Spec me a £350 shuttle pc

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Greetings,

Just wondering if anyone was able to offer me abit of assistance. I've not built a new PC in 7years so I'm alittle out dated on my component knowledge.

Just need the base system and I already have hardrives and an operating system, so no need to take those into account.
My budget is £350, at a push (ie. including delivery & VAT) I could go to £400 but not a penny over!

I'm looking at possibly getting a shuttle pc as I have a fairly small working area, although if it means I'll lose performance I'll stick to a normal case, it's just a nice bonus.

I would like to play the latest games, particularly "Aion" when it's released, which is supposedly fairly graphically intensive. But I'm not too bothered about playing on MAX settings.

I already have a 23" WS LCD so it would need to power that, I also already have a keyboard and mouse. Not interested in a Blu-Ray player/recorder a standard DVD/RW would suffice.

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

Jan
 
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Shuttle XPC SP35P2 Black Barebones System Intel Core 2 Duo/Quad (LGA775) £179.99
(£156.51)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3 Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £86.99
(£75.64)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.60GHz (800FSB) - Retail £52.99
(£46.08)
Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X4096-6400C5C) £46.99
(£40.86)
Samsung SH-S223B/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.77)
Sub Total : £333.86
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £51.58
Total : £395.44

I aren't happy with this spec personally, you could go for the OcUK Value RAM and get a 4870 instead of the 4850 but that takes you £1.43 over budget, and it isnt worth dropping the CPU to the cheapest one because then you'l get a bottleneck and might aswell have had the cheaper GPU I think. If you can donate a DVD-RW from another PC you might be able to get around this though! In such a tight case I would try and keep the current RAM with the heatsinks though :/

Edit for comparisons sake:

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.98
(£86.94)
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3LR Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £84.99
(£73.90)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.60GHz (800FSB) - Retail £52.99
(£46.08)
Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X4096-6400C5C) £46.99
(£40.86)
Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650W Power Supply £43.99
(£38.25)
Asus TM-261 Case - Black/Silver (No PSU) £25.99
(£22.60)
Samsung SH-S223B/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.77)
Sub Total : £323.40
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £50.27
Total : £385.42

You may be able to get a 4870 in under budget but you'd have to go for the 512MB version.
 
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Thanks ever so much for the response. Would you recommend going with the first spec then and swapping out the 4850 for a 4870, should take me £5 over my budget which I can live with.
 
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Yes I'd recommend pushing it up to get the 4870, however a few of those prices are this week only (including the 1024MB 4870!)
 
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That's not a problem I'll hopefully shortly if not I'll stop smoking for a week or something ;)

Just a quickie, the 4870 would the inbuilt 400w PSU be sufficient ? I'm sure I read a 550w would be required. Will this shuttle have room for one also?

I've also got 2x SATA 3.5" Hardrives I planned to re-use will these also fit?

Thanks again for your help, really liking the look of the build.
 
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I think the best place to go for power requirement questions would be to the PSU's website and look for a PSU calculator (there are several on the net). The case has 3 3.5" drive bays inside so yes the drives will fit in.
 
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Thanks, will certainly take a look. Finally just had a thought will I need an additional heatsink + cooling for the CPU, i dont intend to heavily overlock unless really required. I've just never stuck with a stock cooler.

Thanks again.
 
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I can't vouch for or against the stock cooler I'm afraid, there are plenty of reviews in the overclocking section and theres probably someone who's pushed the stock just for the fun of it.
 
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Greetings,

Just spoke to OCUK who doesn't think the 4870 will fit inside the shuttle. I'm guessing I'll need to go for a full tower case to fit this in.
 
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