£600 to build a computer

[brentonhill]

What is the best system you could build for between £600-£700?!

I am thinking about buying a core 2 hp with an e6300 and a gig of ram for about £400 and then sticking a graphics card, some more ram and a sound blaster in there. The ram speed is only 533mhz.

Then I would just upgrade the processor later when they come down in price.


What do you guy's think? Can you build more of a beast??

I can't fit a double slotted graphics card in the hp which hinders me a little but that really is the only down side I think. I will not ever need sli (i hope!).

I am running vista.

Do not think you need to know anything else?

I am looking to upgrade a componant every month regardless of which option I go for and spend around £100 a month.

I guess in real money my buget is £1200 but spread over a year.

hmmm

HELP!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Providing you do not need an OS,monitor and keyboard and mouse the following system is quite decent:

Your Basket
QTY Price (ea) Ex VAT Total Inc VAT Remove
LN11603
600w Seasonic S12-600 SLi Ready Silent PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01 £72.49 £85.18
LN17304
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, Socket 775, 1.80 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £89.69 £105.39
LN13080
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 Dual Core / Core2Duo Ready £9.95 £11.69
LN15070
Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3 iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £60.99 £71.66
LN11596
2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-12 £117.64 £138.23
LN17225
320 Gb Samsung HD321KJ Spinpoint T, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 9 ms, NCQ £52.56 £61.76
LN15198
AKASA Zen case - Black Silent Cool Midi-ATX Computing case w/2 silent 12cm fans w/o PSU £24.49 £28.78
LN13548
Samsung SH-S183A/BEBN Black SATA 18x18 ±R Dual Layer DVDRW Writer OEM UK inc Nero 6.x £18.30 £21.50
LN17550
256MB Sapphire Radeon X1950GT, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1200MHz GDDR3, GPU 500MHz, 36 Pipes, RoHS £90.99 £106.91
If you change any quantities, please re-calculate your basket
Scan Finance - Buy Now Pay Nov 2007
Pay £64.73 deposit and then NO payments for 9 months, then settle the balance and pay NO interest.

Scan Finance - More Sense Than Money

Net Total £537.10

Carriage £13.77

V.A.T. £96.40

TOTAL £647.27

You should be able to get the E4300 to over 3ghz WITHOUT even overclocking the memory.The Seasonic power supply should be powerful enough for most future components too!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you need to include the cost of Vista and a monitor this system is also pretty decent:

Your Basket
QTY Price (ea) Ex VAT Total Inc VAT Remove
LN17304
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, Socket 775, 1.80 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £89.69 £105.39
LN13080
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 Dual Core / Core2Duo Ready £9.95 £11.69
LN15070
Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3 iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £60.99 £71.66
LN15198
AKASA Zen case - Black Silent Cool Midi-ATX Computing case w/2 silent 12cm fans w/o PSU £24.49 £28.78
LN12200
2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 £94.54 £111.08
LN17167
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) £59.99 £70.49
LN11571
250 Gb Western Digital WD2500KS Caviar SE16, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms £40.32 £47.38
LN15427
256MB Palit 7600GT Sonic, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1500MHz, GPU 575MHz, 12Pipes, D-Sub/Dual Link DVI/HDTV SLI £59.99 £70.49
LN15618
17" Daewoo HL720AD Black TFT, DVI/VGA, 1280x1024, 8 ms, 500:1, 300 cd/m2, Speakers £84.95 £99.82
LN14408
530W Hiper HPU-4M530 SLi Ready Black ATX2.2/BTX SATAx2 PCI-Ex2 £39.89 £46.87
LN16564
LiteOn DW1670-488C Black 16x DVD±RW x12 Ram Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM £14.99 £17.61
If you change any quantities, please re-calculate your basket
Scan Finance - Buy Now Pay Nov 2007
Pay £70.14 deposit and then NO payments for 9 months, then settle the balance and pay NO interest.

Scan Finance - More Sense Than Money

Net Total £579.79

Carriage £17.17

V.A.T. £104.47

TOTAL £701.43

You will be able to overclock the E4300 to 3ghz WITHOUT overclocking the memory!!

[brentonhill]

I already have vista and a couple of screens so that is all good.

I am interested in what you said about overclocking the processor from 1.8 to 3ghz. I have never done anything like tat before. is it hard to do? What are the risks and will I need more cooling?

Thanks!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You will need to increase the FSB of the processor.The E4300 is ideal since it has an 800mhz FSB as opposed to the 1066mhz FSB of the E6*** series.If you increase the FSB to 1066mhz(basically 4 x 267mhz) you will get the same clock speed as a E6600. However if you increase the FSB to 333mhz the processor will be running at 3ghz like I am doing.Since I have pc5300 memory(667mhz) this is the maximum I can get to without overclocking my memory.With 800mhz you can go higher.However the amount you can overclock is variable;however most people are getting at least 2.8ghz with E4300 without many issues. I personally do not like overclocking memory as this can cause memory problems.Since the Artic Cooling fan I specified is pretty decent andthe E4300 runs cool it should do fine.The Akasa Zen also has 120mm fans so the case cooling is great too.For even better cooling performance you could use some decent thermal compound like Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic ceramique.

I reached 3ghz at stock voltages - if you raise the voltage too much you could damage the motherboard and/or processor.Also you have to make sure that the case and processor cooling is decent and that the power supply can handle it.The last two points are not as big as they used to as the Core2 runs cooler and comsumes less power when compared to the previous Pentium 4 generation even when overclocked!

BTW the X1950GT is slower than the X1950pro so for around 15-20 quid it maybe a worthwhile upgrade??

Alternatively perhaps a 8800GTS 320mb(costs around 190 quid minimum)??

Another important point is to only overclock by small amounts to see if your system can handle it.

[Nick Smith]

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/01/18...ide-part-1-uk/

guide for overclocking an e6300 here, surely the e4300 will be almost the same?

and if i were you i'd get some Artic silver 5 to go with your cooler.

[brentonhill]

Makes sence. Would I have to use a software based program to do this or would I do it from bios?

Any recomendations?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I overclock using the bios in small increments. Keep the case open so that you can reset the bios if the computer crashes.Once you have got a stable overclock you test your system using 3DMark running in a loop a couple of times or a rendering programme like Terragen.

[brentonhill]

What do you guys think of this for a system? add a couple of gigs of ram, a graphics card and a 5.1 card and i could be laughing as a vista/media centre trype machine?

HP:
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz processor
160 GB Serial ATA-300 hard disk drive, DVD±RW (±R DL) drive
1 GB of DDR II SDRAM memory

£390.99 ex VAT
£459.41 inc VAT

What cards would be nice to add?

Would this be better than building it from scratch perhaps?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What do you guys think of this for a system? add a couple of gigs of ram, a graphics card and a 5.1 card and i could be laughing as a vista/media centre trype machine?

HP:
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz processor
160 GB Serial ATA-300 hard disk drive, DVD±RW (±R DL) drive
1 GB of DDR II SDRAM memory

£390.99 ex VAT
£459.41 inc VAT

What cards would be nice to add?

Would this be better than building it from scratch perhaps?

Unless you can get an excellent deal(when buying the components would be SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive than the machine cost) I would build the system from scratch. Using this approach you can get decent components all-round and tailor the system to your particular needs. For instance many of the cheaper off the shelf systems will use very cheap power supplies and proprietary motherboards as a way of cutting costs.They also tend to use a bios with limited settings.If you can build your own system go for it!!

[merdat]

Yes, Building from 'scratch,' is more fun anyway.