What's the least I can spend and still get good performance?

Arnie

Arnie

Arnie

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I'm looking to buy a complete second rig including monitor and accessories. What's the least I could spend on it and still be able to run recent games at 1080p high settings?

Thanks.
 
An i3 system on the old 1156 socket could be worth consideration as these seem to be better than the Athlons for gaming, and the H55 mobos are coming in quite cheap at the moment.
 
I'd probably spend the extra £24 on an X4 as opposed to an X3, but this following build would do it:

MSI ATI Radeon HD 5850 Twin FrozR II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £144.98
(£120.82) £144.98
(£120.82)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33
(£53.61) £64.33
(£53.61)
AMD Athlon II X3 Tri Core 445 3.10GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £59.99
(£49.99) £59.99
(£49.99)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £44.99
(£37.49) £44.99
(£37.49)
Asus M4N68T-M LE NForce 630a (Socket AM2+/AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £37.99
(£31.66) £37.99
(£31.66)
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Dual Channel (GVP34GB1600C9DC) £33.98
(£28.32) £33.98
(£28.32)
Sub Total : £321.89
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 : £66.48
Total : £398.87

Still needs a cheap monitor and accessories, so that's another ~£100, bringing you up to £500.
 
X3 is considered the sweet spot for gaming atm, so CPU isn't and issue - most overclock to around 3.8GHz as well - so decent free boost in performance.

An additional £4 could be saved by getting a Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD - it's even faster than the F3 :p

So basically, I'd get this:

MSI ATI Radeon HD 5850 Twin FrozR II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
(£120.82) £144.98

Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU)
(£53.61) £64.33

AMD Athlon II X3 Tri Core 445 3.10GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail
(£49.99) £59.99

Asus M4A78LT-M 760G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard
(£35.82) £42.98

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000528AS)
(£34.16) £40.99

GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Dual Channel (GVP34GB1600C9DC)
(£28.32) £33.98

Sub Total: £322.72
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 : £66.64
Total: £399.86

And a monitor of your choice :p
 
Great budget build above! Can't get better than that for £400. Although an optical drive is pretty handy these days in a PC. ;):D

PS Arnie, loving the sig and location.
 
shadow_boxer said:
Great budget build above! Can't get better than that for £400. Although an optical drive is pretty handy these days in a PC. ;):D

PS Arnie, loving the sig and location.
Click to expand...

He said second rig, so can use his current optical drive for the sake of W7 installation :p
 
As kristmace mentioned the possibility of an i3 build earlier, I thought I'd include one for the sake of completeness. It's £33 more, but as he said the i3 does perform better in games (I'd still go for the X3 unless you can find a cheap second hand H55 board / i3 chip).

MSI ATI Radeon HD 5850 Twin FrozR II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £144.98
(£120.82) £144.98
(£120.82)
Intel Core i3 540 3.06GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £85.99
(£71.66) £85.99
(£71.66)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33
(£53.61) £64.33
(£53.61)
ASRock H55M-LE Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 microATX Motherboard £49.99
(£41.66) £49.99
(£41.66)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000528AS) £40.99
(£34.16) £40.99
(£34.16)
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Dual Channel (GVP34GB1600C9DC) £33.98
(£28.32) £33.98
(£28.32)
Sub Total : £350.23
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 : £72.15
Total : £432.88
 
The i3 is only better in games that require 2 cores, anything with more than 2 cores I would assume a 3 core Athlon would beat it... Coupled with the fact you can also turn the Athlon into a quad then it should definitely be the better performer in a few of the top games that make proper use of multiple threads.

That said I doubt the i3 would struggle on anything since it can clock so high, and also has hyperthreading. Meh... Guess there's not a huge difference in it to be honest, both should handle pretty much anything thrown at them.
 
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