building on a tight budget

[Dave90]

Hi, I'm new here and was wondering if someone could give me some pointers of a budget build (hoping to spend no more than £400)

I'm looking for something that will play recent games (BF3, Skyrim, Shogun 2 kinda ballpark) at smooth framerates. I've only got a 19" monitor so i'm not too bothered about super HD resolutions (probably setting around 1600x1024)

as it stands i've been looking at the amd a8 3870k and a hd 6690 as from various reviews i've seen it seems like the best option for my budget

here's a list of the components (sorry for lack of links), bare in mind i have a screen, case, disk drive and 400-450W PSU (<---- will that be enough for crossfire?)

Motherboard: Asus F1A55-M LE, AMD A55, S FM1, DDR3 2250, SATA II 3Gb/s, SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), Graphics On Board, mATX (is the only difference for the A75 boards USB 3.0 and SATA III?)

CPU: AMD A8-3870K Black Edition, S FM1, Lynx Core, Quad Core, 3.0GHz, GPU AMD Radeon HD 6550D 600MHz, 100W, Retail (i'll probably want to overclock this, would an extra CPU cooler be required for that?

RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.65V

HDD: 500GB Seagate ST500DM002 Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5ms, NCQ (is this compatible with the motherboard [being SATA III]?)

GPU: 2GB MSI HD 6670, 1334MHz GDDR3, GPU 800MHz, 480 Cores, DL DVI-I/HDMI/D-Sub (I've seen some with 1GB GDDR5, which is better?)

This comes to £319.17 on Scan so + £70 or so for Windows 7 64bit i'm just about under my budget.

Any tips, pointers or suggestions would really help.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What is your total budget?? £400?? What PSU model do you have?? It need to be a decent one.

Get 20 useful posts on Hexus and you get free postage from Scan.

[Dave90]

ideally yes my maximum budget is £400. is it unrealistic to hope for playable framerates for this money?

the PSU is a Packard Bell PSU FSP FSP400-60HLN 400W ACTI


oh and i was wondering, theoretically, could i add two 6670's and crossfire them with the APU? or is that a ridiculous concept?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

ideally yes my maximum budget is £400. is it unrealistic to hope for playable framerates for this money?

the PSU is a Packard Bell PSU FSP FSP400-60HLN 400W ACTI

The main issue is how old it is! It does not have a huge amount of amps on the 12V line but I suspect you should be OK for an HD6850 1GB:

http://www.x-fish.org/blog_picture/110318_05.jpg

FSP is not too bad luckily,but I suspect the PSU you have is relatively old,so a newer one would be a good idea at some IMHO.

Edit!!

What case do you have?? It needs to be bog enough to take the motherboard and GPU.

The following build uses parts from Scan.



Once,you get free postage you can save around £10.

Scan also has a special offers webpage:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx

I have a Core i3 2100 and an HD5850 1GB. The setup above should be similar in speed in most games. I can many games at high settings at 1680X1050 fine.

You will also need to have a SATA DVD drive if you don't have one,so add another £13:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/sony-...sata-black-oem

These are the PSUs I would look at:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/450w-...v-fan-atx-v231

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...s-12v-quiet-fa

[Dave90]

i see, yeah its in my dads fujitsu siemens scaleo desktop at the minute which i believe is a good 3-4 years old. can you recommend a good quality psu for the lowest price possible?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Three to four years is not that bad TBH,so it is probably still functioning reasoanbly fine,so the system I have listed will run,but I have added some PSU recommendations to my previous post.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also you don't need to spend a huge amount for a reasonable case which should last a few years:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...su-best-seller

Edit!!

If your monitor uses a VGA connection you will need an adaptor for the graphics card.

What resolution is your monitor??

[Dave90]

that certainly gives me a lot to think about. One of my concerns with the A8 was that upgrading became a huge issue (needing a new motherboard incase i got an A10 etc etc)
so the i3 setup seems like a more future-proof setup...

thanks a lot for your help, i'll give an update when i've made a decision!

EDIT

im not sure about monitor as its at my sisters house at the moment. i have a 20" samsung tv/monitor which has a hdmi port but thats plugged into the xbox

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Amazon seem to be the cheapest site ATM for AMD CPUs.

It is a shame that Trinity uses socket FM2,so it does limit your upgrade path. The A8 is a better allround solution than a Core i3 which I use but if you are getting a more powerful graphics card,the Core i3 or a Phenom II X4 does make more sense.

The A8-3870K is around £89:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_...+3870k&x=0&y=0

Then there is the Phenom II X4 965 for around £76:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-HDZ965FB...8647547&sr=8-1

The Core i3 2120 will be faster in lightly threaded games like Skyrim though,but the Phenom II X4 965BE costs around £15 to £16 less.

There is also this AMD 970 based motherboard for around £54:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-SKT...8647616&sr=1-2

I would not use it for overclocking and it is ATX too. OTH,AMD Vishera will run on it.

With your budget I would either get a Core i3 or a Phenom II X4.