Thoughts on my sub £400 Machine.

[Tommy_Here]

Good evening guys, so my friend wants me to build him a cheap pc that can pump out some serious power for the price and has given me a strict budget of £400 so I've looked all over the internet and found these specs that fit the £400 budget. Specs are:
CPU: Intel core i7-920 + MSI Pro x58 £99 (used)
Ram: 12gb corsair xms3 DDR3 Ram £59.05(used)
GPU: Amd radeon r9 290 reference, (used) £120 including p&p
PSU: EVGA supernova 750 (refurb) £54.98
Case: thermaltake Versa N23 = £39.98 (new)
cooler: Coolermaster hyper 212 evo £24.83 (new)
Optical drive: some budget asus model for £11
That totals to £408.84, take away the drive and you have less than £400

I've got a spare HDD and OS as well as some thermal grizzly to give him so that doesn't matter which has given me more money to spend on a good GPU and he'll just hook it up to his tv.
anything else I should change or?

 

[AiiR]

Not a bad rig, I'd argue that you could improve on it by sticking a Xeon X5650 in instead of the 920 so you get 6 cores 12 threads.

 

[darket]

+1 on the X5650

 

[tekkas]

pretty sure the artic freezer cooler 13? is 12-15£ that will save you also

 

[yoyo59]

good build but like everyone said - xeon chip would go nicely

only £40 too

on the talk of budget builds I just bought a x58 pc with a gtx 460 for £140 all in came with ssd too

thinking of putting in a xeon in myself too

also cant you get the 290x? I feel like your a few pounds off having a even better PC imo

I seen some 290x for like 140 delivered

EDIT: you can get a 290x for under 125 delivered if you really look

 

[JTrickle]

You needed ear defenders for a stock blower 290 gpu even when the bearings were new.

Would shave money looking for a 500w psu. Good call on the 920 cpu.

 

[humbug]

its a good rig

 

[Sargatanas2511]

Not bad at all, just watch for the 290 running hot and keep an eye out for a cheap SSD to add to it in future .

 

[pandem0nium]

thinking of putting in a xeon in myself too

Hah, are you some kind of cyborg?

 

[old gamer]

pretty sure the artic freezer cooler 13? is 12-15£ that will save you also

that will do the job, i had one on my 920 overclocked to 3.8ghz

 

[Deleted member 87287]

.

 

[VincentHanna]

If it's just for games get a PS4 Pro instead

 

[efish]

You needed ear defenders for a stock blower 290 gpu even when the bearings were new.

Would shave money looking for a 500w psu. Good call on the 920 cpu.

I installed an evga p.s.u, recently in an older machine it blew the card. Luck of the draw. I think I would be tempted to run with one of the older seasonic bronze units 620 watt, new semi modular £10 more than the refurb. Anyway certianly want to check out some reviews and run with something else.

P.S.U is the last thing you want coming back to bite a month down the line.

 

[arc@css]

Very nice build though I would have thought you could get a reference 290 for less than that?

 

[nashathedog]

Can't you find a non reference 290 or 290x for that money? I sold an MSI Twin Frozr 290x on the MM almost 2 years ago for about 140, Even a 380x which is a bit slower would be nicer to live with than a reference 290.

 

[Lokken86]

You could get a 2500k and a decent motherboard for £100. Overclock that baby to 4.6ghz or more and its good to go.

Keep posting and you could get access to the mm pretty soon.

 

[fullmetaltony]

My reference 290 was so loud, I ended up putting a Kraken G10 mount on it and a Kraken X41 AIO cooler. So much quieter, like night and day. Still very hot though, it's just the heat comes out the top of my case now rather than out the back, but at least I know the overall temp of the chip is kept lower.

 

[C64]

Used 2600k on a budget is the way to go if you can find one if not as said above I just bought a used 2500k and board for £70.
I'd be looking at sourcing a used rx470 4gb or 1050 ti in this price area either card good enough for 1080p gaming.
2x 8gb ram or even just 2x 4gb decent sized ssd or one small one for windows one small/med one for a few games.

 

[oweneades]

If you do go for a reference 290(X) I would look into playing around with the voltages (undervolt) and custom fan curves in Afterburner. I recall doing this back when I had one and it made a noticeable difference when gaming. Yes the card was still loud relative to custom cooled cards but it was much better than the stock profile.