Recommend me some kit please

DebtMan

DebtMan

DebtMan

Associate
Joined
31 Oct 2004
Posts
49
Location
Staffordshire
Ok, I'm fed up of building & rebuilding old systems with older drives and all the crap that comes with it. I'm pretty sure my IDE drives are all about to give up the ghost and I've spent the day trying to get a 10Gig drive to run a clean install of XP but I think it's had it.

So, I have a case & power supply & the usual peripherals.

I'm after recommendations for a relatively basic and BUDGET system that can run my existing games (think two years old) and a few more modern games. I've had a look at my games on the shelf and most are XP compatible with only one as far as I can see asking for XP x64 (that'll be F.E.A.R.), so it'd be nice to be able to run that. I'd also like to be able to play Half Life 2 & Portal.

I suspect most modern systems will cope with these demands but I've been away from the PC side of things for a couple or three years and I'm completely non-plussed.

So, over to you guys. Oh, I know I haven't given a budget figure. Budget is cheap as possible to sastify the requirements above ;)

Cheers All

DM
 
when you say you want to play those games, what kind of graphic settings are you looking to play those games on?

(minimum, high, maximum, etc)
 
smiley1987 said:
What sort of power output does your psu have ??
Click to expand...

Just dug it out & now fear it may not be up to the task. Brand new XClio 400W. The invoice in the box says : 400W XCLIO SCF/aPFC/PCIE PSU

Reaper 392 said:
when you say you want to play those games, what kind of graphic settings are you looking to play those games on?

(minimum, high, maximum, etc)
Click to expand...

Good question. I'm guessing minimum would be crap?? The higher end of the games I mentioned didn't give minimum & recommended hardware on the cases. Does this not happen any more?? Without knowing the difference between 'high' and 'maximum', a hard question to answer but lets go with HIGH settings and anybody else is welcome to tell me the error of my ways ;)
 
It would be helpful if you listed you current hardware configuration in detail and surely you have an idea of roughly what you intend to spend, both these factors will help lock down the best available for you.
 
Guess this is a start, not sure about that PSU, so stuck one in that is capable :)

This probably will do a lot of your needs, but again without knowing your budget not sure how appropriate this is. Could probably cut cost out of this by going down to tri-core CPU.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
(£99.99) £119.99
(£99.99)
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £101.99
(£84.99) £101.99
(£84.99)
Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £88.99
(£74.16) £88.99
(£74.16)
BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W Power Supply £42.98
(£35.82) £42.98
(£35.82)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £39.98
(£33.32) £39.98
(£33.32)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1155/ 1156 / 1366) £19.39
(£16.16) £19.39
(£16.16)
OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £11.99
(£9.99) £11.99
(£9.99)
Sub Total : £384.42
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £78.88
Total : £473.30

Didn't know if you wanted a copy of W7 with it, if you do add it in...

kd
 
King Damager said:
What resolution is your monitor?

Will determine what graphics card we can use :)

kd
Click to expand...

Try not to laugh . . . but . . . it's a 17" Medion CRT monitor. T'interweb says max res of 1280 x 1024.

Liquid said:
It would be helpful if you listed you current hardware configuration in detail and surely you have an idea of roughly what you intend to spend, both these factors will help lock down the best available for you.
Click to expand...

Figured I'd have difficulties on the budget issue tbh. And the answer is no, no idea at all really. If I say . . . not a lot, that's not helpful really, I know. The key issue is that we're getting hitched in Nov so the majority of available finances are heading to that fund.

Like I say, I've been out of the PC world for a few years now and I'm aware it's all moved on of course.

OK, I have the bare case & that PSU. Trackball mouse & MS keyboard. Network access is via a Belkin USB dongle at the mo. Not the best but as I moved the router to the phone socket, it'll have to do for now.

The old system is built on an Abit VA-10 V1.3 mobo with an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ & 2gb of DDR333 memory. The memory sticks have copper coolers fitted and the AMD has an Akasa AK825 cooler with it's own pot. I was using the thermal switch but it was unreliable. The mobo allows a degree of overclocking via the bios.

Sound is via a (please don't laugh again) Genius Soundmaker Value 4.1 that cost me pennies and is better than the on-board sound.

Graphics are taken care of by an AGP HIS Radeon X1650Pro IceQ Dual Link DVI card with 512mb DDR2 on board.

I have 3 IDE drives. The 10gb I spent all day on the other day, an 80gb for storage & games and another tiny drive that was basically a backup for an even older PC ;) The latter shares an IDE channel with a CD Writer.

Make no mistake, my computing is budget ;D
 
XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE AVP, Stalker, CODMW2 Games & 3D Mark 2011 £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 840 "95W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £74.99
(£62.49) £74.99
(£62.49)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33
(£53.61) £64.33
(£53.61)
Gigabyte GA-MA78LMT-US2H 760G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £49.99
(£41.66) £49.99
(£41.66)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £30.98
(£25.82) £30.98
(£25.82)
OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Ultra Low Voltage Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1600C9ELV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366) £20.99
(£17.49) £20.99
(£17.49)
OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £11.99
(£9.99) £11.99
(£9.99)
Sub Total : £381.04
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £78.31
Total : £469.85

I'd recommend this just add in Windows 7 if you need it .
 
King Damager said:
Guess this is a start, not sure about that PSU, so stuck one in that is capable :)

This probably will do a lot of your needs, but again without knowing your budget not sure how appropriate this is. Could probably cut cost out of this by going down to tri-core CPU.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
(£99.99) £119.99
(£99.99)
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £101.99
(£84.99) £101.99
(£84.99)
Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £88.99
(£74.16) £88.99
(£74.16)
BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W Power Supply £42.98
(£35.82) £42.98
(£35.82)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £39.98
(£33.32) £39.98
(£33.32)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1155/ 1156 / 1366) £19.39
(£16.16) £19.39
(£16.16)
OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £11.99
(£9.99) £11.99
(£9.99)
Sub Total : £384.42
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £78.88
Total : £473.30

Didn't know if you wanted a copy of W7 with it, if you do add it in...

kd
Click to expand...

smiley1987 said:
XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE AVP, Stalker, CODMW2 Games & 3D Mark 2011 £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 840 "95W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £74.99
(£62.49) £74.99
(£62.49)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33
(£53.61) £64.33
(£53.61)
Gigabyte GA-MA78LMT-US2H 760G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £49.99
(£41.66) £49.99
(£41.66)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £30.98
(£25.82) £30.98
(£25.82)
OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Ultra Low Voltage Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1600C9ELV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366) £20.99
(£17.49) £20.99
(£17.49)
OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £11.99
(£9.99) £11.99
(£9.99)
Sub Total : £381.04
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £78.31
Total : £469.85

I'd recommend this just add in Windows 7 if you need it .
Click to expand...

Cheers both for those recommendations, much appreciated.

On the quad- vs tri-core option, what sort of difference in practical terms would there be??

And also, Windows 7?? Aside from it being the latest MS OS, is there some major advantage over say Vista or XP??

Looks like I'm gonna have to wait til post wedding to upgrade to any significant degree, but many thanks for the recommendations all the same. They're in the back pocket for now :)
 
Take a look at some barebones from OCUK. Add a decent PSU (£50) and you should be set. For those games some onboard graphics can cope, however a cheap decent GPU can be had for £100 that will destroy the games you are wanting to run.

So I would say;
PSU - £50
GPU- £100
Barebones (case, mobo, ram, HDD) - £200

I would say you can get sorted for 350 to 400.

Good luck.
 
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