Super Price Challenge

[DougMcDonald]

Hi Guys,

I must admit, this is a bit of a lazy post.

I've got a friend who's come from an old celeron with 256 ram and an ATi9800pro (which he upgraded a year or so ago)

He's got somewhere in the region of £200-250 to spend getting something a little better.

Originally, he was looking for simply a mobo, cpu and ram (we think between the two of us we can russle up a case) - I've got a reasonable spare PSU he can have and we have 100GB of old IDE drives that can be used if need be.

Really he wants a decent CPU, mobo and RAM for about £200, ideally with a cheap(ish) gfx card, or something that can re-use his old AGP 9800.

So, the question is, should we try and squeeze a SATA HDD into the equation, and a cheapo GFX card, or simply go all out on the CPU, mobo and ram, with AGP capibility and leave him to sort the GFX himself.

Personally, i would favour improving the gfx, even if a low level pci-e card, as most things will be an improvement. Any suggestions?

He's not expecting top range performance, for that budget, i would think not! but overclocking a lower spec chip would be ideal to keep the cost down and give a decent performance.

As I say, any ideas suggestions warmly appreciated. I will post some suggested ideas in the next couple of days, but anything to get us started would be a help, cheers, xx

[WannaPiEcE]

mmmhmmm he needs a SATA

Most new mobos wont even boot from an IDE HD

[WannaPiEcE]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16819103747- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2.2GHz - $82.50

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128045 - GIGABYTE GA-M61SME-S2 Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 - $49.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144415 - Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB - 50.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130062 - EVGA 256-P2-N615-TX GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported - $89.99

Total: 273.47

Worth it for the price? IMO yes

added: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231098 - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 - $88.99

With ram: $362.46

*Btw this is about as cheap as I can get while still being a decent setup ;p

[Rosaline]

I had taken a screenshot of this quick and dirty basket, but I can't log into my hosting site right now

The following component selection is not intended as advice for specific components, but rather a proof of concept that such a cheap order may well be viable:

256MB Palit 7600GT PCI-E (x16), Mem 1400 MHz, GPU 560 MHz, 12 Pipes, D-Sub Dual Link DVI HDTVSLiFan
£50.99, w/VAT £59.91

Intel Core 2 Duo E4400, Socket 775, 2.0 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail
£63.69, w/VAT £74.84

Gigabyte GA 965GM-S2 iG965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, uATX, VGA
£48.69, w/VAT £57.21

2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5300 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15
£42.54, w/VAT £49.98

Total comes to £248.98 including VAT

I spent more on the graphics card than I would have liked, but the above model should be nicely more powerful than your friend's 9800pro.

However it should be noted that Wanna may have a good point, and a cheap SATA drive would be also needed. This would only stretch to roughly £40 for a very large one (they seem to start at only £24, however), and the addition of a cheap but effective cooler such as the artic cooling freezer 7 pro would cost another £15 but allow your friend to nicely overclock that E4400

Finding a motherboard that will support modern, low cost processors and also AGP seems to be quite a challenge. This board may just be able to manage, and would certainly free up a useful amount of additional money. However the absence of PCI-E will seriously limit the possibilities, if your friend would be looking to consider upgrading in the future.

Edit: Scratch that, AMD is rather good when it comes to value! A new suggestion coming soon to a new post near you!

[Rosaline]

As promised, a new rough fit, this time based on AMD:

(again, I'm not very knowledgeable about components yet, take this more a price guide than as an actual listing of what to buy)

AMD AM2 Athlon 64 4000+ Socket AM2, 2.1GHz, 2x 512KB Cache, Retail
£35.49, w/VAT £41.70

MSI K9VGM-V, VIA K8M890, S AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA I, SATA/IDE RAID, uATX
£27.94, w/VAT £32.83

256MB Palit 7600GT PCI-E (x16), Mem 1400 MHz, GPU 560 MHz, 12 Pipes, D-Sub Dual Link DVI HDTVSLiFan
£50.99, w/VAT £59.91

