Sub £500 Gaming PC - When to pull trigger

[rainsong]

Hey everyone, just a quick question:

I can either build this PC now or possibly hang on for a couple of months using my crappy laptop. What I'd like to know is whether anyone thinks the prices of the components are likely to change considerably by about mid-June... I may as well build it now if prices aren't going to drop much.

I want to dual boot Vista/Ubuntu, will get heavy use for study, home business, games, music etc. Any recommendations for improvements would be much welcomed. Here it is (current total £480 inc VAT and delivery):


Antec P182 Advanced Super Mid Tower - No PSU Black
£84.95

Corsair Memory 550W VX PSU
£55.41

Gigabyte S775 Intel P35-DS3L ATX Audio Lan DDRII FSB1333
£62.39

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2180 2.0GHz 1M Cache S775 800MH
£51.67

OCZ Technology 2x1GB 240DIMM PC2-6400 DDR2 Platinum
£34.89

BFG Graphics GeForce 9600GT OC 512MB GDDR3 PCIE DVI 675/1.8GHz
£115.05

Western Digital Green Power Caviar 500GB 7200RPM S300 16MB
£62.14


Thanks for taking a look

[DDY]

Looks OK to me, you could pay £20 less if you change some components but overall not a bad basket.

[NightshadowUK]

The spec looks good although I'd be tempted to swap the motherboard for an Abit IP-35 Dark Raider as I've not been impressed by the Gigabyte's P35 boards. Oh and what about an aftermarket CPU cooler?

As for price drops, Intel plan to make some cuts in April (Fudzilla - Intel to cut its prices on April 20th) but it won't make much difference to your build.

[Thorsson]

I don't think the Intel price cuts will affect the chips at the bottom very much, about a fiver. Everything else, the price won't really decrease in 3 months. You've got nothing bleeding edge there, prices are quite steady, and there's nothing "nextgen" due until Nehalem (effectively almost a year away).

[staffsMike]

No dvd drive?

I would go with.

Antec Sonata III + 500w Earthwatts PSU - £70
Intel Q6600 + Scythe Mine - £170
2GB PC6400 ~£30
Abit IP35 dark raider ~70 (but can be found for £60 on scan today only a lot)
500GB Western Digital AAKS (wouldn't bother with that green rubbish) ~£60

ATi HD3850pro 512mb or Geforce 9600GT ~£100

That's leaving the the DVD drive as you have and comes to a pretty even £500.

You lose the brilliant case for a pretty nice one (still antec )

PSU is pretty good, probably not as quiet as the corsair but quiet enough.

You gain, quad core and overclocking potential with the decent cooler.

Personally I would add £30 and get 4GB of RAM while it's so cheap

[-iceblade^]

GREAT build, staffs. add in perhaps a £25 and get an 8800GT for that price

[staffsMike]

Yep it's a great building block for making a budget build for giving a lot of power while maintaining a great level of quality

[-iceblade^]

these price drops are beginning to irritate me - i could have bought that system just one month ago instead of using the one i have now

on second thought, i think that build ought to be stickied for a bit . there seem to be quite a good number of threads asking for help around that price range, and i don't see anything that can come close to matching that level of performance...

[rainsong]

Wow thanks everyone for all the help. Here's how it's looking now, prices from scan, I think it should tide me over nicely until Nehalem arrives...

Antec Sonata 3 - £78 (good call, £60 saving vs the P182+psu, and smaller)
Abit IP35 Dark Raider - £70
Intel E2180 - £50 (don't think I'd take advantage of the extra £120 worth of power on the Q6600 + mine)
4gb PC6400 - £63
320gb spinpoint - £48
512MB MSI 9600GT, OC - £120

Total: £440 - leaving spare change for Vista :|

Is it necessary to get a better cpu cooler if I want to OC the E2180 a bit? I heard you can easily get it to 2.5ghz+

I have a spare IDE DVD drive lying around which I was going to use. Is SATA all that much better? (yes I haven't built a pc in a while...)

The only thing that I could regret is the 9600gt... I can feel it in my bones that the price is going to drop in the next couple of weeks....

[Pob255]

Well yet again no OS, so many people gameing on linux

But to gloss over that, Personally I'd go for
A cheaper case (yes it's nice but a bit overkill, spending more on the case than the cpu)
drop down to the Corsair VX450w, it'll still power that pc fine
Must say that Antec Sonata with earthwatts is a great deal.
With the money saved onto a better CPU (a quad core might be a bit overkill, how about a e6550 for £106 or e6750 for £118)
and maybe a 8800GT

[DDY]

SATA is not better performance wise for optical drives but very handy since SATA cables are smaller and easier to plug/unplug compared to IDE, a new SATA DVD-RW drive is only around £15 so it's a good time to pick one up.

On_teh_cheap the Arctic Cooling 7 Pro is a decent HSF to get 2.5GHz+, it's only £15 in most places.

[-iceblade^]

though it must be said, the stock heatsink is good for a 2.5ghz OC. on a budget this tight, every little helps (Tesco).

and why buy a 6750, Pob, when an OC will get very similar performance for a much lower price?

[Pob255]

nooooo the best for cheap aftermarket cooling is Akasa AK-965x3 it's just as good and just over £10
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

must admit to not noticeing much differnce between my old IDE dvd and my new SATA dvd (except sata cables are eaiser to plug/unplug and thinner) and £15 is £15
esp when Scan does an EVGA 8800GT for £140
Although these small costs can add up, depends on what resolution you're planning on gaming at as to wether or not that extra is worth it.

I'd also sugest the MSI P35 NEO2-fr it's not a bad motherboard at all. (although no Hexus care forum support that Abit get)

[Pob255]

Actually you might be right there, the e2180 has a higher multiplier so should oc well, 2.5 with out breaking a sweat.
I know it has a samller cashe memory 1mb vs 4mb but what effect this has in actual games if both are clocked to the smae speed I'm not sure.

But I do know that stick a e6750 in an Abit IP-35 and it's default settings automatically overclocks it to 2.9ghz.
Which is why I mentioned it, you can get it to 3.2ghz without doing anything serious on thoes specs.

[DanceswithUnix]

Actually you might be right there, the e2180 has a higher multiplier so should oc well, 2.5 with out breaking a sweat.
I know it has a samller cashe memory 1mb vs 4mb but what effect this has in actual games if both are clocked to the smae speed I'm not sure..

The difference from 2xxx to 4xxx appears to be about 5%, so the gap to 6xxx will be bigger still. However, I would still buy the cheap CPU and put the money towards maxxing the GPU.

Either way up, I'm sure it will be a very nice machine.

[rainsong]

thanks all, how do I do the forum thank? the special thank that shows on your profiles?

Wish I had the free delivery from scan... spinpoints are on the 'today only' offer... Need to get making productive posts...