My "How good a rig can you build for £350" Project

[armincerf]

Ok, first off this is my first time on a forum so please be nice
I have seen some pretty amazing builds on here which will make mine look terrible in comparison lol, but the whole point of mine is that I had a very limited budget. I am recycling everything I can from my 5 year old build and buying mainly used components, whilst still getting a nice looking, quiet PC capable of playing the latest games (well thats the idea anyway).

In 2008 I bought a PC from an ebay company called "pallicom". Huge mistake, the case will cut off your arm if you're not careful and the PSU blew up (literally, I swear there was a flame) within 5 months.

So here is my current PC

Look how tidy and clean it is!
Also, my hard drives were making funny noises and getting very hot so I had to do this :

Unfortunately I can't afford a new CPU, MOBO and RAM so the plan is to keep the CPU, RAM and MOBO and upgrade everything else. I can then overclock the CPU to 3.4ish which hopefully shouldn't bottleneck anything else.

So I will be keeping my:
q6700 (currently at 2.4GHz)
abit IP35 (I don't like it much but it does the job)
8gb ram (not really enough for the video editing I do but its the max my MOBO supports)

And here's the bits i've ordered so far:
Asus GTX570 - £120 from gumtree
HAF X - £80 - eBay
Thermalright Silver Arrow - £65 - overclockers
PSU - XFX 750w XXX edition - £85 - overclockers (Should be ok if I want to add another 570)


So total spent is £350 (not bad at all seeing as with new components and a gtx670 it would have been £600ish and only 20% or so faster)

Hopefully my case and PSU should last a long time, if I find that my graphics card isn't enough (i'm running a 2650*1440 monitor) then I can always SLI. I'm also planning to water-cool when haswell comes out, if I can save up for long enough

I'll see when I get it, but I think I will be modding the side panel on the HAF X to remove the fan and put in a bigger piece of perpex. Also, does anyone have any tips on lighting? I have seen cold cathodes and LED's but I'm not really sure which ones to go for?

 

[Something Else]

Prrsonally I think the cost of the haf x and the gtx 570 aint that great. You could get a much better case for the money. Perhaps the cash would be better but on a i3, cheap motherboard, ram and psu

 

[harshuk]

Prrsonally I think the cost of the haf x and the gtx 570 aint that great. You could get a much better case for the money. Perhaps the cash would be better but on a i3, cheap motherboard, ram and psu

Stole my words right outta my mouth.

I would have started again.

Only difference id would get a AMD cpu (But we wont start that argument)

 

[armincerf]

What case would you suggest instead? As for the GTX570 I couldn't see anything else for under £120 that was as fast or as quiet :/ I know its old but it still gets better frame rates at high resolutions than the 660ti and its £120 cheaper?

 

[BuToNz]

7950 for that kind of money second hand IMO.

 

[Something Else]

i would suggest now that you have your parts that you keep them. get the rig up and running and performing how you want it to then make it look good.

post up in general hardware with a budget for a new cpu, motherboard,ram and hard drive as sli on your current board and cpu will be a bit of a waste unless you are happy with the performance the 570 gives you, in which case i wouldnt bother with sli

also the 660 non ti performs better than the 570 and will widen the gap further at higer resolutions due to the 2gb vram on the 660 vs the 1.25 on the 570. a 7850 will match and outperform the 570 these days.

personal preferences to the haf x are

YOUR BASKET
1 x Anidees AI-6B Midi Tower Case - Black £99.98
1 x NZXT H2 Classic Silent Midi Tower Case - Black £79.99
1 x BitFenix Raider Tower Case - Black £62.99
1 x Xigmatek Midgard II Gaming Tower Case - Black £59.99
1 x Zalman Z9 USB 3.0 Midi Tower Case - Black £49.99
1 x Xigmatek Alfar Midi Tower Windowed Case - Black/Black £46.99
Total : £399.94 (includes shipping : FREE).

 

[armincerf]

7950 for that kind of money second hand IMO.

Really?? The cheapest I could find one of those for was £170 second hand! I'll see how happy I am with the 570 when it gets here, I saw them going for £150+ and thought £120 was a good deal, I should be able to sell it for more than that if its not fast enough for me. How much difference does the amount of vram make? I will be playing games like GTA V (when it finally comes out) Black ops 2, that sort of thing. I don't mind turning the AA or texture quality down, but I would like to play at 1440p

 

[Something Else]

the current gta with everything set to max at 1080p would use about 1.5vram according to its calculations. i do not expect the new one to be any better port than the current one.

for your res you will need some amount of gpu grunt tbh, if your willing to sacrifice image quality for more frames then your 570 may suffice however im not too sure. i would sell on the 570, maybe keep the haf x if you like its looks as its bought now. spend some money on improving the core components (cpu,motherboard,ram,hdd's)

the psu and cooler you have bought are fine so keep those

 

[armincerf]

Thanks for your help. The PSU and 570 should come tomorrow so I'll be able to test it out then. Then when the case and cooler come next week I'll see what difference overclocking the CPU makes. The reason I didn't get new cpu, motherboard etc, is because I thought they wouldn't really make a difference in gaming. It was either, buy PSU, Case and GFX card, or CPU, MOBO and RAM. I don't have enough cash to do everything

 

[Something Else]

cash is always a limiting factor, suck dont it lol.

you have a good psu, good cooler and still decent gpu and a cpu that although is old tech still works an may be ok.

get it overclocked as much as possible. save up for a bit, get some advice on here in general hardware and your sorted.

