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?

 

[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?

 

[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

 

[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

 

[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?

 

[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 :/

 

[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

 

[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 :/

 

[armincerf]

I would recommend a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo.

I was thinking about that one, but in the end I went for the thermalright silver arrow. A bit expensive, but it should allow me to get the same sort of overclock as a H100, plus they seem to hold there value quite well so I shouldn't loose much when I upgrade to proper watercooling

 

[armincerf]

Update!

Ok, so the case finally arrived! 3 hours later and I have a far bigger, far tidier PC

Firstly, pictures (apologies for iphone pics):

Spoiler

Probably part of the reason my CPU was getting so hot.. The old heatsink didn't even cover the whole CPU and the thermal paste was pretty much solid and was really hard to clean off.

Better

New heatsink only just fits...

All in the case. Not sure how I'm going to get rid of the coloured cables? :/

Oh dear, this was my boot drive

It's ok in the day, but I'd like some more light in there...

After installing the cooler I was able to get up to 3.42Ghz (380mhz*9) at 1.4v. Max temps after 4 hours of prime95 was 62 celsius, compared with 90 something degrees at 2.4Ghz with the old heatsink!!

I probably could get higher, but I don't really want to put the voltage up anymore than 1.4 so I don't think I'll bother.

The difference its made in games has been huge though! At least an extra 15-20fps on borderlands 2, I think I may keep my graphics card after all!

I'm not finished with it yet though, I'm after a decent fan controller as my motherboard doesn't have one built in and I also think my case could do with some cathode/LEDs to brighten it up inside a bit

 

[armincerf]

Thank you all

Unlucky turn with that drive, did the connector just snap off?

I really don't know what happened :/ I think the power connecter must have been forced downwards by the bundle of cables at the back of the case. Nothing a bit of glue can't fix though

remember performance first

I'm actually very happy performance wise I think to add any sort of noticeable performance now would cost at least £200-300 for a better graphics card and £500+ for a new CPU/Motherboard.

Now I have to decide whether to go for LED lights or CCDs, anyone know the pros/cons of both? Never used them before :/