Pre-Done £600 Core 2 Duo Spec

Dureth · 1 Jul 2006 at 12:39

I thought I'd spec out the best Core 2 Duo system I could for under £600. As a "budget" gaming machine this should be pretty damn good. For another £45 you can upgrade the graphics to an x1800xt. Or if gaming isn't your thing then swapping out the 7600GT for a lower end model will give you enough money to get a Duo 6600.

MB-011-IN Intel DP965LT 965 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-011-IN)
£74.95 £74.95
CP-126-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-126-IN)
£129.95 £129.95
MY-012-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 LA PC2-5300 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA) (MY-012-GS)
£99.95 £99.95
GX-025-BG BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-025-BG)
£99.95 £99.95
CA-052-AN Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-052-AN)
£34.95 £34.95
HD-018-SA Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA)
£43.50 £43.50
CD-059-LO Liteon DRW-6S160P-05C 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-059-LO)
£18.25 £18.25
Subtotal £501.50
VAT £87.77
Total £589.27

xirokx · 1 Jul 2006 at 12:58

CA-052-AN Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-052-AN)
£34.95 £34.95

I would question that PSU especially if you were thinking of an X1800 XT as that card likes a minimum of 450w....

I would have to get a better psu..

UKTopGun · 1 Jul 2006 at 14:55

It might be worth getting this new G.Skill memory maybe? Its pc2-6400, poor CAS latency but that doesnt matter for conroe apparently.

And its only £15 more than the pc2-5300.

Energize · 1 Jul 2006 at 16:02

xirokx said:
I would question that PSU especially if you were thinking of an X1800 XT as that card likes a minimum of 450w....

I would have to get a better psu..

You dont need 450watts for a x1800, I have a 7800gtx and it ran fine on a 350watt psu.

xirokx · 1 Jul 2006 at 20:54

well I personally wouldnt wanna risk saving a few quid on the psu to then have to suffer the consequences...each to their own

Corasik · 1 Jul 2006 at 21:05

Well the low power requirements of a Conroe compared to say... a P4 will reduce the stress on the PSU, especially if the system only has a single hard drive, and not to many cooling fans.

380W is should be sufficient, and the Antec PSU's arnt bad ones. Its pretty amazing what a 250W shuttle PSU can handle for instance. a lot of people way overestimate their PSU requirements, and most of the PSU calculators are made by companys selling big PSU's.