Spec me a system for £300

R220 · 27 Sep 2007 at 01:36

Hiya,

Not a huge budget unfortunatly... is it actually possible to make a machine with £300-£350 that will run newer games?

Obviously im not wanting a monster for this price, just something that will be better than my current system (P4 3.4GHz, 9600XT ATi Radeon, 1.5GB DDR PC3200 RAM which is now 3 years old).

(I already have DVD/RW drive (3 years old assuming this will work with current motherboards??) , tft, keyboard, mouse etc..)

I put this together a min ago, not sure if any good but the price looked nice !

- AMD Athlon X2 4200+ 2.40GHz (Socket AM2) £49.34
- MSI K9N Neo V3 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £46.99
- GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC5300C4 667MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit - £24.66
- OcUK GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £64.61
- Western Digital 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - £46.99
- Antec NSK4400 Case - £54.04

-----

£286.63

Thanks

Zefan · 27 Sep 2007 at 01:38

I'd get this instead of the 8600, far better and only £10 more!

R220 · 27 Sep 2007 at 01:47

Thanks

utter n00b question, but what is "Crossfire2 READY"

Does it mean you can run 2 gfx cards as one to get double performance ?

Zefan · 27 Sep 2007 at 01:49

Yeah but it's not literally double in most cases!

I *think* Crossfire1 was a where you needed a "master" card and another card (could be standard or master) to get it working, but crossfire2 works with any 2 cards of the same model (not entirely sure on this, maybe a good thing to post in graphics cards).

HangTime · 27 Sep 2007 at 18:58

I'd bump it up to 2gig RAM as 1gig doesn't cut it these days for gaming.
Also if overclocking you might like to consider a cheap C2D cpu, as when cranked up towards 3ghz they will leave the X2 for dead.

Teaf · 27 Sep 2007 at 19:31

OcUK have the 512MB x1950 pro on "This Week Only", and also some nice OCZ RAM. I would make use of that and get yourself something with those, such as the following. It's at £350, but worth it, and nice for overclocking too. Plus it'll do games great, including newer ones. Note that the E2160 is out of stock at the moment, although the E2140 is still available and would save you some cash.