2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5300 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15
£42.54, w/VAT £49.98

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro V2 - (Socket 754, 939, AM2) + ALL AMD Opteron
£10.49, w/VAT £12.33

200 Gb Western Digital WD2000JS Caviar SE, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.9 ms £32.00, w/VAT £37.60

That comes to a total of £241.39 including VAT and delivery (£5.99, which you should be able to get for free from scan ). As before, I've forked out for a nice graphics card, and I've included a SATA drive and a CPU cooler this time. You may well wish to leave out a cpu cooler, and use the money saved and what remained to pick up a higher speed processor.

I'm actually quite surprised by what's possible on a tight budget!

[Thorsson]

The big question is whether he's a gamer. The need for gfx suggests that he is (and this would be no challenge if we don't need decent gfx). That being the case the 9800 is now too long in the tooth (4 years and three generations old) and AGP to boot. You don't want to be buying an AGP mobo at this point. For games gfx isn't the main thing, it's the only thing.

So this is the lowest level I would go with gfx:

256MB Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1400MHz GDDR3, GPU 580MHz, 36Pipes, Dual DVI, TV-Out £86.94

Clearly AMD is the way to go, as they own the budget end of the market. Mobo is the first thing to pick. The one chosen by Rosaline has on board graphics, which is no good for our purposes. The cheapest I could find was this board, which also has SATA 2 and 4 memory slots:

Asrock ALiveSATA2-GLAN, VIA K8T890, S AM2, PCI-E x16, DDR2 533/667/800, SATA I / II, SATA RAID, ATX £38.06

We want 2Gb RAM as everything runs much smoother with that. I can't fault Rosaline's suggestion here, so that's another £49.98 spent.

The question is what AM2 CPU. Well the price changes are very gradual, so really it depends exactly what you want to spend. I would go with this one:

AMD AM2 Athlon 64 5000 + Brisbane Core, Dual Core 2.6GHz, 2x 512KB Cache, Retail £76.13
because it has the newer "Brisbane" core.

The total for these is £251.11 including VAT, and is quite a decent gaming machine.

Contrary to other suggestions I would not buy new HDDs, as I don't think they are necessary. This motherboard comes with 2 IDE headers. If you were to buy one then this is the one I'd choose:

250 Gb Western Digital WD2500AAJS Caviar SE, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 9 ms £39.12

Smaller drives are very poor value for money.

[mrt9888]

The AM2 4000+ in Rosaline's is also a Brisbane core so you could get that instead of the 5000+

[DougMcDonald]

Thanks for the pointers guys,

In answe to his usage, he's a freelance graphic designer by trade, so wants something that will comfortably run adobe CS etc, but he also games and wan'ts something that will run most (not neccessarily all) new(ish) games to at least a reasonable level (super vague!!)

I suppose more specifically, he's only got a 17" monitor at the moment and isn't in the market for anything newer quite yet, but its not restricted to 1280x1024 (although i suspect anything bigger would be near invisible!)

HDD advice is useful, but we probably will end up getting a SATA drive, since i have my suspisions that one of his IDE drives is on the way out. We may just keep the other for storage for the time being.

I think the 1950 series would be a good bet for games, I will search about for a XT at a reasonable price I think, seem good for mid range card.
Has everyone ruled out the 7900-esk cards? I thought a 7900GT could be got for under £100 these days?

[MrP]

from aria

Elixir 1GB PC2-6400 #24474 £ 17.95 £ 17.95
Elixir 1GB PC2-6400 #24474 £ 24.95 £ 24.95
Jetway ATi Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB #27834 £ 54.95 £ 54.95
XFX N650-IUL9 socket 775 #28093 £ 47.95 £ 47.95
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2GHz (775) #27049 £ 63.50 £ 63.50


Cart Total £ 209.30
VAT £ 36.63
Total £ 245.93

[Thorsson]

7900GT are hard to get. Current card is 7900GS which is around £100, but not as fast I think.

