Spec me gaming pc £600 budget

Soldato
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Hey

Looking to spec my mate a gaming pc for the end of the day.
He needs an OS (W7 ofc). Wants to play games such as CoD MW2 and Left 4 Dead 2

Budget is around £600 give or take.

Everything needed apart from monitor, kb, mouse. So the main parts and the OS :)

Was thinking along the lines of
Antec 300
Samsung F3 1TB
AMD 5770 (though not to sure what make)

What do you think?

Thanks in advance :)
 
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its actually hard work to come up with something good for that price

the motherboard will do proper crossfire in the future if you add another 5770.

and the Phenom cpu has the chance of unlocking cores to turn it into a triple/quad core cpu, but this is not guaranteed
 
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I'd go with the second one, but try and pick up an unused retail win7 copy from somewhere, they're often a little cheaper, and obviously,are Retail :)
 
Something like AMD Athlon II X3 440 3.0GHz 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 Retail Box Processor with the second one or? £66
 
Well you can knock £100 of that right of the bat as Windows 7 is going to cost that if you want proper full retail version which leaves £500 for hardware which isn't great but is doable.

AMD PII 555 X2
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G
[URL="http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-014-C3"]Club 3D ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB

Patriot Viper 4GB PC3-10666 1333MHz[/URL]
Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case - Black
Corsair CX 400W
LG GH22NS50 22x
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail (Full Version)

That lot comes to £604

I seen that case reviewed in this months Custom PC and it's highly rated and dirt cheap as well, the PSU isn't modular but the cables are braided. Ram shows no signs of getting cheaper so you will have to make do with what I selected. If you wanted an Intel Core i3 build instead (with the same mothered but with an Intel chipset) it's going to cost another £15 but it's more overclockable. The PSU is 400 watts which isn't a lot but enough for the above rig and since it's a re-badged Seasonic you know it's going to be 100% stable.
 
Running DDR3 RAM at 1333MHZ using low latencies seems to be the ideal memory settings for a Phenom II at stock speeds:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-ddr3,2319.html

This is exactly what I have been looking for, many thanks

it will run at what ever speed is in the bios/cpu defaults, 1600mhz is just the maximum

I just meant in terms of cost and a crafty way of getting an answer to a question I have which is answered in the link above
 
Well you can knock £100 of that right of the bat as Windows 7 is going to cost that if you want proper full retail version which leaves £500 for hardware which isn't great but is doable.

AMD PII 555 X2
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G
[URL="http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-014-C3"]Club 3D ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB

Patriot Viper 4GB PC3-10666 1333MHz[/URL]
Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case - Black
Corsair CX 400W
LG GH22NS50 22x
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail (Full Version)

That lot comes to £604

I seen that case reviewed in this months Custom PC and it's highly rated and dirt cheap as well, the PSU isn't modular but the cables are braided. Ram shows no signs of getting cheaper so you will have to make do with what I selected. If you wanted an Intel Core i3 build instead (with the same mothered but with an Intel chipset) it's going to cost another £15 but it's more overclockable. The PSU is 400 watts which isn't a lot but enough for the above rig and since it's a re-badged Seasonic you know it's going to be 100% stable.
Seems rather good.
The person who i am looking for has very very basic knowledge of computers so won't be overclocking so.

Also, what are the benefits of getting the retail version of Windows over the OEM? Like with the retail you can de-activate it with your pc to put onto another or something while OEM you can't?
 
In games which scale well with more cores such as Resident Evil 5 and Dragonage Origins the X3 440 is much faster than an X2 550BE,however, in other games the X2 550BE will be faster.
 
Seems rather good.
The person who i am looking for has very very basic knowledge of computers so won't be overclocking so.

Also, what are the benefits of getting the retail version of Windows over the OEM? Like with the retail you can de-activate it with your pc to put onto another or something while OEM you can't?

If he/she isn't overclocking (that won't last long he will get the bug eventually!) then I would recommend he goes with the Intel Core i3 setup as it's just flat out fast, quicker and better at everything then AMD Phenom II's and is seriously faster then the crappy Athlon line.

OEM licences are limited to one use i.e once it's been installed and activated on that PC you can't re-use it in another PC so you have to buy another licence. Retail means you can use it as many times as you like just so long as it's uninstalled and de-activated on the previous PC.

no you haven't, you seen the more expensive Utgard

Bugger, thought it was to good to be true.
 
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So an I3 option could be like this?
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Right on target as well if it works... Tbh he just wants it to play.. so to play in 'decent/good' graphics is fine for him
 
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