Hello all please may i have some advice on my first build?

JamesTrendall

JamesTrendall

JamesTrendall

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25 Jun 2012
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Droitwich
Hello everyone my name is james and im taking the dive in to attempting to build my own pc.

Im here asking for some advice as i have a budget of £200-£250,

I have a few things already i have,

300w PSU [just a generic brand type from an old pc
a GT400 Nvidia graphics card laying around [will upgrade after saving a bit more]

Now the hard part is after searching for motherboards CPU's ram ect....
I have found the CPU i want its the AMD FX-4170 @4.2Ghz online for around £85-£100 i think thats the one you can unlock the 2 extra cores and over clock to around 5.1Ghz i have seen somewhere

The motherboard i have no clue on what to look for as i thought it was as simple as finding a AM3/AM3+ socket motherboard but after reading up on chipset's and god knows what else im so confused.

the only motherboard i have found that i think is good enough is the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 - 1.0 - motherboard - ATX - Socket AM3+ - AMD 990FX looking for something that maybe i can play around with OC at a later date once i read up on it

The ram i wish to buy is just 4GB or 2 4GB sticks of ram for as cheap as possible.

The only reason why im building this pc is to play EVE online and minecraft mainly everything else will be the missus on facebook typical women stuff ;)

Anyway please let me know what you guys think and if this would be ok to run just the stuff stated above.

I have a case cd drive floppy drive and a HDD [going to get a SSD when i can] please help as im now confused what sort of chipset i will need ect...

The only thing i am looking in to is a motherboard with 2 graphic card slots and 4 ram slots so i can upgrade in the future for as cheap as possible.

Regards,
James.

Ps: sorry for grammar and spelling im trying to do all this while having my 1year old son bash the keyboard on my lap. :D
 
The chip will not overclock that high at all, unlocking cores is just luck, i didn't think you could with bulldozers.
As for the board, on your budget you should be not looking for the only thing good enough, beggars cant be choosers, get the best value for money board you can see (maybe someone else can help you on that)
may help a little more in a minute, but you may want a new psu as well, and im quite busy at the moment, if no one assists ill have a looks on what i think you should get :)
 
What case is it? Do you know if it's ATX or mATX?

Is the CD drive and HDD SATA?

Can dump the floppy, no one uses that anymore :p.

And the PSU will need to be replaced... Generic ones are usually... explosive ones.

Also, do you need a copy of Windows? Since that can take a chunk of the budget away.

Can you check which exact Nvidia model the GPU is?
 
The CD drive and HDD is SATA i thought i'd keep the floppy just incase oneday i need it

The case is ATX size it currently has an ASUS A7A266 motherboard in it

I have a copy of windows 7 64bit home ultimate edition or something like that sorry i need to dig it out.

The GPU is NVIDIA Geforce2 MX/MX400 i think that is right.

I know i cant exactly choose the best parts with such a low budget but i thought spending the most on the CPU and MOBO would be the best as i can always save for better parts later on.
 
GPU is AGP so can't use that. I think Llano will be perfect for your budget.

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-3870K 3.00GHz (Socket FM1) APU Processor (AD3870WNGXBOX) **£10 Cashback** £107.99
1 x Gigabyte A55M-DS2 A55 Chipset (Socket FM1) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £44.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £36.98
1 x Corsair Value 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low Voltage Dual-Channel Kit £23.98
Total : £225.94 (includes shipping : £10.00).



However there is no upgrade path from this, but it will last you for a good few years with EVE and minecraft.

Might be best to wait a month though, Llano's successor Trinity is due and will perform better than Llano at hopefully the same price.
 
whats the difference between Micro ATX and just ATX?

Is there anyway i could build a pc on my budget that would leave open upgrade potential for the future? or atleast buy just the CPU and Motherboard as Ram is rather cheap its just the GPU i would need to save up for. So will get that at a later date i guess

Thank you for help so far and sorry to sound needy on such a cheap budget.
 
ATX and mATX are just the sizes. ATX has 7 expansion slots, mATX has 4.

If you want space to upgrade:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £77.99
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £55.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £37.99
Total : £230.95 (includes shipping : £10.00).



This will be a much better option. The board is a Z77 board, one of the best chipset you can get so fair. It will allow you to use the onboard GPU which apparently runs EVE pretty well. And you can drop in an i5 on a later date if you wish.

