Need a little help speccing up a build

saitrix · 30 Nov 2009 at 00:44

Hi,

My friend is after a new pc for himself with a budget of £500 for it. Now I have got a few things sorted so far. He is wanting a system that is good for the occasional gaming session, but then be quiet the rest of the time, and he wanted a hdmi so the HD5770 seemed perfect there.

500gb Western Digital Caviar Black (worth going for over a blue?)
Sata DVD-RW
AMD HD5770

So thats £185 of the budget gone already. The other componants I wasn't too sure what to go for really, whether AMD or Intel. So for ~£315 need to get:

CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Case
PSU

Ideas?

95thrifles · 30 Nov 2009 at 07:14

The aftermarket CPU cooler is optional, and does take you over budget, but would make rig quieter and allow OCing, could save a few quid and get OEM DVD drive but put retail in there for the software, or could save a few quid and get a 770 chipset mobo but I included a 790

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £119.98 (£104.33)
Asus M4A79XTD Evo (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £83.98 (£73.03)
Coolermaster Sileo 500 Silent Case - Black (500w Extreme Power Plus PSU) £79.99 (£69.56)
AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £77.99 (£67.82)
Corsair 4GB (2X2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMV4GX3M2A1333C9) £72.99 (£63.47)
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD5001AALS) £42.99 (£37.38)
Sony Optiarc DRU-870S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - Retail £25.99 (£22.60)
Akasa AK-968 X4 CPU Cooler (Socket 939/AM2/AM3/775/1156/1366) £21.99 (£19.12)
Total: £525.91

saitrix · 30 Nov 2009 at 11:14

Thanks there for that, is it worth going for the 790 chipset over the 770 then?

95thrifles · 30 Nov 2009 at 11:17

the 790 gives you the option of adding a 2nd gfx card in xfire later down the line, in case you might need it, if you prefer to always use one card solutions and would rather sell old card and buy new better replacement rather than xfiring then you should stick with the 770

saitrix · 30 Nov 2009 at 11:46

Ahh perfect, yeah it will never be used with 2 graphics cards so will stick with the 770. Is it worth spending a little more for the Phenom II X4 925 over the 550?

95thrifles · 30 Nov 2009 at 12:05

925? theres a 945, anyway for pure gaming no not really, but if you do other things such as encoding/editing/rendering then yeah youd see the benefit, depends on the uses of the system really

saitrix · 30 Nov 2009 at 12:29

Yeah its a newer one, only just released this month. 95W TDP, seems to be instead of the 920 for the AM3 slot. Can be found for £105, compared to the £67 of the 550.

How well does the 550 overclock? I bet the 550 would still be perfectly fine on the desktop, and saves some cash, plus I have noticed it TDP is only 80W. Trying to keep this system on the cooler side you see.