Gaming spec for £700

InQ · 27 Feb 2006 at 12:53

My bro's looking for a PC for gaming, budget is £700 but he doesnt need a monitor, kb or mouse (so case and guts plus speakers).

What can you do?

BigDom · 27 Feb 2006 at 13:01

Go's over by £60 but gives you a very nice gaming setup. Could cut costs with a Retail Venice 3500+ but the SD is a much nicer option. I use a logitech speaker setup similar to the Z-4 so made sense to recomend that one as the one I have is very nice

.

GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£199.95 £199.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
HD-024-SA Samsung SpinPoint P HD160JJ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-024-SA)
£48.95 £48.95
MY-005-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
£54.95 £54.95
CP-150-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-150-AM)
£122.95 £122.95
CD-030-NE NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE)
£24.95 £24.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.50 £14.50
CA-048-AN Antec SLK3800BUK Black Quiet Midi Tower Case - 400W SmartPower PSU (CA-048-AN)
£54.95 £54.95
SP-032-LG Logitech Z-4 2.1 40 Watts Speakers - Retail (SP-032-LG)
£44.95 £44.95
Subtotal £636.10
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £10.95
VAT £113.24
Total £760.29

Monstermunch · 27 Feb 2006 at 15:57

Just like BigDom said, Nice spec BTW.

Mikey1280 · 27 Feb 2006 at 16:59

Nice spec BigDom but I would change hard disk to a 160gb Hitachi Deskstar as most reviews say that it is faster and it is slightly cheaper

semi-pro waster · 27 Feb 2006 at 17:24

I can't really see any way to improve on what BigDom has specified, a possible minor change is to go for the Arctic Cooling T1 or T2 case which is cheaper and has a 450w Seasonic PSU included otherwise the Antec will be more than adequate.

If the budget is really important then you could go for a 7800gt at ~£200 although the X1800XT is well worth the extra.

iraiguana · 27 Feb 2006 at 18:07

looks like a nice spec for a good price.

InQ · 27 Feb 2006 at 20:48

OK sorry about not getting back guys....but good news, more money to spend.

He tells me he has some PC3200 OCZ RAM from his old P4 setup that he's going to use in the new system plus he's just got an OEM Opteron 146 (for £113) from elsewhere so he doesnt need a CPU....so that now makes it a budget of £600 for case and guts (bar RAM and CPU) and speakers.
Of course he's going to be clocking the Opty...

BigDom · 27 Feb 2006 at 20:58

Drop the CPU and RAM from my spec and your down to under £600 and should be able to clock the opty decently enough. That mobo is the same one used in the OCuk clocked rig and also the one I use. If you can fit it in the budget you can of course go for a DFI Lanparty but I'm happy in the Asus and it does have a good set of overclocking options.

Two things though - 1) the PC3200 IS DDR isn't it? Not DDR2. 2) is it a matched pair of ram to get dual channel?

InQ · 27 Feb 2006 at 21:08

BigDom said:
Drop the CPU and RAM from my spec and your down to under £600 and should be able to clock the opty decently enough. That mobo is the same one used in the OCuk clocked rig and also the one I use. If you can fit it in the budget you can of course go for a DFI Lanparty but I'm happy in the Asus and it does have a good set of overclocking options.

Two things though - 1) the PC3200 IS DDR isn't it? Not DDR2. 2) is it a matched pair of ram to get dual channel?

Cheers, yep its a matched pair of DDR NOT DDR2 (P4 3GHz Northwood, Asus P4P800E Deluxe mobo).
I have mentioned he could get the same mobo as me (DFI Ultra-D) but he has looked at a cheaper DFI...
DFI NF4 Infinity SKT939 nForce4 chipset Dual DDR400 PCI-E SATA ATX
The Ultra-D uses the NF4 Ultra chipset and this Infinity uses the NF4 chipset (SATA not SATA2, dont know of any other significant differences?).

semi-pro waster · 28 Feb 2006 at 09:41

InQ said:
(SATA not SATA2, dont know of any other significant differences?).

smids has done a great sticky in the hard drives forum explaining SATAII but as a quick summary the difference is negligible in most cases and whether you get additional features such as NCQ(Native Command Queueing) or Staggered Spin Up etc depends entirely on the implementation by the motherboard and hard drive manufacturers.