Spec me - £500 Gaming System

[dwjoll]

System tower only, for gaming mainly, £500 budget. Already have monitor and OS (Vista 64 bit). Is it possible to build a system at this budget to incorporate a Wolfdale chip, or will this involve cutting corners elsewhere to stay under budget? Thanks in advance.

 

[jak731]

what resolution do you game at?

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £106.99
(£123.04) £106.99
(£123.04)
Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £84.99
(£97.74) £84.99
(£97.74)
Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant PSU £64.99
(£74.74) £64.99
(£74.74)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail £59.99
(£68.99) £59.99
(£68.99)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD322HJ) £32.99
(£37.94) £32.99
(£37.94)
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £31.99
(£36.79) £31.99
(£36.79)
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£19.54) £16.99
(£19.54)
Sub Total : £398.93
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL @ Home Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.99
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £59.84
Total : £458.77
needs
case

possible changes

change PSU to a VX450, but this will restrict the upgrades you can do to the PC at a later date

change the graphics card to a nvidia card like the 9800GTX+, performance may raise or drop depending what games you play

add a third party CPU cooler, requires a bigger budget

you will most likely have to overclock to get the best performance

 

[ro55o]

Overclock the E5200 and you'll have yourself a pretty decent gaming PC.

The 4850 is on offer this week, great price for the performance.

 

[Prophet]

Will the 4850 hack gaming at 1680X1050 with max setting?

 

[ro55o]

Will the 4850 hack gaming at 1680X1050 with max setting?

I've got one myself, the only game I can't fully max out is crysis, but then again most cards can't. I've been playing fallout 3, left 4 dead, grid etc all at max settings, even with aa enabled they all run perfect. At that resolution you really don't need anymore. I'm planning on moving to a larger screen soon, so only then am I looking at getting a more powerful GPU, and even then I'm thinking about getting another one for crossfire. Just for reference, I'm running an E8400 overclocked to 3.6ghz and 4gb of ram.

 

[Prophet]

Excellent. Sounds ideal for me then

 

[dwjoll]

Thanks for the replies. I will be gaming @ 1680 x 1050 on my LG 22" W2252TQ.

I have just done a few sums and i can stretch my budget to £600

I really would like one of the newer Intel chips, duo or quad, im not too fussed, both perform very well as I understand.

 

[ro55o]

Changed the CPU to an E8400 and the motherboard to a P45 (The most noticable difference is the support for crossfire, so if you want a bit more power later on down the line, just stick another 4850 in)

 

[linktoinsanity]

The E8400 is a good cpu, go with that.

 

[Kennysevenfold]

How about this mate.? Just over

Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £106.99
(£123.04) £106.99
(£123.04)
Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £84.99
(£97.74) £84.99
(£97.74)
Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 2.66GHz (1066FSB) - Retail Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 2.66GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £84.99
(£97.74) £84.99
(£97.74)
Tagan TG500-U33 500w 2-Force II PSU Tagan TG500-U33 500w 2-Force II PSU £49.99
(£57.49) £49.99
(£57.49)
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) £43.99
(£50.59) £43.99
(£50.59)
Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AACS) Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AACS) £40.99
(£47.14) £40.99
(£47.14)
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £31.99
(£36.79) £31.99
(£36.79)
Samsung SH-S223F/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM Samsung SH-S223F/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.99
(£14.94) £12.99
(£14.94)
Sub Total : £456.92
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL Select Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.99
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £68.54
Total : £525.46