Spec help - Gaming

[Daveh]

Hullo lads

Decided to give my old pc (s754 amd 3000 9800pro) & monitor to my gf (shes in her final year college)

Ill have approx £800 to spend on a SFF medium gaming pc. (CS, DoD, WoW, BF2)

Im including a new monitor in the budget Preferably a Widescreen 20inch?
Im a big fan of the Silverstone Sugo Case also!

I basically need everything APART from HDD, PSU keyboard, mouse and DVD/rw.

I would appreciate your insights and specs!
Would consider o/cing

Thanks Dave

PS: would you consider holding off until the AM2 comes out or will it be best to get a s939 due to price drop? Will I be making an obsolete PC if i buy now?

 

[Eliminos]

£800 for a computer with a £350 widescreen 20" and a £100 case is nearing on the impossible. You are basically asking for £350 in components, which is going to be an opteron 144 and an x800 if you're lucky. It would be better to go for a 19" or even a 17" with a much cheaper case, maybe then you could get a decent gaming rig out of it.

 

[Ren.182]

It's doable.
He said he wanted a mid-range gaming machine. With £350 it could be done i'm sure.

 

[Daveh]

aye, think your right mate

I tried spec myself one and I went over the budget by £128 (total £928)
AMD Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail
Silverstone Sugo SG01 Aluminium Mini PC - Silver (No PSU)
Asus A8N-VM CSM Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI Express Motherboard
Belinea 102035W 20.1" Widescreen LCD Monitor
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV


Im sure I could scrape together another 150-200 quid if needs be.

If I make the budget to £1000 - what you reckon?

Thnks Dave

 

[semi-pro waster]

You don't have a PSU in there either, if you want a gaming machine then I'd certainly recommend 2gb Ram now as well. For £1000 it will be do-able but you are still spending a disproportionate amount on a screen and case possibly without getting the components to do it justice.

 

[Daveh]

Waster, I agree I'm spending more on the screen - I would tend to upgrade pc componants more regularly than I would a monitor so I consider it a bigger investment.

In addition the monitor will be hooked up to mac mini with Front Row/TV tuner.

As for the PSU I have one lying about. (mentioned in Spec)

If I upgrade the ram to 2gb (extra 50quid) what do you think?

Personally I feel the x1900 would be too much to spend, especially when I dont think I would notice the extra benefits - or am i wrong?

Thanks again
Dave

 

[Eliminos]

FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£12.95 £12.95
MO-032-SA Samsung SM-940B 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-032-SA)
£204.95 £204.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£159.95 £159.95
GX-048-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
£219.95 £219.95
MY-008-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit (F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ) (MY-008-GS)
£129.95 £129.95
Subtotal £797.70
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £9.95
VAT £141.34
Total £948.99

Would be a normal ATX + 19" screen solution. You've got £50 spare for a case.


For your 20" widescreen + £100 case you aren't really going to get a good gaming machine, as I assume you can't fit a full ATX motherboard in there, and cooling is often an issue. Your spec looks OK for your initial targets. For £1000 you could probably fit an opteron 146, 2GB of G.Skill and a good cooler. But you probably aren't going to get the overclock you want out of the opteron due to the cheap motherboard and restricted air flow of a tiny case.


For high res gaming (20" widescreen res) then you would probably notice the difference between an x1800 and an x1900.

 

[semi-pro waster]

As for the PSU I have one lying about. (mentioned in Spec)

Ah sorry I should have read that more closely, as long as it is mATX then that is fine of course

I can understand your reasoning for getting a larger monitor now when you put it like that, I personally might be more tempted to spend more on the PC and get a second monitor later but whatever suits you is best.

The X1800XT will be easily capable so I'd agree that an X1900XT is spending quite a bit more for little if any noticeable difference.

Finally the upgrade to 2gb is well worth it for the £50 or so it will cost you.

 

[Daveh]

thnks for your input lads.

Might consider dropping monitor size but I can stretch the budget to approx £1k I guess.

However I never thought of the O/c implications in a mtx factor as elminos pointed out.

Ill have a think/research anyhoo - sure its half the fun!

Thnks again
Dave

 

[Eliminos]

Well I don't know of any good solid mATX OCing boards. So that is your biggest limiting factor. As for air flow, that is probably a fair factor too. I'm not sure how many 80mm fans you could pile into a mATX case but its probably only 2 or 3.