New Gaming/Home PC Rig

[Jasp]

Ok Mother has asked me to build a PC with a budget of around £850, like all my budgets iv'e overshot it by £50 lol, this includes monitor/keyboard/mouse/speakers the whole lot. Primary use is gaming and has to last roughly 2-3 years. Forgot to mention the PC is to be run stock, no overclocking.

CPU: AMD 955BE £158.69
Motherboard: Asus Crosshair Formula III AM3 £143.74 *Edit* Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P £98.43
Memory: 4Gb Corsair XMS 3 DDR3 1333mhz £53.02
HD: WD Black 500gb £45.41
GFX Card: ATI 4890 £143.74
PSU: Corsair 650TX £72.04
Case: CM Scout Storm £79.98
Monitor: Asus 22" 1680X1050 £117.27
DVD Writer: £16.09
Floppy/Media Reader: £18.73
Keyboard/Mouse/Speakers : £29.76

Total : £878.48 *Edit* £833.17

Any recommedations or anything i could do better? i know i could swap the motherboard to something a tad cheaper it just seems a shame when its such a cracking price for it lol.

[Syd]

Is this Hexus' first Official hard core gaming Mum

[Jasp]

Well its for my sister really, their stuggling at the moment on a Nvidia 8300 and to upgrade the current PC makes no sense, as i'd be looking at case/gfx card/power supply as the case currently has no fans and is generic PC world crap lol.

Just thought its gonna be upstairs so gonna need a wireless card as well lol.

[staffsMike]

That looks pretty awesome tbh. The graphics card will eat that resolution for breakfast at the moment, so it should last a long time

[ed^chigliak]

If your not going to use the features of the motherboard then buy a cheaper one because it will not be any slower running the games. You're not overclocking so the motherboard doesn't need to be anything special. If you intend to stick with a single GPU and maybe replace it with a better GPU it's another good reason to get a cheaper non-crossfire motherboard but more importantly you only need 500W PSU. If the 500GB WD black is not a single platter drive then a 640GB drive will be faster. I'd say the HD4870 1GB would be more than enough for 1680x1050 so you could save a bit more. The case seems expensive too and I'd go cheaper especially if I thought I could save enough over the whole build for a high quality IPS monitor like the Dell 2209WA. The screen is what you look at so you should get the best you can IMO.

[Jasp]

Well had a look at some other cases and the other other two that spring to mind are the Antec 300 which is about £30 cheaper or the Coolermaster V2 690 which is about £18 cheaper, they don't seem to offer the same lvl of cable management as the scout though.

Also would a HX520 power the rig instead of the 650tx, quite like the idea of modular for cable management.

[jim]

See no reason why the HX520 wouldn't work, it's a good PSU, and it probably wouldn't be taxed all that much.

Looks like a very good build so far.

[ed^chigliak]

That scout case in the eyes of my sister would be big black and ugly. I don't think she would care about tidy cables on the inside either. Cases are a personal choice and that case looks like your personal preference. I'll bet your sister would choose something smaller and less machotastic. I think the way to go to impress the ladies is a cute little micro ATX system. You don't need a big case for 1xHDD and 1xGPU and a 780G micro ATX motherboard would work just as well.

[Jasp]

Shes a funny one my sister lol, either way i think the CM 690 V2 fits better in the budget and offers a little more bang for buck after some reading, plus as you say its a little less macho.