PC Build - Budget £500 ish

[!TIMMY!]

I am trying to help my friend build a new PC for around £500.

We were thinking of an Intel E7200, 2gb DDR2, 4850.

The PC must have:

Dual Core CPU
2GB+ DDR2
4850
Blue Ray Drive
PSU - Powerful enough for 2 4850's (he wants to get another 4850 in the future
Intel motherboard (for crossfire)
Case - Big enough for 2 4850's
HD - 500GB+

The Yo Yo Tech Spartan 300 comes to around £540 with the above specs (and oced E7200 to 3.5ghz), but is prob cheaper and better to build one from scratch.

Can anyone help spec a PC please.

[staffsMike]

You pretty much want to build the spartan with a better CPU cooler..

Antec 300, Corsair 550W VX ~£90 or 650W TX (+£10)
E7200 + Xigmatec tower ~£95
2GB PC6400 ~ £30
LG Blu Ray ~£65
Asus P5Q PRO (xfire in 8x) ~£80
640GB Western Digital AAKS ~£50
HD4850 ~£110

Comes to about £520

[!TIMMY!]

Thanks staffsmike.

I think he will want 2 16x PCI-E slots. What's the cheapest he will be looking at for that?

[Webby]

If you want 2x 16x PCIe slots both at 16x rather than one running at 8x then you are going to be looking at an x38 or x48 board they will be more expensive, cheapest I have seen is ~£100 when on offer looking at Scan the cheapest on preorder is £110 and the cheapest in stock ~£115.

However, while this is the absolute best option in terms of crossfire you will probably not notice the difference between duel 16x and 8x, so if the budget can not really stretch the extra £30-40 then I would stick with the P45 board.

[!TIMMY!]

Cheers for the reply, I will let my friend know his options. Looks pretty sorted then.

[TAKTAK]

You pretty much want to build the spartan with a better CPU cooler..

Antec 300, Corsair 550W VX ~£90 or 650W TX (+£10)
E7200 + Xigmatec tower ~£95
2GB PC6400 ~ £30
LG Blu Ray ~£65
Asus P5Q PRO (xfire in 8x) ~£80
640GB Western Digital AAKS ~£50
HD4850 ~£110

Comes to about £520

+ a hoperating system...

[staffsMike]

+ a hoperating system...

Indeed but the OS money has gone on the Blu Ray drive, so it will still be cheaper than a spartan I guess..

[!TIMMY!]

He has XP, so didnt need that

[staffsMike]

http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f...-vs-p35-45871/

good read here, I was curious as to whether P45's 8x was much different to X38's 16x .. very interesting results

Seems P45 isn't all too bad to xfire

[NovaSphere]

http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f...-vs-p35-45871/

good read here, I was curious as to whether P45's 8x was much different to X38's 16x .. very interesting results

Seems P45 isn't all too bad to xfire

wow, didn't expect that at all, I knew the difference between x8 and x16 wasn't so big, but that the difference is so small is surprising...

[bibio]

Hi,thought there wasn't many if any GFX cards out at the moment,that could need more than PCI-e 1.0 x16,or at most just a shade over.
PCI- 2.0 x16(double bandwidth of PCI-e 1.0 x16),more for the future.
Not taking into account chipset performance,SLi,Crossfire etc.

Cheers BOB

[Webby]

Interesting read Mike from the conclusions drawn at the end it would suggest that P45 is the way to go for crossfire unless you have the cash to splash out on a X48 board which is going to be at least £135 (based on prices from Scan).

So for the OP stick with P45 as I don't think the budget allows for an X48 board!

[Blitzen]

I would take that review with a big pinch of salt.

[staffsMike]

Well there is the conclusion to the tweektown review.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/14...nce/index.html

Pretty unbiased.

What I take from it, is that when you get into very high settings and high resolutions the differences become very apparent, in the favour of the X48, probably x38 too).

I never though P45 was the xfire solution, but I don't think the results are bad at all.

[poo417]

Unless you have ALOT of GFX power and cpu to go with it you will notice very little difference going with 2 x 8 vs 2 x16. I can't remember the exact numbers but it takes alot of information to fill up a x8 lane. On a £500 build I would not worry about it.

Poo