Gaming PC for £600

sharingan_sasuk

sharingan_sasuk

sharingan_sasuk

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Hi, I apologise for yet another spec me thread but as most have different needs and budgets, I thought it would be best.

Budget: I've already stretched my budget from £500 to £600 so I would like to keep it under that if possible, unless something is bottleneckling (if such a word exists) the rest of the system and thus needs to be upgraded :)

Needs: I use it for gaming, and the two games I spend pretty much all my time on are World of Warcraft and Left 4 Dead. I currently use a 19" monitor with a 1440x900 resolution. Now I know you say WoW isn't exactly intensive, but I'm planning to run FRAPS in the near future to record my PvP fights and would like to maintain a smooth FPS with all video settings on max (maybe 4x Multisampling and low Shadow Quality as that isn't too important). Atm, I use a Dell XPS M1530 and I can't FRAPS and maintain a smooth framerate, while during raids, I have to lower my video settings.

I'm NOT into games like Crysis or those usual high-benchmarking games you find (ie. GTA IV which I already got on the XBox 360 :p)

What I require: CPU, Graphics Card, Memory, Motherboard, Case (not into any fancy LEDs or whatever, just one that works!), Power Supply, Hard Drive (also got an external HDD so 160GB should suffice), DVD-RW drive, and cooler if necessary should overclocking be recommended.

What I've speccd so far:
sm50jm.jpg


Any feedback and opinions on this spec would be very much welcomed :) I wasn't planning on a new desktop just yet but suddenly someone else needs my laptop so I might as well get a new system! £600 is a lot to spend for me, especially at these times so please try keep it at that. Regards
 
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Looks good, but you could go for a E8500 dual core, a lot faster and a few quid cheaper, if you want to save money you could even get lower spec (anywhere down to an E5200 and clock it back up), by sounds of it you dont need quad, Id upgrade mobo to the pro version, a lot better layout among other things, to recoup the money from that you could change PSU to PC Power & Cooling 470Watt, it'll still be ample for that system, if you can get any cheap Id look at PC8500 RAM myself over PC6400
 
I'd go for a VX450W or a PCP&C 470W.

Change the HDD to this, much better.

Think about going dual core, get a cheap C2D that can clock high, you can get an extra 1-1.5ghz out of most chips without too much trouble.
 
add a couple of fans if your getting that case.. front and side, think its already got an back exhaust fan :)

also id change the cpu cooler to artic freezer pro 7... just the other day my cpu was sitting at 15c and thats with a hefty overclock :D
 
get a bigger hard drive, 320gb is not enough these days. :D
+1 for a corsair power supply, getting an e5200 an overclocking it.
cpu at 15 degrees? what's the temerature in the room lol.
 
Ok, I've changed a few things around and managed to save £50 or so. Here's the latest one:
2i9i04k.jpg


Total: £554.19 inc free delivery

I have a few questions as well if I may:
1) Is PC6400 RAM sufficient or shall I go for PC8500 if I'm overclocking this E7300?
2) Is a modular PSU necessary with that case?
3) Does it matter if I go Asus or Gigabyte as they seem to have very similar prices and specs. I'm not really one to go into a lot of minor detail, so I would have no idea which would be best
 
800mhz ram is fine with the 10x multi, you would be at 4ghz running 1:1 before you even went out of spec.

Only real need for better ram is for a really high FSB.
 
I personally rate the GB-EP45-UD3P

But that's above the P5Q-E level, which is also as good :rolleyes: :D ...

And no, Modular isn't required, it's purly for tidyness really ... but cable ties and wraps can have it tidy, just take some time to tidy up the cabling. Will help with temps if wiring is really messy too.
 
I've switched the E7300 for an E5200 after reading some great reviews about how it clocks for a budget CPU, and now it's down to £510 or so :)

I think the P5Q Pro should suffice, and the P5Q-E (yet more 'tiers' on this particular model!) isn't necessary?

I think I'm set on most of the items; E5200, 4GB PC6400 DDR2, 4850 IceQ, Asus P5Q Pro and 500GB Samsung. Maybe I could spend a bit more on the case, like up to £50? I'm not sure what decent ones would be around that price range though.
 
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Good day all. I've been checking out at the Antec 300 case on YouTube and been impressed so far.

I've noticed though that the PSU is positioned at the bottom in this case. Would the PC P&C Silencer 470W PSU have long enough cables to reach the top where the DVD-RW drive and whatever might be located on the motherboard?

Now just the CPU left to go. E5200 vs E7300 vs E8200, lol. I'm thinking of just overclocking the hell out of the E5200 as it has only 1MB cache less than the E7300. However, will the extra 4MB cache on the E8200 over the E5200 have a noticable difference when trying to run WoW and FRAPS at the same time?

Regards
 
right
now im not gonna meintion any competitors
but i know of a site which, for £625 inclu pp has an e8400/8500, n a gtx260 in
not sure about the rest, but the case is pretty good, its the same as the one i have
 
I think the 4850 should be more than enough for my 1400x900 resolution games, and I'm not too sure about the GTX260.

May I ask what PSU you have, and if it works perfectly fine with the Antec?

Regards
 
Placed my order, was slightly over £600 but I don't care :)

Although I was close to getting the E5200/E7300 as they were great clockers, I went for the E8400 as I found it really cheap on another site (cheaper than the E8200 in fact) and it is pretty nice at stock. I look forward to overclocking that too.

The rest was pretty much the same as my last spec except I went for the Antec 300 Gaming Case and Gigabyte Odin GT 550W as it was modular.

Fingers crossed everything arrives on Thursday morning as intended. And many thanks all for your input!
 
Building my system at the moment, and I've only just realised I received a European power cable with my Odin GT PSU! Lol

Luckily I got a spare power cable from an old monitor I can use. Hopefully it will work fine.

Might post some pictures later as I've been taking them at every step :)
 
That cable will be fine ... They're all just bog standard cables that run from socket to PSU or any device, it's then changed to whatever the device requires.

Could even use a Kettle Plug if wanted :D, seen that done a few times in similar situations. They useually then realise they want a brew lol ...
 
Finished and it booted up fine first time. My BIOS was reading my CPU temperature as 18C, and I had to manually set the FSB setting as 'Auto' was giving my E8400 2.33Ghz rather than 3.0Ghz.

Installing Windows XP Professional 64-bit now, and once I'm done I'll post some pics :)
 
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