Spec General Usage/Gaming Rig

Gilbert89 · 29 Jun 2011 at 16:27

Hello,

With a budget of £500 could I have some help and advise on specs for a system which would be used for various games on a 22inch Monitor (Obviously taking that resoultion into consideration when playing games) and general Word Processing, Photos from the Camera, iTunes, Webpages etc.. Preferably a Intel based system although maybe people with more knowledge could recommend otherwise with this budget?

Thanks!

DJ_Martin · 29 Jun 2011 at 16:44

Some questions that others will probably want answers to:
Do you need keyboard/mouse?
OS?
What is the resolution of the monitor? (not size) 1080p?
What games you are likely to play?

Gilbert89 · 29 Jun 2011 at 17:59

Include Win7 64BIT
No Mouse and Keyboard
No Monitor

Games such as WoW, CSS, Call of Duty 2, 4, MW:2, Black Ops etc

Elliot.93 · 29 Jun 2011 at 18:03

If you don;t have a monitor you'll need more than £500 if you'll be gaming.

Gilbert89 · 29 Jun 2011 at 18:16

Sorry, I havent made that clear at all.. have a 22inch samsung monitor.

DJ_Martin · 29 Jun 2011 at 18:51

Alright then, it seems you are faced with two choices. It is either AMD phenom x4 based build or an i3 Intel.

Up until yesterday I would have done an AMD phenom x4 955 simply due to the fact it is a quad core and a lot of newer games are starting to utilize either 3 or 4 cores. However this thread has proved me completely wrong in that most of these games actually still perform better on an i3 set up. Therefore my recommendation would be:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £119.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £91.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) £29.99
1 x MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £59.99
1 x Lepa N-Series 600W Power Supply £42.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £35.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £33.98
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £514.80 (includes shipping : £11.25).

Sorry I'm a bit over budget, best I could do.

If others come to the thread and suggest a Phenom build I suggest they read through that thread first, about the time where Stulid comes in.

Marine-RX179 · 29 Jun 2011 at 19:23

DJmartin said:
Alright then, it seems you are faced with two choices. It is either AMD phenom x4 based build or an i3 Intel.

Up until yesterday I would have done an AMD phenom x4 955 simply due to the fact it is a quad core and a lot of newer games are starting to utilize either 3 or 4 cores. However this thread has proved me completely wrong in that most of these games actually still perform better on an i3 set up. Therefore my recommendation would be:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £119.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £91.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) £29.99
1 x MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £59.99
1 x Lepa N-Series 600W Power Supply £42.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £35.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £33.98
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £514.80 (includes shipping : £11.25).

It's pretty much what I would recommend as well considering the budget. But I would probably stretch a bit more and change the motherboard to the Gigabyte Z68A-D3 Intel Z68 £85.19:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-346-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

Yes it the board doesn't have display output for the Integrated graphic, but wouldn't really need it with a graphic card. With this board it would be a little bit more future proof should the OP want to upgrade to a i5 2500K in the future and would like to overclock.

DJ_Martin · 29 Jun 2011 at 19:28

If there was room left in the budget then a more future proof motherboard would probably be a good idea but I'm already £15 over. Some people are more flexible than others on budget and if he feels that he wants the option to upgrade later and can spend the extra money then fair enough but I try to get as close to the budget as possible.