BTW my prices were from Scan which isn't that cheap for lower-end components. Aria looks like a better bet, as shown by Mr P. But I wouldn't go C2D unless he wants to do real OC.

[DougMcDonald]

Elixir 1GB PC2-6400 #24474 £ 17.95 £ 17.95
Elixir 1GB PC2-6400 #24474 £ 24.95 £ 24.95

How Bizarre! I'll have two of the £17.95 ones please!

[Blitzen]

mmmhmmm he needs a SATA

Most new mobos wont even boot from an IDE HD

Yes they will.
They are just limited to one IDE channel.

[Thorsson]

How Bizarre! I'll have two of the £17.95 ones please!

And who are Elixir? I'd rather have a name I knew on my RAM for the sake of a few £s.

[MrP]

How Bizarre! I'll have two of the £17.95 ones please!

probably my mistake when i copyed, pasted and edited.

And who are Elixir? I'd rather have a name I knew on my RAM for the sake of a few £s.

there ok, i have used them before in my rigs.

probably not up to any OC action, but there not some no name ebay stuff

[Rosaline]

On the hard drive point of view, given the apparent age of your friend's system, I would strongly recommend getting a new hard drive. Not only will it last longer, but hard drive technology has moved on massively. After our rather old (five years...) IDE drives failed, we replaced them with a fairly average by modern standards IDE drive. You wouldn't think the difference would be that noticeable, but features like caching have really helped to make these old computers feel a little more sparky.

Also, given the age I suspect their computer to be, a new hard drive would allow more storage space! You could even keep the old one, too, for less important things to sit on.

I honestly don't think that for the £37 you would save by not getting a new hard drive, any other improvements could be made that would be as significant as an effective hard drive that will last a good few years.

[Pob255]

If you've got a couple of 512mb ddr sticks kicking about and a decent AGP card an ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA motherboard is great for step-by-step upgradeing, although they've stoped makeing that line so it hard to find them now
Found one on aria [url]http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+775+(Intel)/Asrock+4CoreDual-VSTA+775+Motherboards+?productId=26474[url] £39.24

One lazy option is novatech's preinstalled motherboard bundels http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/bundles.html not the cheapest but it's all put together.

A cheap 7900GS should be under £100 although an x1950pro should be slightly cheaper.
Both of thoes will happly cope with the majority of games at 1280x1024

If that 17" monitor is tft then it's not going to be over 1280x1024, if it's a CRT then 1280x1024 is pushing it in terms of size
Just to calarify, I'm on a 19"CRT atm (due to my 17"tft dieing) the 19" is the size of the tube not the viewable area, the viewable area is actually 17.9"
The actual viewable area on a 17" CRT is 15"-16" and the safe max without causeing eye strain would be 1152x864

From ebuyer
ASUS P5B £59.75
Corsair XMS2 2GB Kit CL4 £54.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 £76.50
EVGA 7900GS KO Edition 256MB £89.99
or
Sapphire X1950Pro 256MB £90.20

£281 just over budget

Going through Aria
ASUS P5B 775 Motherboard £56.34 (on SuperSpecial offer)
Patriot 2GB PC2-5300 Extreme Performance (2x1GB) £54.94
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 £74.61
ATi Radeon X1950 PRO 256MB £82.19 (the card is from PowerColor)
or
EVGA GeForce 7900GS KO 256MB £76.32 (on SuperSpecial offer)

£269 or £263 still slightly over

To save a bit you could get 2 of the Elixir 1GB PC2-6400 £21.09 (on SuperSpecial offer) while it's not a great brand it's higher rated so should be more resilient if you overclock (the FSB not the memory) and I've found that in general cheap brand memory works well aslong as you don't push it past it's specs and getting over spec'd and underclocking it massivly increases it's life span.