SFF Gaming/Bit of everything spec

Newflesh2000

Newflesh2000

Newflesh2000

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Joined
23 Sep 2007
Posts
51
Location
Hereford
Evening all,

Recently been playing around with the specification for a SFF system for general use but with the ability to play games reasonably well when required for my brother.

Wanted to try and stay as close to £500 as possible for the budget and I don't think i've strayed over it too badly.

This is what I'm thinking of building

Spec1A.jpg


After doing a bit of research i'm pretty happy with the combination of components. I know I can OC it a decent amount, but as i've never built a SFF before i'm not 100% sure that it'll all comfortably fit in that case, or if there could potentially be a better combination of components. From what i've read i'm pretty sure it would but thought I would put it up for the general opinion of the OC crowd.

Memory and hard drive are already sorted as i've suitable bits spare.

Criticise/Praise away.
 
The Gainward 4870 1GB is almost a tenner cheaper, and the XFX 4890 1GB is very little more. I'd consider changing to either.

If you really wanted to save a wedge, I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference if you went for the Sapphire 4870 Toxic 512MB unless you were running a 30" screen.
 
MrMoses said:
Upgrade that processor!
Click to expand...

Would like to, and if i did i'd probably go for a E7400 wolfdale based chip but that would push me a bit too far over budget. It would also have to do without the scythe mini ninja to help save pennies.

As far as i'm away the E5200 is a pretty overclockable chip, and evenknow i'm saving even more money on my chosed gpu at the moment, i don't think I can strech to the E7400. Besides, it can always be upgraded later on to a different chip and the E5200 could be reused in a different system.
 
Nice motherboard :) It'll clock well.
I'd suggest a cheaper graphics card, and a quicker processor. That reflects how I use computers more than anything else though, I'd probably use onboard for a while then add a card later
 
Right. I've taken a bit of a step back to try and put a bit of perspective on this. As the systems is not going to be used for heavy gaming as my own is it's probably worth the saving to drop down to a 4850 for the gpu. This will then allow me to go with an E7400 C2D wolfdale chip and only just sneak over the budget.

So this is the gpu i'm thinking of going with now. A XFX HD 4850 XXX. Looks quite good for the money.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-127-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938

This means that for the moment the system will stay on the stock cooler as I wont bother overclocking it straight away as it's a quicker cpu. However, I may be able to get my grubby hands on a cheap Zalman CNPS9700 cooler from a mate who no longers needs it for virtually nothing. Got one of these in my main rig so I know what they're like but the question is could it be squeezed into a V315B?
 
do a spot of reading on the mobo if you plan to overclock.

Its not a patch on the previous G35 asus based mobo i read. I went for the DFI lan party JR t2RS board in the end with a GTX 260 card.
 
Is that so? I'll be very amused if that's true, as I have the G35 one and my mate bought the G45. Can't persuade him to overclock it sadly. Shame you don't have access to MM yet as I'm selling my one. Couldn't see any significant difference between the G45 and G35 Asus boards, so presumed they clocked the same. My bad.

V351 is fairly large I believe, though I don't know offhand the clearance above the processor. Depends on whether the psu is mounted directly over the cpu socket or not, however if its from a mate there's good odds he'll let you hold it up against your case before you buy it off him.

Anyway, good call on faster processor over graphics card, I think that's sensible. Have a look around for the Asus P5E-VM hdmi, it's a generation old so good odds it'll be cheaper than the G45 board.
 
you will have 126mm of clearance to play with in a V350/351 for the heatsink.

a scythe mini ninja is still about the best youl get in unless you can find a QX9650/QX9770 stock intel cooler.
 
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