spec me AMD style baby, £250

locutus12 · 12 May 2006 at 21:10

i am building for a friend, i have access to MM and dont mind a mix of second hand parts and new (infact i encourage it given the Ltd budget) i have been given a budget of £250 and i need the following things from it.

1) ram, a gig at least, doesnt need to be special
2) CPU (AMD please, no evil intels.)
3) motherboard (as modern as possible that can support as many formats as possible, for example the asrock 939 dual sata)
4) Graphics card, PCI-E or AGP its for a gamer so abit of power is good.
5) CPU cooler
may also need a case.

Noni · 12 May 2006 at 21:46

3 words-

SAVE UP MORE.

My mate had the same budget, the best we could congure-

80GB HDD

Sempron 754 2800+

754 MB (Mboard)

512mb ram

Nvidia 6200 256

Cheap case with cheap PSU

dvd rom drive.

locutus12 · 12 May 2006 at 22:00

Noni said:
3 words-

SAVE UP MORE.

My mate had the same budget, the best we could congure-

80GB HDD

Sempron 754 2800+

754 MB (Mboard)

512mb ram

Nvidia 6200 256

Cheap case with cheap PSU

dvd rom drive.

good god, where did you go, PC w**** ?

so far i can get the following...

AMD A3000+ £65
1 gig of ordinary pc3200 £45
Asrock 939 board £45
CPU cooler £8
Case £18
Graphics card: X800GTO 256mb £75

trojan698 · 12 May 2006 at 22:06

I'd go for a different board personally. Theres no need to get the dual sata, AGP cards are more expensive, its a dying platform. The nforce4 chipset also offers better performance.

edit, with that budget you're best sticking to the mm.

locutus12 · 12 May 2006 at 22:11

trojan698 said:
I'd go for a different board personally. Theres no need to get the dual sata, AGP cards are more expensive, its a dying platform. The nforce4 chipset also offers better performance.

the asrock board matched and in places beat the DFI lanparty board it was pitted against in OCworkbench website test scores, its also got support for socket M2... i think they may be around long after the ordinary 939 boards...

trojan698 · 12 May 2006 at 22:15

not here it doesn't.

Edit - fair enough, it isn't a DFI board, but you get the idea.

locutus12 · 12 May 2006 at 22:36

Toms hardware: the 939Dual-SATA2 has sensible, if not downright high-grade equipment. This includes at least one SATA-II port, cleanly executed voltage converters, and a good mix of old and new interfaces (serial/parallel and USB 2.0). In addition, the overclocking options more than hold their own against more expensive brand boards. As for upgrading options, in all likelihood there is already an upgrade path to AMD's coming Socket M2 (due mid-2006). To start with, however, we would be happy to see a BIOS update that would reduce the lingering performance deficit, at which point the 939Dual-SATA2 would be a hot tip indeed

they have had 5 bios revisions since then plus the ocworkbench team cameout with a bios designed to allow massive ammounts of overclocking

even without the revisions, its still only 5% slower than the fatality mobo, afraid thats not enough to justify spending the extra £30 on a mobo, besides the guy im building it for wouldnt notice the extra 5% but he would notice that i went over budget...

MuSsEr · 13 May 2006 at 00:06

locutus12 said:
the asrock board matched and in places beat the DFI lanparty board it was pitted against in OCworkbench website test scores, its also got support for socket M2... i think they may be around long after the ordinary 939 boards...

lol the day asrock beats DFI is the day i buy a consol (not gona happen..EVER, i hate them)...

DFI urinates allover asrock and every1 knows its, DFI also kicks everythign elses ass in terms of overclocking options

asrock is a low budget board and the only thing they have going for them is they offer an AGP and PCIE board, other than they they suck....quite a lot

p.s. id also go with the option of saving up more, as £250 is not much to spend on a decent comp...altho it depends what hes going to use it for....word and excel documents? lol

locutus12 · 13 May 2006 at 00:36

MuSsEr said:
lol the day asrock beats DFI is the day i buy a consol (not gona happen..EVER, i hate them)...

DFI urinates allover asrock and every1 knows its, DFI also kicks everythign elses ass in terms of overclocking options

my mistake, it went up against the same and better chipsets than the DFI lanparty uses, see for yourself.
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/asrock/reviews/939Dual-SATA2/b1a.htm

as for the over clocking options, read my threads properly, i never said it had better overclocking options, infact i didnt mention them other than to say a bios was available that gave good results when overclocking.

MuSsEr said:
asrock is a low budget board and the only thing they have going for them is they offer an AGP and PCIE board, other than they they suck....quite a lot

p.s. id also go with the option of saving up more, as £250 is not much to spend on a decent comp...altho it depends what hes going to use it for....word and excel documents? lol

the 939 dual sata 2 at £48 isnt low budget, its middle of the road. as for the rest of their boards, many of them are good boards now that they are employing Nforce 4 chipsets.

as for spending more than £250... dont be a pillock, if i had more money to spend, the thread title would reflect it, £250 is the budget and thats that.

with this budget u can put him together a system that will be able to play battlefield 2 at medium quality and support future gaming and formats along with giving him an overclock from 1.8Ghz to 2.4Ghz with ease.

as for the asrock 939 that you so quickly dismiss, im using one. 9.5K on 3dmark05 and 1mb super pi calculation completed in 37.656 seconds doesnt lie.

now if youve got any input to add thats within the budget and about specing me a system then please by all means, go right ahead. if your going to continue being a noob, trolling and thread trashing, then please, spair us all.

Energize · 13 May 2006 at 01:22

The asrock is about the cheapest 939 board you can get, on a budget like this you dont have a choice.

locutus12 · 13 May 2006 at 01:29

Energize said:
The asrock is about the cheapest 939 board you can get, on a budget like this you dont have a choice.

try telling MuSsEr that :rolleyes:

besides its not the cheapest board, jetway are a far crappier brand and much cheaper too, can pick up a 939 board for £24.

MuSsEr · 13 May 2006 at 01:53

asrock are indeed a low budget board, anything under about £70 is low budget

custompc dont seem to rate the asrock boards compared to asus and dfi very highly

just coz one web site has a test which it came out on top does not mean its true, checked anywhere else?

you say youg et 9.5k on 3d05....but u dont actually say what cards thats with...

and saying save up more is not thread trashing, its sane advise, £250 is not very much to spend on a decent comp, unless he wants to play microsoft excel...

get off your high horse n lighten up

locutus12 · 13 May 2006 at 02:09

X1800XT 512

agw_01 · 13 May 2006 at 02:20

Tell you something though... those GTO's are rapid!

A friend of mine got one for his new build... wipes the floor with my 9800 Pro

jmhduck · 13 May 2006 at 08:59

MuSsEr said:
asrock are indeed a low budget board, anything under about £70 is low budget

Under £70 low budget :eek:

so my asus with nforce 4 ultra chipset is a 'budget board', no offense but I don't agree, yes it's not uber high end dfi sli expert is much better but I wouldn't call a board with nvidias top non-sli chipset low end...

lee87 · 13 May 2006 at 09:08

The Asrock boards are fine imo, looking at super pi scores my X2 3800 scores the same as other X2 3800's using different boards (DFI, ASUS).

The only thing that asrock is poor at is overclocking, but that doesn't mean it can't overclock at all.
It's an excellent board at a very cheap price.

If you are looking for a better board then have a look in the B grade section, there is a Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express board going for £35.