spec me gaming pc for £500 please :)

Walsandrew

Walsandrew

Walsandrew

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Compton, CA
hi. a friend wants to build a pc for in the region of 500 pounds, no os, monitor or any other peripherals needed.

it will be used almost exclusively for gaming, in particular fps. he also wants to know if this budget is big enough to max out bad company 2 and in the future and potentially bf3? (i know this is hypothetical but still). he would also like to be able to hit top settings on sc2.

is this budget enough? if so, what would you consider the best spec? so far he's been unable to tell me the exact res of the monitor he will be gaming on but it will be 20inch so not a very high res.

thanks in advance for any help :D
 
Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £144.98
(£120.82) £144.98
(£120.82)
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
(£99.99) £119.99
(£99.99)
Gigabyte P67A-UD3 Intel P67 Chipset (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33
(£53.61) £64.33
(£53.61)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.49
(£10.41) £12.49
(£10.41)
Sub Total : £426.46
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £87.39
Total : £524.35
 
thanks stulid. knew i could count on you for a great spec :)

any thoughts on how this build would fair with the games i mentioned on highest settings and on a 20inch monitor?
 
Walsandrew said:
thanks stulid. knew i could count on you for a great spec :)

any thoughts on how this build would fair with the games i mentioned on highest settings and on a 20inch monitor?
Click to expand...

The graphics card is more than enough for any game on a 20" monitor.

The cpu is one of the latest and very fast indeed, so I would be surprised if you couldn't max both games you mentioned with at least 30 fps.
 
Reasonably well I would say, I'm guessing the resolution might be 1600x900 as that seems pretty common for 20" monitors. However if you crank up AA and all other settings to max then any of the 'cheaper' graphics cards are going to struggle and you'd really need a higher budget to max out those games.

edit: depends how literally you take 'highest settings'. 4x AA is generally fine in most games (as they use in reviews) however at 16x AA the 768MB RAM on the GTX 460 is a bit of a limiting factor.
 
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sorry to be a pain but if he was to have an extra 150 pounds available and that he wants to spend, which it is seeming like he does, what if any upgrades would you make to this spec? so budget is now 650 excluding screen or anything else. he plans to upgrade to a 24 inch monitor also.
 
Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK Motherboard Bundle - Intel Core i5 2500K & Asus P8P67 Intel P67 Mainboard £299.99
(£249.99) £299.99
(£249.99)
MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £159.98
(£133.32) £159.98
(£133.32)
BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W Power Supply £49.01
(£40.84) £49.01
(£40.84)
Antec 100 One Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £44.99
(£37.49) £44.99
(£37.49)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.49
(£10.41) £12.49
(£10.41)
Sub Total : £530.36
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £108.17
Total : £649.03


Or with a little compromise on case and psu compared to above.

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK Motherboard Bundle - Intel Core i5 2500K & Asus P8P67 Intel P67 Mainboard £299.99
(£249.99) £299.99
(£249.99)
HIS ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE CODMW2 Game £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33
(£53.61) £64.33
(£53.61)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.49
(£10.41) £12.49
(£10.41)
Sub Total : £517.31
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £105.56
Total : £633.37
 
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stulid said:
Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK Motherboard Bundle - Intel Core i5 2500K & Asus P8P67 Intel P67 Mainboard £299.99
(£249.99) £299.99
(£249.99)
MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £159.98
(£133.32) £159.98
(£133.32)
BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W Power Supply £49.01
(£40.84) £49.01
(£40.84)
Antec 100 One Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £44.99
(£37.49) £44.99
(£37.49)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.49
(£10.41) £12.49
(£10.41)
Sub Total : £530.36
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £108.17
Total : £649.03
Click to expand...

NOM! Wouldn't change a thing.

PSU on second spec is not 80+ efficiency, and whilst good isn't as good as the BeQuiet Pure Power.
 
thanks for those. now, this might be a noobie question here but is there no cooler in that spec? or is it built into somewhere..? he has mentioned that he will look to do a bit of overclocking on the cpu and graphics card (i think i'm right in saying both oc quite nicely?), so my question is would he need better cooling and/or power supply to support this?
 
Walsandrew said:
thanks for those. now, this might be a noobie question here but is there no cooler in that spec? or is it built into somewhere..? he has mentioned that he will look to do a bit of overclocking on the cpu and graphics card (i think i'm right in saying both oc quite nicely?), so my question is would he need better cooling and/or power supply to support this?
Click to expand...
There's a stock cooler comes with the CPU, but if he is planning on overclocking the CPU, he should buy a 3rd party cooler. If he's aimming for just a above average overclock, something like a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 for around £15 would be great, but if he's planning on really pushing the overclock toward the higher end, then he should spend around £30 on getting something like a Titan Evo or Akasa Nero S or Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom instead.

The BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W would be more than fine for a system with a single GTX460 1GB...but if he would like to have the option of adding another GTX460 1GB to SLI in the future, he should getting a decent higher watts PSU such as a Antec TruePower 650W.
 
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