Lan PC for £500

Alby · 27 May 2008 at 19:36

Hi all,

I'm struggling to keep a self build LAN rig below £600. Can anyone look at my shopping list and make any hints/suggestions?
I'm in Jersey so at least I don't have to pay VAT, I would like (obviously!) the best graphics poss with upgrade options (SLI?) and would like to be able to OC as much as is safe for the confines of a small case. But will also use it as my main PC (will cannibalize DVD and PSU but the rest are ancient) so space and user friendly is important.
Any help greatly appreciated!

Case: £75 Silverstone Sugo SG01
Mobo: £53 Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2
Processor: £135 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6400+ 3.20GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail
RAM: £30 GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
HD (1TB): £86 Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM
Graphics: £115 Asus GeForce EN8800 GT 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
Or £135 BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) ?
Cooler: £25 Scythe Mini Ninja CPU Cooler
OS: £60 Windows Vista Prem 64 Bit

Use existing PSU, DVD, Card reader.

Total: £600 urgh!

Ben M · 27 May 2008 at 19:43

intel are superior, at present, to AMD in the processor stakes, so get a c2d and not an AMD chip.

pingwing · 27 May 2008 at 19:47

You could get a core2 based pc instead to save a bit, so get an E8200 for about £95 and Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H for £41 gets you about £50 or so (cooler could also become the artic freezer 7 pro for £15... if it fits). The OCUK 8800gt is £90 keeping it a bit cheaper too.

Urm yeah basically its pretty much cheaper to get core 2 (as the E8*** series clock up to about 4ghz and should be pretty easy to cool)

Alby · 27 May 2008 at 20:18

Thanks, I'll take a look at those intels, for gaming is there a huge hike in quality for the spend on a quad over a duo? And is it worth the extra for a gts over a gt?

pingwing · 27 May 2008 at 20:41

For now it seems the higher clock speed of the dual core is better than the quads (though its promised in the future that will reverse...... im personally not convinced).

For the graphics card its pretty much best to see what the new cards are like (they are out in a few weeks and forgot to mention it) as they will either be awesome or just ok, but either way the 8800 gt/gts's will be quite a bit cheaper and the gts is better than the gt (by about as much you have to pay for the gts over the gt) but its only noticable with a resolution over 1680x1050 sort of area