Need to replace my daughters gaming laptop....

jotto

jotto

jotto

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10 Dec 2012
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So my daughters gaming laptop has finally died and its time to replace it. She had the Rock Xtreme 770 and it was quite a nice machine. I really liked the 17' screen with its resolution of 1920 x 1200, very clear and crisp.

Its been on its way out for a little while and now the Nvidia graphics card has died so I think it really is time to replace it.

Only problem is we are on a very tight budget. Just having xmas and 3 big birthdays next week, I am struggling to find any money.

I need to build a tower that will be able to play things like Skyrim. BF3, BF2 and Far Cry...obviously not on really high but some thing that will look pretty enough at 1080p and not too laggy, single screen only.
System will not be overclocked ( ahem....possibly??? ) and the case doesnt have to be pretty. Just functional is fine, no one will ever see inside it so even if its thin and flimsy, it will work.

So, with that in mind, what would you guys suggest?
We have a new monitor, keyboard and mouse so it really is just the tower.
I do have 8Gb of Crucial ram @ 1600MHz so thats one less thing.

Im a bit of an intel/nvidia fanboy but would look at AMD if it would work. Built my son an AMD based system for christmas and with my old Asus GTX 560Ti DirectCu Top card it plays games quite well. He only has an old monitor so he only runs at 1280 x 1024 IIRC.

So, with all that info in mind, what would be my best bang for my buck?
TIA.
 
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I realise that but rather the specify a budget, I thought if I said what I wanted it to do, I might get some input. At the end of the day, I will scrape together what I need.

I just wanted to know what you guys would pick if the system was to be used as described above.
Happy to use B grade items.
 
Second hand 5850 ~£50
Second hand Q6600/Phenom II X4 + Board + RAM possibly ~£100
Case <£30
PSU <£50

Any other bits will be cheap, though you need an OS
 
 
How about this?

The IGPU should be good enough for a little while until you can source a decent GPU, and you can overclock this to 4.2Ghz with 1000Mhz on the IGPU

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A10-5800K Black Edition 3.80GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD580KWOHJBOX) £95.99
1 x Gigabyte F2A55M-DS2 AMD A55 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £49.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD38G2133HC11DC01) £39.95
1 x Thermaltake Smart 430W '80 Plus' Power Supply £37.99
1 x Aerocool Qs-200 Lite Midi Tower Case - Black £33.98
1 x **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-252-SE) £33.5
1 x Samsung SH-118AB/BEBE SATA 18x DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £306.40 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
Good suggestions except for the psu. I think you should get a higher rated one to allow for system expansion in the future. You have little overhead with a 430w psu. The last generation of graphics cards can draw more than 250watts alone and thats before you add in cpu, mobo, memory, hdds, usb devices etc.

I'm not saying you'll be unable to run it, but it may limit your choice of secondhand graphics and your overclocking potential (whilst you may not wish to overclock right now, you may wish to later to get a few more months out of your system. Remember, you will be limited with a lower end system already, future games titles may place yet more demands)

I understand you're on a budget, but a few more £'s spent now (and we're not talking a lot, check out the new corsair GS series modular psus for example) will certainly save you more later on. Food for thought.

<edit> This would be my choice of psu right now: http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-117-CS
 
JimboJet said:
where do you live jotto?
Click to expand...

Sorry missed that one...sunny Cornwall. Any reason??

On a side note, the old baking the video card in an oven partly worked. I can get output to a monitor or TV but the screen is very dark. Have been told it might be the inverter.

Daughter is set on a new desktop so its going to be replaced.

Ideally, want it to play the games out of the box. Dont really want to wait to add a GPU.

The system doesnt need to be future proof, ie, I will do what I need to to get her something that does the job for now. At some point in the future, rather than upgrade parts, I will probably do a full custom unit specifically for gaming.

Right now I just want to get some peace so a system that plays the games listed fairly well is what Im looking at for the here and now.
 
Bacon? said:
Why a K chip with a A55 series mobo?
Click to expand...

Im new to all the latest CPUs. Can you explain what you mean please. Many thanks.

Also, the 7750 linked to earlier looks to be OK for my needs. What differemce would there be playing at 1920x1080 instead of 1680x1050? Would there be a huge drop in frame rates? Again, as long as games look fairly pretty we are good to go. No need for ultra high settings! lol.
 
The reason I asked Jotto was because I've just upgraded my machine's graphics so I have a 5850 'spare' atm. I also have an Antec 1080 case lying around that I was possibly going to offer you for free if you were local! (will be moving house later in the yr and need to start shifting stuff!)
 
JimboJet said:
The reason I asked Jotto was because I've just upgraded my machine's graphics so I have a 5850 'spare' atm. I also have an Antec 1080 case lying around that I was possibly going to offer you for free if you were local! (will be moving house later in the yr and need to start shifting stuff!)
Click to expand...

Spare 5850 sounds interesting...
 
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