Sub £400 Build?

[Raikiri]

Looking at putting something together for my nephew, I have a case, screen and W7 that he can use already but need everything else.

Will mostly be a gaming and media box, so I did a couple of specs but was wondering if they could be improved upon:

Intel 1:

Intel 2:

AMD:

Cheers!

 

[Fire_fly]

How about something like this.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 "Dual Fan Edition" 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £83.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £59.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-500CXUKV2) £49.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D2V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £44.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £38.39
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £403.92 (includes shipping : £10.50).

 

[Idleman]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x MSI HD 6850 "Dual Fan Edition" 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £83.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £74.99
1 x Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £41.99
1 x Corsair Value 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMV8GX3M2A1333C9) £34.99
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £32.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.98
Total : £399.88 (includes shipping : £10.00).



Does he really need a 2TB hdd.

 

[Raikiri]

Well it will be a media box as well for all his DVDs, music etc. Double the storage for £15 seems like a better deal to me.

Unless 8GB of RAM would be beneficial for games?

 

[Fire_fly]

Those Green drives are only 5900RPM vs 7200RPM for the ones that we have speced. So they are slower at loading things such as maps in games. 500GB should be plenty for most peoples music collections and use a DVD drive for his films. What games does he want to play on it as that should determine the choice you make.

 

[ChilledLJ]

The first one, i don't think the i3 is good value at all for £100, far too close the £130 i5's can be had for.
In fact I would swap the CPU in the first one for the Celeron G530 at £30 and save up for an i5

 

[Sparx]

I ended up speccing the exact same thing as your Intel 1 spec, I would go for that personally..

YOUR BASKET
1 x Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (ST2000DL003) £89.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 "Dual Fan Edition" 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £83.99
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £55.99
1 x Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £41.99
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £39.95
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £32.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.98
Total : £375.88 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

On that budget, perhaps look at buying second hand from some fellow forum members, you might be able to find some real bargains from people looking to upgrade their CPU, Graphics card, mobo etc.