Spec me £360.

cyborg · 20 Sep 2008 at 13:37

Pc will be used for gaming, whats the best spec you can do me?

I have monitor, keyboard, mouse, case, and hard drive. I need the rest.

fobose · 20 Sep 2008 at 13:40

What do you have currently? Monitor, keyb and mouse?

cyborg · 20 Sep 2008 at 13:54

I edited the op.

fobose · 20 Sep 2008 at 14:02

Here is a spec I did for some one else earlier:

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail
Abit IP43 Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GB24GB6400C4DC)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCS Extreme 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU (CMPSU-450VXUK)

Total : £345.39 inc free delivery

You could always spend the bit extra on a P45 board, rather than the P43.

cyborg · 20 Sep 2008 at 14:07

fobose said:
Here is a spec I did for some one else earlier:

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail
Abit IP43 Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GB24GB6400C4DC)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCS Extreme 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU (CMPSU-450VXUK)

Total : £345.39 inc free delivery

You could always spend the bit extra on a P45 board, rather than the P43.

~
The guy im building this for is installing xp. What about 2GB of ram and a better processor?

Also whats your view on the hiper PSUs?

fobose · 20 Sep 2008 at 14:24

Personally I think 4GB is the new standard for a gaming PC, even on XP x86 he will see a good 3.25GB, perhaps a bit more.

You could add an arctic freezer 7 CPU cooler and overclock that E5200 quite a bit. From what I have read on these forums the hipers are best avoided.

Freelanc3r · 20 Sep 2008 at 14:24

cyborg said:
~
The guy im building this for is installing xp. What about 2GB of ram and a better processor?

Also whats your view on the hiper PSUs?

Don't get a Hiper PSU, they go bang, and can sometimes take components with them when they blow up. Not worth the risk.

Go for a quality PSU make like Corsair, Enermax, Antec, OCZ.

cyborg · 20 Sep 2008 at 14:35

I was hoping to save money on the PSU, for the rest. He has his own copy of xp, so i think i will go with 2GB because im sure he'll only ask me why he can only see 3GB of the 4 he bought.

I was thinking of something like this:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCS Extreme 512MB GDDR3
G.Skill 2GB DDR2 PK PC2-6400C4 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit
Abit IP43 Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
OCZ StealthXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply

Total : £398.21

Thoughts? Is that abit up to the job?
Means i'll have to convince him to give a little extra though.

fobose · 20 Sep 2008 at 15:13

It will be fine, doesn't look like your planning on overclocking it anyway but even if you was I am sure it wouldn't cause any probs. You'd save £10 by going for the PSU I recommended, 600W is over the top for that system. As you can see from toms hardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4850,1957-20.html

Total system power consumption (load) is 251W.

cyborg · 20 Sep 2008 at 19:14

thanks for your help.

Last question. He is keeping his old hard drive, but im sure its a 2mb cache no name, and thus slow. Whats the cheapest/smallest 'fast' hard drive you can get?

Namistai · 20 Sep 2008 at 21:33

Samsung Spinpoint 320gb

They're < £40 and there will be a huge performance difference in loading times etc - well worth the money!

fobose · 21 Sep 2008 at 00:05

You can get a seagate or samsung 250GB for about £34 mark but as said above, I would get the 320GB samsung as they are really fast and only £4 more.

cyborg · 21 Sep 2008 at 23:38

Thanks guys. Last question. He has 2GB a RAM from his old system, best to leave it out of this new one? its a crap name ddr2 brand, no doubt slower? i suppose it won't matter unless he wants to overclock, right?

platinum87 · 21 Sep 2008 at 23:59

cyborg said:
Thanks guys. Last question. He has 2GB a RAM from his old system, best to leave it out of this new one? its a crap name ddr2 brand, no doubt slower? i suppose it won't matter unless he wants to overclock, right?

your gonna want 1066mhz ram with the 8400

if u dont overclock its a waste!