Help me spend £650 please

Damnations Fury · 9 Jul 2009 at 01:05

Mainly been using laptops for the last couple of years and am now looking to geta decent desktop to do a bit of gaming on. I'm price out of an i7 (though in truth is probably far more than I need), but not sure whether Phenom II or Core 2 Quad (seems to be Phenon II after research, but i'm keeping my options open) is currently better and certainly have no idea of what would be a decent but well priced overclocking board to go with them would be, so could someone spec me up a full system with a limit of about £650. Needs to include a monitor and everything but a mouse, keyboard and os as wil be running Windows 7.

Thanks for your help.

95thrifles · 9 Jul 2009 at 06:20

Hi, going for the quad core system as youve requested you get something like this

Ive also done a slight alternative, this would be better for gaming, better gfx and screen but only uses tricore CPU, depends on what you need the PC for as to which is more suited

wupwup · 9 Jul 2009 at 09:46

deffo go for am3. and of those two systems i would pick the second. but change the case slightly to a cooler master cm 690.

Damnations Fury · 9 Jul 2009 at 11:17

Thanks for the help so far. To be honest I was just putting in core 2 quad as a comparison, to be honest dual core would probably be enough for me, though tri or quad would be nicer.

wupwup · 9 Jul 2009 at 11:37

i would go for the tri core. a dual might do you, but to be honest you will only save £25. its verry much worth it.

bledd · 9 Jul 2009 at 13:49

i'd spend a little more and get a 620w PSU

it'll be a more future proof

don't rule out the specs of something like this..

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-042-OE&groupid=43&catid=1444&subcat=

price it up individually

PermaBanned · 9 Jul 2009 at 17:19

Damnations Fury · 9 Jul 2009 at 17:55

Any thoughts to this build that just above £650:

Not sure if the OCZ psu's are worse/better than the corsair and again with the Acer monitor over the ocuk one (the buttons on the ocuk look a bit cheap, but i'm open to being proven wrong). Also what about buying the Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P. It looks to get fairly decent reviews (i'm very unlikely to use crossfire, more likely to sell the graphics card and upgrade to another single one), but it is cheap. I could use that cash towards getting a better cooler.

By the way, 500GB will easily do me, as I use an external 1TB hard drive for most things. Is 32mb cache really actually worth anything?

wupwup · 9 Jul 2009 at 17:57

what are you thinking of doing with this pc? obviously gaming. but at christams/ next year, maybe the year afer what will you use it for? if you still want to be gaming without a new pc i would sugest getting a decent 650+ watt psu. if you can stretch an extra £30. it sounds like a lot but it will be much cheaper in the long run i.e. £80 not £130 (for a basic psu and more expensive later. also a better mobo would be better. the one up from that would be good as it suports ddr3 ram. wich will probably be nessesary for future upgrades. so it would be foolinsh to have to buy another mobo then.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-335-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1377

good luck

PermaBanned · 9 Jul 2009 at 18:01

But wupwup, you assume they would be playing the latest games. The game i play most often is probably Halo CE, and most modern games support low spec PCs, as to increase the consumer range.

wupwup · 9 Jul 2009 at 18:06

that is why i asked what he would be doing with it. but from my experience graphics cards tend to only last a few years and in 2/3 years time the rest of the pc will still work for most games. but if he had to buy a new card and found that he cant get a half decent one without having to spend another £70 on a new psu for it then i can foresee problems. with a 4750 you probably wont be playing top end games. but if he wants to in a few years why not leave the option for a more powerful card open. but this is just a question.

Sycho · 9 Jul 2009 at 18:17

The spec i've chosen for you comes to £690(£673.90 if free posting) but it's worth paying the extra for an extremely good monitor....it's the best 22 inch on the market for value/performance and yeah AMD dual core 550 phenom II cpu would be enough as it's not much difference from a tri-core 720 for gaming however the motherboard is out of stock currently:

Damnations Fury · 9 Jul 2009 at 18:31

wupwup said:
what are you thinking of doing with this pc? obviously gaming. but at christams/ next year, maybe the year afer what will you use it for? if you still want to be gaming without a new pc i would sugest getting a decent 650+ watt psu. if you can stretch an extra £30. it sounds like a lot but it will be much cheaper in the long run i.e. £80 not £130 (for a basic psu and more expensive later. also a better mobo would be better. the one up from that would be good as it suports ddr3 ram. wich will probably be nessesary for future upgrades. so it would be foolinsh to have to buy another mobo then.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-335-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1377

good luck

Honestly at the moment i'm mainly playing Blood Bowl which is hardly pc intensive, but it's be nice just to not have to turn down the shaders to minimum on everything. I'm not really a fps fan these days, more stratergy etc so will be more likely playing Starcraft 2 & Diablo 3. I'm not viewing this as a pc to last me even for a couple of years, more somehting I can pick up the odd upgrade on every so often, so maybe a better psu would be worth it.

PermaBanned · 9 Jul 2009 at 18:50

The HX450W should be good enough, it can handle what you want and then some upgrades.

Tip) 4670x2 Crossfire > 4870, and uses a hell of a lot less power.

There's also your electricity bill to consider, and the impact on the planet.

wupwup · 9 Jul 2009 at 18:57

well if you arent playing anything pc intensive i would sugest a slightly lower powered graphics card that will last longer. then when you find it cant keep up or breaks all you need to do is replace 1 part. not 2 or 3. this is what i would sugest

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-249-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1328

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-335-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1377

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-145-CM&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-008-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1084

(or maybe the 550. if you only want one graphics card then you may not need 650. but check with someone else first. better safe than sorry)

those are the main parts. i dont know much of monitors so i wouldnt want to recomened a rubish one. the HDD and optical drives in all of the other builds are great. im not sure whether that board will take ddr2 as well as ddr3. so the only last thing is a grapchics card. if i factor in £270 for the HDD, optical drive and monitor and ram, you have about £70 for a graphics card still.