Budget PC, recommendations wanted.

[soljuh]

Hi, im new here.. I just want to know what hardware would be the best and the most reliable for the money I have.

Im working with around £340

what Im thinking so far is this:

Casecom Black Mid Tower Case - £20
ASUS M3A 770 Socket AM2+ - £47
Crucial 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL6 - £29
Hi-Power Black 700W 14cm Blue LED Fan PSU - £47
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ - £44
Seagate ST3250310AS 250GB Hard Drive - £31
Zotac 8800GT AMP Edition - £97
Sony DRU-190S 20X DVD±RW DL & DVD-RAM - £17

Total - £332

If you can think of some better stuff please post here.
I dont really want an ATI card, as I have had problems with them in the past. an Nvidia card is more reliable to me.

[Zhaoman]

2 very well recieved super-budget cases:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=541780
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=660781

A nice new AMD chipset mobo:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=848860

87% efficient award winning PSU:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=801618

Popular energy efficient processor:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=807038

Low latency RAM:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=402849

Add the GPU of you're choice and you're sorted mate!

edit: and Hard Drive, DVD drive etc...

edit again: oops goes a tiny bit over budget, but you could get a 9600GT which will perform just as well.

[staffsMike]

I would change the case and PSU to an antec combo such as the Antec NSK 3480 (for a uATX mobo).

£55 gets you a nice case designed to be quiet and very cool with a decent 380W PSU, you can go a bit further and get a full ATX version with a 430W PSU though (more than you need).

I'd go with the abit 780G motherboard
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=845045

or something similar to the 740G board mentioned above.

The PSU you mentioned is quite frankly rubbish and and a waste of money. You don't need that sort of power (which that PSU probably won't deliver anyway) and you are much better off with lower output higher quality PSU's which the one in the antec combo is.. to a point.

So that's

Antec NSK 3480 ~£55
780G mobo ~£45
5000+ ~£44 (I like that chip but the energy efficent 45w one's are nice too, as cheap as £40 for the 2.3GHz)
2GB RAM ~£30 (lower latency is better with AMD's)
250GB HDD ~£30 (i'd go for Western Digital if you could but what ever works for you)
Optical ~£15

That leaves enough for the ATi HD4850 which is an awesome card at around £110

Total is around £330. I'd use the extra £10 on a 320GB single platter hard drive or towards an Arctic cooling acclero for the HD4850, make it nice and cool and quiet.

[mediaboy]

Amazing the difference it what you can buy for £350 over 6 months or so.

I remember looking at this price range when I first decided to buy a computer (about 9-12 months ago) and started saving up for it.

Maybe I just didn't get onto the forums quick enough.

If you've got the time, and the extra power/cooling, consider getting a 5000+ BE and overclocking. It's £5-10 more (depending on whether or not Scan have it in stock) but you can clock it (from default 2.5) to about 2.7/2.8 without any problems (I was using a £3 cooling system, in my Xclio case, and still managed to hit 2.745 without problems. Was pushing it at 2.8 though)

If you don't want to OC then stick with the normal 5000+.

Although you could go up a model to the 5200+, the performance difference isn't really worth it methinks.

I'd say ~£30 for 2GB RAM might be excessive on a budget computer. I got mine for £24
Of course, it depends on speed/latency and I'm not sure what speeds etc. the 780G supports, and what sort of RAM you want. It's a matter of more money=slightly more performance though, at least in theory, so it's up to you whether or not you spend the extra bit of money.

[staffsMike]

The 5000+ BE wen't EOL a while back I believe. They are great chips though, plenty capable enough of an OC to 3.0GHz if it's a brisbane core.

[mediaboy]

Ah... would explain why I can't find them online any more

Mine went funny eventually. Bad cooling methinks (the cooling system vibrated, as I later found out) but not sure.

OCed, like I said, to 2.8ghz. Brisbane.

[soljuh]

Thankyou very much for the help! extremely quick support.

Do you get free delivery on scan.co.uk?

[aidanjt]

Active Hexus forum users can get free delivery from scan to the mainland, you need 30 posts or more iirc.

[staffsMike]

You need 20 posts here to get it. It did breifly change to them requiring just a hexus account but you must get to 20 posts again if you want free delivery.

[soljuh]

What size cache will I need for the hard drive? This is a first time build, ive only had a little guidance from relatives, close friends etc.

[staffsMike]

The more the better really but whatever you get I'm sure you won't notice a huge difference.

[Zhaoman]

the bigger the better! (the bigger the faster I should say )

16Mb should be a good size at that capacity.

[soljuh]

Right, could anybody post some links to 160GB-250GB hard drives.. Im finding it quite hard to find one that I know will definitely work, as Im not very experienced at building computers.

[colmo]

I agree almost point-for-point with staffsMike's list, though I would recommend the Antec 4480 instead - I went for the 3480, and it is a bit pokey. I'm wondering where I'm going to mount a third hard-drive in it, and the IDE DVD-RW is rammed almost flush against the PSU, causing cabling the thing to be a headache. It's beautifully made of rolled steel, though, and looks quite good too.

[colmo]

I too-hastily pasted a link from Dabs to a drive I thought was single platter. I've gone back and searched for correct example, and found this one:

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...avigationKey=0

Note that Dabs have free delivery on orders over £99 (they do surcharge for delivery to more remote areas, but it is relatively small at about £4)

Edit: If you can stretch your budget a bit (£20), this 640Gb drive is a better bet in terms of £ per Gb:

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...avigationKey=0

[staffsMike]

That 320GB is still the dual platter version not single.