want to build a crackin' pc for £450! is it possible? :|

[Faelinor]

alreet people?

as the title suggests, im really wanting to build meself up a decent pc .. kinda skint though. can get like 500 quid together max.. yet im not sure on what parts to buy and stuff :/ like really good value for money components.

was just wondering if any of you crazy-assed techy people could give me a bit of advice really like! would be really appreciated.

was thinking of using my old dvd drive, cd-rewriter and floppy drive from my old pc to save a bit cash and whatnot, but will have to buy all other parts.

so aye! good pc capable of playing current games on high settings, and maybe frapsing in daoc aswell without it lagging - for about 450 quid! is it possible? :|

 

[Kryten]

Throw the optical drives and floppy drive in the bin. A brand spanking new dvd rewriter with all mod cons will set you back a whopping £13.

It's a competent budget so don't worry too much.

9800GT £100
Gigabyte AMD (AM2+) motherboard £80
AMD X2 6000+ £65
Case and PSU £80
4gb DDR2 ram £40
1tb HDD £70
DVDRW of choice £15

£450

Gone for AMD for price reasons - it's not a hugely great processor but for the money it's damned good, and gives you scope to look at things like Phenom II processors later down the line.
I'm normally an Intel person as anyone will say, however price/performance is a tough balance typically. But there's still £50 there in your budget to play with should you want to change to a socket 775 mainboard (around £90) and lower end Core2duo processor (nearest is a Core2Duo e5400 at £85)

Hang around for some other suggestions and you might find you can get a fairly neat system for very little money.

 

[nath]

I'm not up on my graphics cards but isn't the 4850 significantly better than a 9800GT? If so, it's only 10 quid more: ASUS HD 4850 512MB DDR3 Dual DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer

 

[Kryten]

Not a great deal better but for a tenner more I'd take it anyway purely on ability and feature.

 

[nath]

4870 for 150 - this might be an area word splurging a bit extra on, non?

XFX HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer

 

[Faelinor]

cheers for taking the time to reply like, im sure there's been loads of threads about people wanting advice on this kinda thing.

nath - that radeon looks really nice like.. read a canny few reviews and stuff and people have been saying its the bees knees.
Kryten - cheers very much like mate that looks spot on! was just wondering about the processor there.. is it any good? what does it overclock to? a mate of mine was rabbitin' on about the intel core2duo e8400 - does it vastly outperform that AMD X2 6000?

cheers again!

 

[Kryten]

Yeah, the e8400 is a spinky chip and overclocks like the wasp's bollocks, but you're looking at circa £140 for the processor and at least £90 for a suitable board that won't limit you too much. If you can stretch to it, certainly do.

 

[Bob007]

Toms Hardware just did a nice Graphics Card Price review here. Good place to start for picking G/Card.

 

[Helme]

Regarding the Athlon CPU, yeah it's worse off than the E8400 - will probably hurt you in a year or two, but then a new Phenom upgrade should sort you out.

I'm personally running an X2 5000+, and so far I've yet to have a single game struggle with everything maxed out - I actually find it's my graphic card that limits what I can play(ie Crysis at ultra silly high).

 

[Faelinor]

what card you using like Helme mate? pretty sure im gonna go with the ATi Radeon HD4850 me like... but when i've been on like google product search they've came up with like different names :| like one's a Sapphire, one's an Asus, one's a Palit - how do i know which of these cards to buy for me pc? if im making any sense :]

 

[Bahumat]

what card you using like Helme mate? pretty sure im gonna go with the ATi Radeon HD4850 me like... but when i've been on like google product search they've came up with like different names :| like one's a Sapphire, one's an Asus, one's a Palit - how do i know which of these cards to buy for me pc? if im making any sense :]

best thing is to google the model including manufacturer. The cards ultimately the same card, but these companies overclock them or add longer/lifetime warranties etc etc.

 

[Faelinor]

cheers man!
think im definately gonna go with the GeForece 9800+ actually though.
think its 20 quid more and it's better than the Radeon apparently.. think so anyway thats right isnt it? :|

 

[nath]

Not sure about that at all actually - which radeon are you talking about and how much is this 9800 you're looking at?

 

[Ch3tan]

Thought all the radeon cards of the last generation kicked the nvidia cards squarly to the dirt, and used less power to boot, and had more stable drivers.

 

[Kryten]

I always advise to side with ATI currently purely on the strength of the drivers and support for anything other than gaming - i.e. multiple monitors, non 3d performance etc, as they do indeed smear nvidia around considerably. My original suggestion was only to keep within budget.