Spec me a core i7 system £450

Main components below:

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i7-2600 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
(£199.99) £239.99
(£199.99)
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £84.98
(£70.82) £84.98
(£70.82)
Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
(£21.66) £25.99
(£21.66)
Sub Total : £389.12
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £79.72
Total : £478.34
 
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail £199.99
(£166.66) £199.99
(£166.66)
Corsair Force Series 3 60GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (CSSD-F60GB3A-BK) £77.99
(£64.99) £77.99
(£64.99)
Foxconn Quantum Force Flaming Blade GTI Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard £67.99
(£56.66) £67.99
(£56.66)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Cooler Master GX 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Sub Total : £343.29
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £70.91
Total : £425.45
 
sehcure said:
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail £199.99
(£166.66) £199.99
(£166.66)
Corsair Force Series 3 60GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (CSSD-F60GB3A-BK) £77.99
(£64.99) £77.99
(£64.99)
Foxconn Quantum Force Flaming Blade GTI Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard £67.99
(£56.66) £67.99
(£56.66)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Cooler Master GX 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Sub Total : £343.29
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £70.91
Total : £425.45
Click to expand...

The i7 950 is a bit old now :P Better to have an i5 2500K than that:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/100?vs=288
 
beejjacobs said:
What do you need exactly? OS, monitor etc...?

i7's would be about half that budget! What's it for?
Click to expand...

+1 to this

What is the use of the system? As this will greatly determine the component choice. Also i7 is not always the best solution, especially when you are on a tight budget, as it may mean you need to compromise on other areas to afford it (such as an SSD, graphics or good quality PSU).

sehcure said:
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail £199.99

<snip>
Click to expand...

Hehe, I suppose that is an i7 so technically correct. However that particular chip is last generation, slower than the current generation £170 i5 and the board doesn't have any onboard graphics.
 
I realise that; but after trying to get a new age i7 build for £450 I realised it's quite hard, so went down to an older gen.

He didn't specify, so it doesn't matter.
 
Guys let me just say thanks so much for those great suggestions. I probably was being a little bit green expecting an i7 system for £450 but you guys did do really well.

I'll take what you people said on board and I do believe an i3 or i5 would actually probably be sufficient.

All my sister wants me to build is a PC that will be fast and around £450 that can play all the new sims games as that's all she plays.

I will need an OS and peripherals too and of course a case which I notice would never fit that budget if going i7 so I may actually go down to i3!

Any i3 or i5 suggestions are welcome please include a case too.

Monitor is not needed

Thanks guys
 
For gaming, especially Sims, i5 will be plenty! :P But we'll see what we can fit in the budget...

EDIT:
This is what I could fit in for the budget. Windows really kills the budget and hard drive prices don't help!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.98
1 x Intel Pentium G850 2.90GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £67.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £67.99
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GT 430 OC "Dual Fan" 1024MB GDDR3 Low Profile PCI-Express Graphics Card £47.99
1 x MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £46.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Alpha Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x Cooler Master GX 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply £29.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £17.99
1 x OcUK Black Gaming Keyboard £10.99
1 x Microsoft Ready Basic Optical Mouse Black - Retail (3EG-00003) £9.98
Total : £452.29 (includes shipping : £17.85).

 
Last edited:
As above, the processor alone would be half the cost, might need to either up your budget or lower your requirements
 
An entire build with peripherals and an O'S for 450.... Jeeze.....

You better not need a monitor. Otherwise it really is impossible.

Went for Llano so you'd have some ability to play games...



Product Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Llano A8-3670K 2.70GHz (Socket FM1) APU Processor (AD3670WNGXBOX) £89.99
(£74.99) £89.99
(£74.99)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.98
(£66.65) £79.98
(£66.65)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £67.99
(£56.66) £67.99
(£56.66)
Asus F1A55-M LX AMD A55 (Socket FM1) DDR3 Motherboard £49.99
(£41.66) £49.99
(£41.66)
Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £39.98
(£33.32) £39.98
(£33.32)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard - Retail (JQD-00006) £28.99
(£24.16) £28.99
(£24.16)
Logitech M325 Wireless Mouse (910-002142) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
(£21.66) £25.99
(£21.66)
Cooler Master Elite 342 Case - Black £24.98
(£20.82) £24.98
(£20.82)
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
(£14.99) £17.99
(£14.99)
* Sub Total : £408.22
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £84.14
* Total : £504.86


kd
 
Great suggestions so far people.

Question though, how come you can get a Intel Core i5 system from Dell for £399? would that be better than self building? because this question will inevitably be asked to me by my sister and I'm not sure if self building is the best option any more. It doesn't seem to save any money like it used to.
 
Go on **Competitor hint removed **, click Core i5, cheapest is Inspiron 620 MT@£449
And that's a i5-2320 with only 4GB of ram with a pitiful hd6450 gfx card...
 
For all those who are putting together potential systems together for the OP, the system requirements for sims3 taken from steam are:

# OS: Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
# Processor: (XP) 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent; (Vista) 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
# Memory: (XP) 1 GB; (Vista) 1.5 GB
# Graphics: 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
# DirectX®:
# Hard Drive: At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
# Sound:
# Built-in Graphics:

* Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above.
* 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
* 0.5 GB additional RAM

If thats all the OP's sister plays thats not that demanding even with expansion packs added. My daughter played sims years ago and it would run on anything reasonable.

The cheapest setup will run this game well. A cheap-as-chips AMD rig would run this game for years to come. 8gb ram, nope: fancy cooler, nope: ssd, don't make me laugh.

OP if you don't mean the game called the sims then my apologies, also if the pc is used for more demanding work that you have not mentioned.

Your right, a cheap of the shelf system would be fine if it the game called sims. Overclockers have a few systems that are cheap, add in a GPU and your good to go.

Edit:

King Damager's spec is also very good, change the ram to 4GB, maybe get rid of the gaming keyboard for a cheaper one and the cooler if one comes with the chip, and your withing budget, add a GPU at a later date if usage becomes more demanding.
 
Last edited:
Looking at this you really don't need much in the way of hardware to make the sims 3 run well at high settings.

The Llano system mentioned by King Damager would be what I would go for - the Quad core CPU is fast enough and the 400 core graphics built into the A8-3670K APU is on the same performance level as a HD 5570.
 
 
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