HELP!?

silvertree

silvertree

silvertree

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Joined
13 Oct 2013
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7
FIRST TIME BUILD
Hi,

right firstly I need help... I've decided to build my first PC from scratch (fed up laptops)
my budget is £400-500


I've got a rough idea of what to do and a few mates who've done this before mentioned to come here!

to ask for an "armchair build"??

basically I want something for bit of gaming (mega not high end) films, music and internet any help be great!

I want to use this case as my start point? BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Magma Orange
 
Got anything you can salvage from previous computers or the laptop?

I butchered my Dell XPS laptop for a hard drive years ago when the screen broke and Dell said it would cost £380 to replace (LOL can buy a 42" TV for that!). Due to Dell exclusively making most of their hardware incompatible by messing around with plug pins and even mirroring the MOBO standoffs of the inside of some cases, i have avoided buying a laptop/desktop from them since and am super glad I got into building and clocking them myself.

At your current budget an extra £50- £100 will be the difference between an entry level rig and one that will last a fair bit longer. If you cannot increase your budget, the new APUs which are due release in a few months will suit your budget well. The current ones play impressively well for their cost and the next generation APUs are supposedly much better than the previous ones.
 
Here is an APU build (next generations come out in a few months if you can wait)

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A10-5800K Black Edition 3.80GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD580KWOHJBOX) £99.95
1 x Gigabyte F2A85XN-WIFI AMD A85X Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £86.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC10TDC01) £79.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Magma Orange £69.95
1 x MSI HD 6670 2048MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £61.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £53.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £43.99
Total : £510.95 (includes shipping : £11.75).



I picked orange RAM which is clocked at high speed and will improve your on board graphics a lot. There is similar ram for £10 cheaper but the timings are better on this one (and it is still orange!). The onboard graphics can Xfire with the GPU i included in teh build for that extra grunt if you need it. This is the minimum gaming build in terms of spec. Here is a video of BF3 being played with a similar system but without the extra graphics card and just using onboard graphics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FMbGz2fUzw

This one will offer much better performance, though it is £25 over budget:

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7870 IceQ X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H787QN2G2M) £143.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £80.99
1 x **B Grade** AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £74.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Magma Orange £69.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G1600HC9DC01) £56.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £53.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £43.99
Total : £524.88 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
If you can, i would go for the second build and get a Gigabyte UD3 (link) if you can. It will let you overclock a bit more and has a UK RMA. There was an issue with certain revisions of the board being uncooperative with overclocking but a few weeks back it was hinted by OCuk staff that they had the 'good' board. I would probably post a thread in customer queries section if you are unsure.

Another bonus of the board is the build will be mainly black and orange! :D
 
Low overclocks will be fine for this PSU. If you want more overhead for peace of mind, it will only cost a bit more. I did mean to change it to 500w, since the original PSU was in fact for the APU build.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
If you can, i would go for the second build and get a Gigabyte UD3 (link) if you can. It will let you overclock a bit more and has a UK RMA. There was an issue with certain revisions of the board being uncooperative with overclocking but a few weeks back it was hinted by OCuk staff that they had the 'good' board. I would probably post a thread in customer queries section if you are unsure.

Another bonus of the board is the build will be mainly black and orange! :D
Click to expand...

You do realise the motherboard won't fit into that case! :p

You need a Mini-Itx motherboard, this make's AMD a little harder to spec as there's not a huge ITX range.

Change the case and you'll be OK.
 
Cheers for all the advise,

This is going to be be my first build so it's not going to be a monster! As for all the components listed in the first list I'm happy it will work well for my needs with the addition of an SSD 60 GB.

As for the case that was the primary base for this build as compact size is my goal.

Thank you Avenged7Fold for you Time.

If I have and issues I'll post here
 
I wouldn't class the Prodigy as compact? They've made a mATX version that's exactly the same size.

They do look pretty nice though :)
 
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