 

[armincerf]

cash is always a limiting factor, suck dont it lol.

Haha, sure is. Although I am selling my car in the summer before I go to uni so depending on how much I put aside to spend on rent/books/getting ****ed I should have a grand or so to buy some nice shiny computer bits Does anyone know when haswell CPUs are coming out?

 

[JimboJet]

tbh I'd expect you to get a 3.6 OC on that chip if its anything like the Q6600, thats ample for todays stuff.

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Cool project dude, you should have a decent gaming rig at the end of it providing you can get a moderate overclock on the CPU.
I think a GTX570 will be fine for most games at high settings (not max on some games) at 2560 x 1440.
Sometimes you just got to make do with what you have, nothing wrong with that

 

[Stan_Lite]

I know it's too late but you could have saved yourself a few bob on the PSU - 750W is way more than you need. I have always thought that you needed a PSU with plenty of power but, after a recent build, I now know better. I'm running an overclocked 3770K and 3 X overclocked GTX670s in my current gaming/Folding rig and, at full tilt Folding, the power monitor I bought says the system is drawing a maximum of 650W - and that's with everything flat out. You could easily have managed with a 500W PSU and saved yourself a few bob for a better graphics card

 

[armincerf]

Cheers for the feedback guys My PSU and silver arrow arrived today and I should be picking up the 570 tomorrow so I'll post some update photos and see what framerates I get.

the power monitor I bought says the system is drawing a maximum of 650W

With 3 670s?? A 570 apparently draws 350w by itself so either the 6xx series are super power efficient or you need a new power monitor :/

 

[Stan_Lite]

With 3 670s?? A 570 apparently draws 350w by itself so either the 6xx series are super power efficient or you need a new power monitor :/

I don't know where you got your information but it's wrong. The 350W may be the power consumption for the whole system but it certainly isn't for the card on its own. If you look at these test results, you'll see that the calculated card TDP for a 570 is 213W and for a single 670 is 149W. There's nothing wrong with my power monitor. I suggest you need a new source of information :/

 

[armincerf]

New toys arrived

The 350W may be the power consumption for the whole system

I guess that was it, I must have read it wrong Sorry :/

I have now had the chance to test out the 570, I managed to get it stable @ 870mhz with 1.05v and its averaging about 39 fps on borderlands 2 which isn't as good as I hoped :/ It may be CPU limited though so when I get my case and fit the new cooler, I'll see how much difference overclocking the CPU makes.

On a positive note, I highly recomend the Asus direct CUII cards, silent even after 30 minutes at full load while overclocked

Here are some pics.

Spoiler

Some boxes arrived

Cheap PSU vs (relatively) expensive PSU

Can you tell which is the new one?

Still very messy Can't wait to get a proper case

 

[Anox]

So its going fine and dandy at the minute? looks like an octopus was stuffed into a computer case...

 

[armincerf]

So its going fine and dandy at the minute? looks like an octopus was stuffed into a computer case...

Yep, I kinda wish I'd gone for a modular PSU now lol... Hopefully when the new case arrives I'll be able to put all the unused cables around the back of the motherboard. Temps for the GPU are very good considering there are no case fans, max temp was about 69 degrees after 30mins on furmark overclocked. Room temp is about 20 degrees. CPU temps not so good at the moment... 91 degrees on full load whilst under-clocked from 2.7 to 2.4 I think its down to a huge amount of dust and the £5 heatsink :/

 

[Anox]

Yep, I kinda wish I'd gone for a modular PSU now lol... Hopefully when the new case arrives I'll be able to put all the unused cables around the back of the motherboard. Temps for the GPU are very good considering there are no case fans, max temp was about 69 degrees after 30mins on furmark overclocked. Room temp is about 20 degrees. CPU temps not so good at the moment... 91 degrees on full load whilst under-clocked from 2.7 to 2.4 I think its down to a huge amount of dust and the £5 heatsink :/

Wow, that's a pretty damn warm CPU right there , I would most probably invest in a heatpipe tower cooler if your budget permits it, or go with a cpu water loop from Corsair. For a tower cooler I would recommend a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo.

Again the water loop is if you're willing to spend a fair amount more than planned. Otherwise the CM one is a brilliant budget choice. It all depends on how your budget is holding.

Oh and what case are you getting? (Never mind saw the HAF X)

I really hated asaka stuff, still do now. The fans in particular were my arch enemy.