Spec me a Gaming PC

TTom

TTom

TTom

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Joined
16 Feb 2009
Posts
8
Hey all,

I am going to be building a PC soon which is going to be used primarily for gaming but also Photoshop and After Effects occasionally.

My budget is £400 however I already have case, psu and hdd (the case is Antec Sonata III + 500w PSU.)

That means I need a gpu, cpu, mobo, ram and dvd drive, I think that the HD4870 is a good deal at £149 however I don't know which cpu+mobo would go well with it.

Thanks. :)
 
something like..

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
GX-090-PC_60.jpg
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £149.99
(£130.43) £149.99
(£130.43)
CP-271-IN_60.jpg
Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 2.80GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £105.79
(£91.99) £105.79
(£91.99)
MB-143-AB_60.jpg
Abit IP35 Pro XE Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £65.54
(£56.99) £65.54
(£56.99)
MY-086-OC_60.jpg
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £39.09
(£33.99) £39.09
(£33.99)
CD-112-SA_60.jpg
Samsung TS-H653F 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.09
(£13.99) £32.18
(£27.98) Sub Total : £341.38 Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL @ Home Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.49 VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £52.48 Total : £402.35
 
Thanks for the help, how does this look :)?

Asus M3A78 Pro AMD 780G (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2

Totaling around £405?
 
TTom said:
Thanks for the help, how does this look :)?

Asus M3A78 Pro AMD 780G (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2

Totaling around £405?
Click to expand...

Sorry to bump, is this build ok? :confused:
 
Sorry I didn't see your reply.

Plenty of power for the money, make sure you let us know how you get on overclocking it too. ;)
 
TTom said:
Thanks for the help, how does this look :)?

Asus M3A78 Pro AMD 780G (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2

Totaling around £405?
Click to expand...


I would not advise that setup. Either go all out for a quad core Phenom II or stick with an Intel C2D.

Tricores are pretty pointless and won't perform as well as say Kenny's previous specced cpu.

RE GPU: Defo stick with the 4870 though :)
 
AlexTrickle said:
I would not advise that setup. Either go all out for a quad core Phenom II or stick with an Intel C2D.

Tricores are pretty pointless and won't perform as well as say Kenny's previous specced cpu.

RE GPU: Defo stick with the 4870 though :)
Click to expand...

Do some research.

You're completely wrong.

This is for a gaming PC, the X3/tri-core is currently one of the fastest gaming processors around, for performance/price it offers the best value of any chip.

At 1600x it equals and beats the i7 920 in gaming benchmarks - that says it all.
 
Edleake said:
Do some research.

You're completely wrong.

This is for a gaming PC, the X3/tri-core is currently one of the fastest gaming processors around, for performance/price it offers the best value of any chip.

At 1600x it equals and beats the i7 920 in gaming benchmarks - that says it all.
Click to expand...


I have been looking at benchmarks and it looks like the 720 is the best cpu I could get at that price range, however do you think that spending £40 more for the x4 920 would be worth it?
 
Right now, not at all.

In 12 months? Perhaps, definitely maybe! But seriously for todays computing X3 is perfectly fine and more importantly very fast in games (thanks to the extra cache).

I have a 940 but if I were buying today, I'd grab an X3 for sure and save the extra £60. :)
 
Ok thanks for your help :).

I was just looking at RAM and I saw that for £4 more I could get PC2-8500 DDR2 memory (compared to 6400) looking on wikipedia shows that this type is slightly faster, I should go for this then right?
 
Hey, I have ordered the parts, however it seems that the motherboard is incompatible with newer Phenom II CPU's without having to update the BIOS first. (would have been nice to know this before) :(

Anyway, searching shows that I will need to use the ASUS EZ-Flash feature on the motherboard to update the BIOS from a usb, that would be easy enough but it seems like that wouldn't be possible without an AM2+ Compatible CPU already in the motherboard. (which I don't have)

Any possible way I can get around this without buying another cpu for the sole purpose of updating the BIOS?
 
Pretty much every post I've read on the web has said the AM3 still boots no problem, it just doesn't get recognised by the BIOS.

So the theory goes, you can still boot and flash with your new CPU but it wont work 'properly' until you've done so. :)
 
Hey, I have put together my PC today however no display is shown on the monitor when I boot, the gpu fan, cpu fan and case fan start perfectly fine, there is one beep when i turn the power on and the green LED comes on too.

I am thinking it is the Phenom II problem I mentioned... :(
 
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