Spec me build £400-£550 please

ttreaders

ttreaders

ttreaders

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28 May 2007
Posts
656
Hey all,

I'm wanting to put a new pc together for my son who is 14 for christmas. Apart from the usual word processing for his homework he's into gaming - WoW, CS:GO etc.

I'm completely out of the loop as to what is worth buying and would very much appreciate it if you could spoon feed me a shopping list of components from ocuk that are good for price vs performance :)

Will want a 120gb SSD, fairly decent graphics card and reasonably large case as I have fat fingers and struggle with small cases :D

Thanks!
 
 
Certainly looks good Shivy, as I said though I'm out of the loop with hardware though so I'll have to take your word for it :)

I'll remove the 1tb drive I can use old drive from his current computer for storage. He can also use his old peripherals.

Thanks
 
Sounds good, just verify whether the drive is SATA and not IDE

Taking the drive out;

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus H81M-K Intel Core i5 DIY Micro ATX Motherboard, CPU & RAM Bundle £227.98
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Rev2.0 WindForce 3X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Battlefie (GX-122-GI) £129.95
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Raijintek Agos Midi Tower - Black £39.95
Total : £547.45 (includes shipping : £8.00).



256GB SSD which will be a bit better, and the i5 will eat the games. WOW I think uses two cores so an Intel setup is better for dual-core setups - for performance right now at this budget, Intel > AMD any day
 
Last edited:
YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Rev2.0 WindForce 3X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Battlefie (GX-122-GI) £129.95
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £107.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-UD3P AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £65.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £59.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Xigmatek Mach Midi-Tower Black £23.99
1 x Raijintek Themis Black Heatpipe CPU Cooler PWM - 120mm £19.99
Total : £557.47 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Eight core CPU for all the games you mentioned, better multi-tasking;)

AMD give you much more bang per buck.

256GB SSD.
 
Both specs looks decent, you guys have got me wondering now though. There seems to be a lot of debate about which of those CPU's are better. AMD cheaper but use more power and generate more heat although slightly better for general use. Intel i5 said to be slightly better for gaming but less overclocking potential... hard choice. Don't know which build to go with :confused:
 
ttreaders said:
Both specs looks decent, you guys have got me wondering now though. There seems to be a lot of debate about which of those CPU's are better. AMD cheaper but use more power and generate more heat although slightly better for general use. Intel i5 said to be slightly better for gaming but less overclocking potential... hard choice. Don't know which build to go with :confused:
Click to expand...

The AMD is a strong CPU all round.

It has better multi threaded performance and can overclock way beyond say a FX8350 which is a 4GHz CPU,

This guy sums it up well,



You might even find this one interesting,

YOUR BASKET
1 x XFX Radeon R9 290 DD 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (R9-290A-EDFD) £215.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £79.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £59.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £50.99
1 x Xigmatek Mach Midi-Tower Black £23.99
1 x Raijintek Aidos Direct Contact CPU Cooler - Black £14.99
Total : £595.51 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Get money off the GFX card - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18631947

Making it £569.92

Much stronger GPU with four free games and you can still overclock this HEX core CPU.
 
ttreaders said:
Both specs looks decent, you guys have got me wondering now though. There seems to be a lot of debate about which of those CPU's are better. AMD cheaper but use more power and generate more heat although slightly better for general use. Intel i5 said to be slightly better for gaming but less overclocking potential... hard choice. Don't know which build to go with :confused:
Click to expand...

I would also argue that i5 is better for general use, as most apps are single threaded which the i5 beats the AMD side at, but in browsing, MS Office etc I doubt you'll see any difference as these are hardly CPU heavy tasks

However, the octa-core 8320 is good value, but I'd go i5 any day of the week right now

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/837?vs=697

The 4670k is the closest I could find to the 4440 in that bundle on anandtech bench, but as you can see they are pretty evenly matched, though the i5 does beat at some and the 8320 at the other. The intel does offer a more compelling upgrade path though, that H81M-k board will take an i7 happily in the future should you ever need more oomph, whereas I doubt AMD will come out with any radical new CPUs for AM3+

Both are good CPUs though :) but (imo) the i5 is better
 
I just ordered that card you mentioned Stulid but when applying the code it says 'Get GX-224-XF for £166.66+VAT and Free shipping on your whole order'.. so I ordered it but the price hasn't changed. I don't see any other way to 'activate' the code... does this mean that they are no longer running the offer despite the code seemingly working?
 
ttreaders said:
I just ordered that card you mentioned Stulid but when applying the code it says 'Get GX-224-XF for £166.66+VAT and Free shipping on your whole order'.. so I ordered it but the price hasn't changed. I don't see any other way to 'activate' the code... does this mean that they are no longer running the offer despite the code seemingly working?
Click to expand...

Possibly, I can't imagine the offer would still be on as there were only 100 pieces that OcUK were selling at this price and it was such a good offer that people wouldn't pass it up for this long!

Sure the OcUK staff would have posted if it had stopped though, so it may still be on...

Ask customer services?
 
ttreaders said:
I just ordered that card you mentioned Stulid but when applying the code it says 'Get GX-224-XF for £166.66+VAT and Free shipping on your whole order'.. so I ordered it but the price hasn't changed. I don't see any other way to 'activate' the code... does this mean that they are no longer running the offer despite the code seemingly working?
Click to expand...


Are you sure?

what is the total at checkout after applying the code?

I checked it last night.
 
Yeah, my order says:

XFX Radeon R9 290 DD 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (R9-290A-EDFD) £179.99 1 £179.99

AMD Radeon GOLD Reward Ticket (Emailed) £0.00 1 £0.00

AMD PROMO: Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth PC Game £0.00 1 £0.00

FREE SHIPPING (DPD Next Day): £0.00
VAT: £36.00
Order Total: £215.99



I tried a few times even with different browser and applied the code each time getting the same 'Get GX-224-XF for £166.66+VAT and Free shipping on your whole order' but it never updated the price
 
Could you do me a favour and try apply it yourself now and see if it works for you? You just enter the code and get that message and that's it right? :confused:
 
ttreaders said:
Could you do me a favour and try apply it yourself now and see if it works for you? You just enter the code and get that message and that's it right? :confused:
Click to expand...

£585.91 now.

It was certainly correct last night as thats how I posted the final price including pence.

Ask customer services.
 
Strange, just tried it again and it's working now... tempted to reorder it and ask them to cancel the other one. Could over complicate things though, are ocuk known for sorting these things out? If they are likely to change my current order to the correct price then I'll leave it as it is.
 
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