Lads first home build.

razor23uk

razor23uk

razor23uk

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1 Jan 2009
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Hi guys n gals......regular reader but not-so-poster here!

My lad want's to build his first pc and has put together this shopping list. He will mainly use it for on-line gaming with the likes of WOW and other similar platforms. I have very little experience in home builds from scratch, just expanding and upgrades.
He has a tower and 500gb Seagate hard drive, optical drive and keyboard/mouse ect, so it will be fitting together the following.......

Asus Mother board.....M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760 G (£50)
AMD Athlon 2 x3 Tri-core 455 3.3ghz (£72)
Geforce ET 440 1024mb GDDR3 (£56)
Corsair 4GB DDR3 PC3 1333mhz (£20)
New Power supply (£20)
New cooling fan (£20)

So he is looking at about £240 in total, obviously all the parts are fron here but if you think any of them may be not quite up to spec can you recomend others?
Many thanks.
Jeff.
 
RJC said:
Whats the total budget for new components, don't go cheap on the PSU, it probably end in tears ;)
Click to expand...

Definitely this. I'd consider a better gfx card if he can stretch to afford a bit more. If gaming is the main aim, it'll be the most important component. What resolution monitor will he be using?
 
razor23uk said:
New cooling fan (£20)
Click to expand...

If this is for a heatsink i would use the the one that comes with the chip and add the £20 to your PSU budget.

Then add a better cooler at a later date if required - but at stock settings the retail cooler is fine.
 
For WOW you want CPU with high IPC and fast in single-thread performance, so AMD- especially Athlon II is out.

On a tight budget, try to snap together a i3 2100 (£80~£90), H61 motherboard (£40~£50) and probably a 2nd hand graphic card around £20-£40 (i.e. 8800GT 512MB~4890/5770 1GB).

P.S. A 4890 1GB/5770 1GB would be quite a bit faster than a GT440.

And yea...for PSU, don't get some generic brand PSU...they rarely have enough power output over the 12v rail for the CPU and graphic card and can end up going with a bang, and can take the rest of the the PC to the grave with it. Spend something like £35 to get the Corsair CX430 V2 instead.
 
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A bit over budget, but a shame you can't get free delivery:


Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
(£79.99) £95.99
(£79.99)
OcUK GeForce GT 440 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £55.99
(£46.66) £55.99
(£46.66)
MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £46.99
(£39.16) £46.99
(£39.16)
Lepa W-Series 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply - with FREE LEPA Hard Drive Enclosure £39.98
(£33.32) £39.98
(£33.32)
Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT25664BA160A) £22.99
(£19.16) £22.99
(£19.16)
Sub Total : £218.29
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £45.56
Total : £273.35

Comparison of the 2 cpu's:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=202
 
Thanks for the quick replies and info guys. All the spec was what he looked at last night and I suspect that it is what he can afford at the moment, so if he can wait and save a bit more, or clean the cars and mow the lawn, then the slightly higher priced set up should be do-able.
Good point re the cpu cooling fan.....use the supplied one and up grade later if needed?

Since posing the question I have looked at various threads here and it seems that everyone recomends to steer clear of AMD processors?.....not that I would ever question you guru's on here, but why is that?
 
V F said:
Going off topic for a second, I can't help but notice something fishy. A AMD X6 1100T beats a X6 1090T by nearly 10 fps... I've noticed for a while now that some of these benchmarks are about as useful as Broadband speed guesstimates.
Click to expand...
It make sense when you think about it, considering WOW is pretty much a single-core game...
 
V F said:
Going off topic for a second, I can't help but notice something fishy. A AMD X6 1100T beats a X6 1090T by nearly 10 fps... I've noticed for a while now that some of these benchmarks are about as useful as Broadband speed guesstimates.
Click to expand...

What's fishy about that ? and it's 8 fps, the same difference between an i5 2500K and an i5 2400.

Faster clock speed = more fps :rolleyes:
 
V F said:
100Mhz doesn't give you 8fps.
Click to expand...

In this case it does. But if you look into it in more depth, you can see that up until the 1090T they used the MSI 890FXA GD-70 motherboard.
When the 1100T BE came out they had switched to the Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3, perhaps this motherboard is slightly faster than the MSI.

For Sandy Bridge it looks like 200MHz gives 8fps.

For the OP's choice AMD (AMD Athlon 2 x3 Tri-core 455) to Intel (i3 2300) gives +25.9fps :D:D:D
 
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Ditch the AMD socket. Use a intel H61 mobo (£40ish) you can then use the pentium G/i3/i5/i7 CPUs. The memory you spec'd is 1333mhz you should find 1600mhz RAM for a similar price.

With WOW being intel and nvidia biased it makes sense to base the build on them.

RJC posted the anandtech benchmark link. You can use that to compare the G pentium versus the i3 or you original AMD choice. It would be nice to have the i3 2100 but it's more than the pentium CPUs.

As stated you really do need to spend more on the PSU. Good budget PSUs are available around £40. Remember the h61 mobo has integrated graphics, so if your struggling to fit a suitable GPU into the budget you can omit it and look to add one later. Keep an eye on the clearance section ;)

Good luck with the build any questions you know where we are.
 
Thanks for all the help guys!
We looked through it all together last night and to be honest, the difference in price between his shopping list and the kit recomended here is not a million miles away.
He will steer away from the AMD cpu after looking at the preformance benchmarks for wow and definately save a while longer before he buys the pieces.
I will post at a later date with the results.
Thanks again for your valuble information everyone!
Jeff (Dad!) and Dan (Son who wants to be a pro pc builder!)
 
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