a lot quicker than my current 2.6GHz P4
 
e6600 was all there was with a 9x multiplier (the so called sweet spot with the early P965 boards) in the early days. Now, P35 motherboards can do 500 FSB on a dual core with a little tweaking, so it's not so important.

The e8200 will be a good choice. If you can pair it with some fast RAM all the better, but either way your new rig will blow your old one out of the water by some considerable margin. :)
 
Right then,

Following your advice, have gone for 2gb of Corsair 8500 RAM but kept the rest of the spec the same. Will order it tonight and then get ready for my first build next week....

Thanks for the advice about CPU and RAM, much appreciated
 
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