Build your own pc

Ok guys, I am thinking of building myself a PC for gaming. Problem is I only have a £300 budget. I've been looking around and found some stuff. Spreadsheet in the attachment. Not looking to play too intensive games, GTR Evo mostly but want something future proof :)

Mobo: ?
RAM: Corsair 800mhz 2x 2gb
Case: ADVANCE 8808KP KAPPA PC Tower
PSU: Colors 650W Gold 12Cm Silent Atx Power Supply
HDD: DESKSTAR 7K1000.B 320GB SATA-II 3.5IN 7200RPM 16MB 0A38018
CPU: ?
GFX: Gigabyte GV-N95TOC-1GI NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 1GB ATX HDMI Graphics Card

Ok, so as you can see, I need a mobo and CPU. Planning on a Core 2 Duo, so would need a Mobo that can handle that and also SLI so if I need to upgrade, I can stick another 9600gt in. What kind of Core 2 Duo would you recomend for my build so far? Trying to keep as small a price as possible.

Also, one last thing, do those parts seem trustworthy enough? Especially the card. 1gb 9600gt for £60 sounds to good to be true but it's Gigabyte, who I know are good.

Got £130 left, but if you can get any of the parts above cheaper or recommend something better or whatever, that'd be great :D.
 

Attachments

  • pc.zip
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  • Oli Bellamy

It's extremely budget, you'll probably get quite a few of the latest games complaining about the processor, and that power supply is disgusting. Let me put it into perspective, the power supply controls every bit of power that goes into your computer, cheaper ones (like the one you have) are inefficient and have much less build quality, they're going to malfunction much quicker, and when they do the cheaper ones will take out the entire computer, more expensive ones output much nearer to their advertised wattage and have safety functions to stop it from electrocuting the entire computer.

Simply, the one you selected is going to be less powerful than advertised, the system will be pushing it and working very hard, and is going to become inefficient, you're going to get computer restarts all the time until it dies. A newer one is made of high quality parts that will not go wrong quickly. You can save £40 now on the PSU and spend another £300 on a new computer in 6 months time when it's destroyed your computer. Your choice. Corsair brands are the best, hell that PSU Simon showed you is 3x as good, and cheaper.

I'd probably go for this one
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114945

May be slightly better and more upgrade proof.
 
It's extremely budget, you'll probably get quite a few of the latest games complaining about the processor, and that power supply is disgusting. Let me put it into perspective, the power supply controls every bit of power that goes into your computer, cheaper ones (like the one you have) are inefficient and have much less build quality, they're going to malfunction much quicker, and when they do the cheaper ones will take out the entire computer, more expensive ones output much nearer to their advertised wattage and have safety functions to stop it from electrocuting the entire computer.

Simply, the one you selected is going to be less powerful than advertised, the system will be pushing it and working very hard, and is going to become inefficient, you're going to get computer restarts all the time until it dies. A newer one is made of high quality parts that will not go wrong quickly. You can save £40 now on the PSU and spend another £300 on a new computer in 6 months time when it's destroyed your computer. Your choice. Corsair brands are the best, hell that PSU Simon showed you is 3x as good, and cheaper.

I'd probably go for this one
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114945

May be slightly better and more upgrade proof.

Ok thanks, but look at my post above, got a corsair PSU selected there ;).

What do you think of the parts there? Everything ok? Could I get better bang for my buck?
 
  • Oli Bellamy

Ok thanks, but look at my post above, got a corsair PSU selected there ;).

What do you think of the parts there? Everything ok? Could I get better bang for my buck?
You have a Neo 550watt selected in your post.
 
Yeh I already have that stuff. I'm more interested in gaming power and Overclockability than anything else. I have a 250gb HDD on my laptop at the mo and only have managed to use 100gb really, so 320 is absaloute most needed. And pentium are a bit old aren't they? Also quad core mobo and dual core cpu.. lol

I think I prefer my build at the moment, higher clock speed and overclockability and (I think) better card. Correct me if I'm wrong of course :)
 
Yeh I already have that stuff. I'm more interested in gaming power and Overclockability than anything else. I have a 250gb HDD on my laptop at the mo and only have managed to use 100gb really, so 320 is absaloute most needed. And pentium are a bit old aren't they? Also quad core mobo and dual core cpu.. lol

I think I prefer my build at the moment, higher clock speed and overclockability and (I think) better card. Correct me if I'm wrong of course :)

The E5200 should easily overclock 33% ie. 3.33GHz with a good air cooler. This processor family still has the best price-performance ratio (I bought a E8500 recently for that reason). I don't think you'll get more performance from the Athlon you selected. If you want to go AMD, maybe you should consider the X3's (but they're more expensive).
What's a quad core mobo? I'm no specialist but I think the mention about quad core only means that this mobo can run a Core 2 Quad.

How about this then? Smaller hard disk, scaled down the PSU but better graphic card :
http://www.lambda-tek.com/computing... 1 CASE B102636 1 PSU B66552 1 HDD 1384269 1
 
Jamie in all honesty you would be better saving another £100 and you would be able to get something kickass rather than making do, this is just my opinion but I thought I should air it.

If you really want a £300 PC drop another post and I'll see what I can come up with, but my recommendation is to save another £100 or as close as you can get.
 
Sli possible:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142585

£96

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/116755

£26


http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139212

£45

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150573

£78

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150985

£45

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148715

£60

£350
___________________________

None Sli:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150285

£73


http://www.ebuyer.com/product/116755

£26


http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139212

£45

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150573

£78

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150985

£45

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148715

£60

£327 odd.
___________________________

E7****?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152177


As posted above the E5200 will hit 3ghz + , it's actually part of the C2D family
and is faster then the old C2D chips ( like C2D E4500 etc )

But if you can save money for the E7400...
 
Jamie in all honesty you would be better saving another £100 and you would be able to get something kickass rather than making do, this is just my opinion but I thought I should air it.

If you really want a £300 PC drop another post and I'll see what I can come up with, but my recommendation is to save another £100 or as close as you can get.

Reason it's £300 is because I get £35 a month for everything. So I'm usually left with £20 by the end of it. That's 20 weeks. See why it's so tight budget? XD.

I think I am decided on PSU (Corsair 520W), Graphics card (9600gt 1gb for £60, come on, tell me that's not worth it for 1440x900 gaming), Ram, the 4gb corsair for £30 800mhz aswell and 320gb HDD.

So if anyone could find a CPU + mobo that supports SLI if possible, I think that would rock. I still have about £100 left I think. I can't remember what it was, but I think the 6850C2D was good for OCing..?
 
9600GT is a good card, as it is based on the 8800GT. although the graphics chipset is a bit "old" now, it still is a good graphics card.
(mine 8800GT runs everything on max in evo)

as for SLI Motherboard, Damian (as always :)) put up a good SLI motherboard for the Intel platform.
I have to say that everyone should listen to Damian more when it comes to advice (I think we should give you the status of the official RD pc buyer advisor :))
 

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