Is it possible to build a gaming rig for £300 ?

Roachman · 21 Oct 2006 at 16:56

I've been asked to look into building a gaming rig with a budget of just £300.
This is for a case, mobo, cpu, ram, gfx, hdd, dvd burner and maybe fdd. Monitor/mouse/keyboard/speakers not required and would not be o/c'd.

The last gaming rig (mine) that I built was about 3 yrs ago and I know that things have changed a lot.
Looking through the forums here I notice that most gaming rig posts are quoting prices a lot more that £300 but I'm wondering can it be done, albeit a low end spec ?

I'm out of touch with the current hardware so any comments/suggestions welcome.

semi-pro waster · 21 Oct 2006 at 17:06

The budget really isn't enough to do much with, this is about as good a compromise as I can come up with. It should be able to play most games at lowish resolutions but 1gb Ram would be a massive help.

CA-011-AS Asus TA-5A1 Series Midi Tower (Black) - 350W PSU (CA-011-AS)
£35.95 £35.95
CP-176-AM AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-176-AM)
£32.99 £32.99
HS-015-AR Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra CPU Cooler (Socket 754) (HS-015-AR)
£4.50 £4.50
MB-098-AB Abit NF95 GeForce 6100 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-098-AB)
£39.99 £39.99
MY-005-OK OcUK Value 512MB (2x256MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-005-OK)
£34.99 £34.99
CD-078-SA Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter (Black) (CD-078-SA)
£16.99 £16.99
HD-023-SA Samsung SpinPoint P HD080HJ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-023-SA)
£25.99 £25.99
GX-026-BG BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 7600 GS 256MB DDR2 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-026-BG)
£61.99 £61.99
Subtotal £253.39
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £9.95
VAT £46.09
Total £309.43

Tetras · 21 Oct 2006 at 21:40

You need around £500 for a reasonable rig, can be done with less but your mostly making compromises and leaving gaping upgrade holes. Between £600 - £700 is prolly ideal range price - performance.

Malenko · 21 Oct 2006 at 21:50

Shop around, MM (although you can't acces it yet) this week only, clearance stock, other e-tailers :eek:

... a competent enough gaming rig is possible on £300 but leaving room for upgrade as funds allow it.

Mitch007 · 22 Oct 2006 at 09:36

Malenko said:
Shop around, MM (although you can't acces it yet) this week only, clearance stock, other e-tailers ... a competent enough gaming rig is possible on £300 but leaving room for upgrade as funds allow it.

Agree, there is a lot more you can do, not buying all components 100% new will help you get a better system for the limited budget. B-grade, offers of the week and clearence lines here at OCuK will help but don't limit the search to here :eek:

.

233 · 22 Oct 2006 at 09:54

easy solution

MM

cheap S939 setup with either an opty or a x2 should weigh in between 60-150 depending on what you go for

a gig of ram should be had for 70 upwards
and whatever you have left in budget for a nice gfx card say 70-80 quid

and pick up a nice elcheapo case/keyboard/mouse somewhere

you can mix and match to get a suitable spec

ok heres a quick MM build

1GB ram 70 quid
asus a8n-e & 3800x2 with freeser 64 100 quid
80 gig sata 20 quid
6600gt 55 quid

leaving a few quid over for a case/psu keyboard and mouse

oh and haggle to get it within budget

Minstadave · 22 Oct 2006 at 10:00

Unfortunatly the OP is a long way off having MM access.

233 · 22 Oct 2006 at 10:02

good point

pity as MM is a damn site cheaper than a certain auction site and a lot more reliable too

Roachman · 22 Oct 2006 at 10:33

Many thanks for all the replies, especially to semi-pro for taking the time to put together a spec. I totally agree about the gig of ram btw.

Second hand components is something I hadn't thought about so thanks for that although I think the buyer would want new, but I shall let him know.

pastymuncher · 22 Oct 2006 at 13:36

I did it for just under £250 for a gaming pc for my sons and that included an OEM version of windows XP. Most of the parts were from a certain auction site and were all brand new in sealed boxes. The only exceptions being the case/psu and the graphics card which were brand new from an online retailer.

Components were:-
754 A64 3000+
Abit NV8
1Gb PNY pc3200
Irock ATX case with 400W psu
XFX 6800XT Xtreme edition
160Gb Samsung Spinpoint Sata hdd
Samsung 16X DL DVDRW
3.5" Floppy
Windows XP Home OEM

Cracking little rig it is and is happily running overclocked at 2.4ghz. For what it cost me you really can't complain.

Minstadave · 22 Oct 2006 at 14:13

pastymuncher said:
Components were:-
754 A64 3000+
Abit NV8
1Gb PNY pc3200
Irock ATX case with 400W psu
XFX 6800XT Xtreme edition
160Gb Samsung Spinpoint Sata hdd
Samsung 16X DL DVDRW
3.5" Floppy
Windows XP Home OEM

Thats really well done for the price you paid

pastymuncher · 22 Oct 2006 at 15:22

It's a really nice little pc and is a brilliant clocker. I think thats mostly down to the excellent Abit mobo but it's a stormer of a cpu as well. The case is a bit cheap and nasty but has excellent ventilation (1x120mm front intake, 1x80mm&1x120mm side intake and up to 4x80mm rear exhaust) and has covered optical drive bays and looks quite good. I was pleased with it anyway and so were they.

I have £300 now to build a new pc for my partners sister. I got roped into that yesterday. She has a dismal spec pc. Celeron 2.8, 256mb ram basic mobo with onboard sound and graphics. Awful it is. It had no anti spyware and dubious antivirus on it. I installed Adaware, A-squared and avast anti virus and Comodo firewall. They found 168 spyware items, 89 malware items, 5 trojans and a couple of viruses.They wondered why their pc was sluggish and they had problems with the internet. My partner went and said i could build her a decent one for around £300. I was thinking maybe AM2 as they are so cheap and it would give them an upgrade path as well, or a 939 rig but that would sacrifice the upgrade path, or maybe a Pentium D 805 rig. It's easily do-able for the budget anyway.