The Pentium is actually a very good budget chip, sure it only runs on 2.8 ghz but it's IPC crushes the FX, meaning it can do more on the same clock speed. It's best to avoid the FX series since they perform worse than AMD's previous generation, the Phenom II, which in turn performs similiar to the Core 2s.

However, it can't be overclocked, you need a chip that ends with a "K" to overclock. If you can spend a few extra, it might bet better stretching to the i3-2100.
 
That seems more like what im looking for as the onboard GPU would would give me extra time to save and buy a decent GPU.

With this Motherboard i could later on down the line upgrade to a i7 or is that a different socket type? also is 2.8Ghz enough or am i being naive what would be needed if i decide to record anything while doing something else [just for example = play eve and record]
Would that need a CPU with better Ghz or just a really good GPU?

Also this motherboard does it allow OC'ing with the right CPU and also sli/crosfire GPU's?

Im a very needy person. :D im just thinking down the line if i decide to upgrade more and get in to getting the very best i can from a build.

Thank you for the help so far its helped me a lot.
 
T345 said:
Get this board
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-569-AS
and a better CPU/ A GPU :)
Click to expand...

WOW thats cheap and seems like what im looking for in a motherboard with the PCI slots crossfire/sli able'd plenty of ram slots i have 1GB of Non ECC unbuffered generic RAM would that work on this board to get it up and running if thats do able i might use the extra saved to get the best CPU i can and in 2 weeks time get some nice decent RAM.

Now only if you could find a CPU with a high Ghz for the same price :D

if i save £40 on the board i could push to an unlocked i3/i5 maybe.
 
Sadly there's no unlocked i3s and all the i5s are out of your price range:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £37.99
1 x **B Grade** Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 (MB-458-AS) £35.00
Total : £231.92 (includes shipping : £10.00).



Bare in mind this is a B grade board, usually this means it will be missing a few accessories such as SATA cables. But for that price even though it's a previous gen Z68 board it's very very good for £35.

EDIT: If that RAM you have is DDR3 then could go for this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £173.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
1 x **B Grade** Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 (MB-458-AS) £35.00
Total : £267.97 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 
The ram is DDR3 i have no idea of the speed tho. or is that down to the motherboard and the FSB that determines the speed of the ram.

I have SATA cables laying around and out of the old PC i have so all cables shouldnt be a problem. Thank you for the last shopping list i think i will push towards the i5 unlocked as i cant see 3.40Ghz going out of fashion to fast and would do a lot more of whats needed out of it.

Sorry for the late reply but this is perfect thank you all very much.

No doubt i will be back needing more help when i blow it all up when i mess up the cables lol.

Thanks again guys
 
JamesTrendall said:
The ram is DDR3 i have no idea of the speed tho. or is that down to the motherboard and the FSB that determines the speed of the ram.
Click to expand...

It is down to the motherboard in regards to what memory is compatible, and speeds, architecture, max supported memory etc.

By compatibility I mean not all brands are 100% guaranteed to work (though a BIOS update can solve that sometimes).

Architecture, eg DDR2, DDR3 etc.

Speeds, most motherboards depending on the architecture will usually run at 800mhz/1066mhz/1200mhz etc for DDR2, for DDR3 this is usually much higher eg 1333mhz/1600mhz/1800mhz and higher (though some are achieved by overclocking - I wouldn't overclock the memory personally however).

And max supported memory, some boards allow up to 32Gb but you need to check what each DIMM (slot) can hold.

All the above can be found by looking at the motherboards specification ;)


And on a side note, regardless of budget I would make sure you get a decent branded PSU. Even if right now you think you might not need the extra watts, later on you may need a bigger PSU so it's better to have it there already. A good sized tower and a motherboard is also reccomended above everything else, at least then the rest of the components are less hassle to change. To change any of the above three basically means pulling the PC apart and starting again, where as changing a graphics card or memory is a simple disconnect and plug new ones in job :p
 
Would the motherboard above be ok to use and then just change up the CPU GPU and RAM when its needed? or would the motherboard also need changing?

a motherboard at that price i think is a bargin but i might be wrong. all im worryed about is getting them and then later on i cant upgrade the CPU ect.... when i need to.
 
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