New Project Advice Appreciated..

Comradecurtis · 2 Apr 2010 at 21:45

Alreet boys n gals.

I am looking to start my first build at the end of the month. I'm thinking about £300 - £500, a gaming spec would be nice, but my xbox does the job and Im realistic about the price restraints. Ideally i'd like a spec ready for further upgrade, cash permitting.

I've been thinking i3 perhaps with a later i5 or i7 upgrade but I have no idea really. Any helpful hints for an eager beaver?

stulid · 2 Apr 2010 at 22:04

What do you need for £500

Monitor, operating system, keyboard and mouse?

Any parts to keep?

Comradecurtis · 2 Apr 2010 at 22:36

oh yeah sorry.

no monitor, keyboard or mouse needed. Would want Win7 tho. Ill be starting from scratch, and with the later upgrade in mind, Id be happy to keep as much as possible. Tough Times and that.

amateur viking · 3 Apr 2010 at 08:57

Here's an i3-based system that should be good for most games up to 1680x1050 resolution, it's a wee bit over £500 but I've tried to keep it as balanced as possible.

Adding in Win7 is going to push up the price to more like £600, in terms of future upgrades, you should be able to drop an i5-750 (which is tip-top for gaming and productivity) straight in to that setup.

Driving the price down is going to mean switching out the mobo and processor to AMD, which might be worth it on your budget. The AM3 socket motherboards tend to be a little cheaper and (arguably) more future-proof/upgrade friendly. Plus there are a ton of sub-£100 AMD processors that are very nice (fast duals and solid quads depending on your preference).

Comradecurtis · 3 Apr 2010 at 11:19

Cheers mate. I did see that spec but hadn't considered the later upradeability (?). That would be at the higher end at the min. I sleep on it i think. But thank you mate. pole position lol

stulid · 3 Apr 2010 at 14:20

Try this.

COOLERMASTER Elite 335 case £29.99
CORSAIR CX400 psu £39.99
GIGABYTE GA-MA785GT-UD3H £74.98
AMD PHENOM II X4 955 £135.99
OCZ OBSIDIAN 4Gb DDR3 £89.99
ASUS HD5770 cucore £127.98
SONY OPTIARC 7240s £15.99
SAMSUNG F3 500Gb £44.99

That lot is £559.90inc VAT.

Still need windows7, but its a quad core setup, faster than the above i3 system, and will take the new Hex core chips due out, unlike the socket LGA1156.