Budget Build - Please check

[marksct]

Hi guys

I am building a new pc for uni on a budget of as low as possible! but about £600 - £650 excluding monitor/os/keyboard/mouse

Heres the parts I have selected, could you check them please and make suggestions if needed.

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4-955-BlackEdition AM3
MB: either Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P AM3
or GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3
RAM: 4GB CorsairTwinX DDR 1333MHz
HD: 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 16MB Cache 11-ms
GPU: 1GB XFX-HD 4890 (3900MHz)
PSU: Please suggest one!! I have no idea what I need, or whats a good one...
Case: Antec 300 Case
DVD Drive: Samsung DVD writer

With the cheaper MB that is £525.71 without the PSU
Will post links after the 5 posts thingy if they are needed.

All items are from SCAN

Thanks for any help

[LegacyOne]

Since the X4 955 can run DDR2 and with their no gain with DDR3 (faster does not mean faster) and in and runs in a AM2+ you could save a lot and go with a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P or Asus M3A79-T Deluxe.

As for a PSU do you plan to do Crossfire? If not 520W Corsair HX (Modular) or 550w Corsair VX will do.

[Blitzen]

As for a PSU do you plan to do Crossfire? If not 520W Corsair HX (Modular) or 550w Corsair VX will do.

He said 'budget' rig.
The HX520 certainly is budget at the over inflated price it goes for.

[scaryjim]

He said 'budget' rig.

If it's meant to be a budget build I'd say he's already gone over the top, personally £650 is hardly a "budget" build. Given the other components selected I don't think either of those PSUs are off the wall suggestions... On the other hand, anything 400W upwards will do the job: just don't buy generic / value PSUs as you've no guarantee what you're getting. Some work fine, but some just blow up! Budget PSUs really are a false economy.

Also, as LegacyOne says, there's no great gain going AM3 / DDR3 vs AM2+ / DDR2, but the price difference isn't that huge any more so it's as much personal preference as anything.

Now, if I was looking at a budget build, I'd go for a Phenom II X3 instead, with this Gigabyte 770 UD3 motherboard and this DDR2 1066 4GB memory kit. I'd also trade down the 4890 in favour of a 4870, perhap even a 512MB version.

However, as I've already said, £650 for a base unit isn't exactly budget, so there's not a lot wrong with what you've picked. I'd definitely go with the 790X mobo rather than the 770, and you might want to change that Hard drive for something a bit beefier - 1TB drives are ~ £60 now so I'd recommend maybe a Samsung F1 1TB.

[Iron Sights]

Firstly what are you mainly going to be using this pc for....

If your planning to crossfire in the future then go with the GA-MA790XT-UD4P

[Whiternoise]

Corsair and Enermax will do you fine. As scaryjim mentioned, unless you want to go crossfire or add a lot of high end components, anything above 500W is probably overkill. Enermax do a high-efficiency 425W (it's what i've got at the moment).

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W-...-year-Warranty

or

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400W-...PeakPower-440W

Are two "expensive" PSU's around that region. There are plenty around the £40-50 mark that are from reliable manufacturers.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400W-...822-dBA-min%29 400W Silverstone - £40

There are also loads from Akasa in the 400-500W range.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hi guys

I am building a new pc for uni on a budget of as low as possible! but about £600 - £650 excluding monitor/os/keyboard/mouse

Heres the parts I have selected, could you check them please and make suggestions if needed.

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4-955-BlackEdition AM3
MB: either Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P AM3
or GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3
RAM: 4GB CorsairTwinX DDR 1333MHz
HD: 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 16MB Cache 11-ms
GPU: 1GB XFX-HD 4890 (3900MHz)
PSU: Please suggest one!! I have no idea what I need, or whats a good one...
Case: Antec 300 Case
DVD Drive: Samsung DVD writer

With the cheaper MB that is £525.71 without the PSU
Will post links after the 5 posts thingy if they are needed.

All items are from SCAN

Thanks for any help

The build is certainly fine although I would go for a Samsung F1 drive instead:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1TB-S...ache-89-ms-NCQ

I would try and get the 770 motherboard also if you are not interested in crossfire as it has had excellent reviews and performance and overclocking capability seems around the same as 790 series motherboards:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/985/1/

http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigaby...rboard-review/


I have an HX520W and it is an excellent PSU although I would go for one of the Enermax ones for a similar price:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500W-...PeakPower-550W

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/525W-...uard-SafeGuard

I would personally go for a decent 500w as you will have more room for upgrades in the future. Also the PSU will be relatively unstressed too which is good too - remember that PSU output falls over a couple of years due to component ageing and also at higher ambient temperatures.

[marksct]

ok thanks for the feedback

Firstly I dont plan on crossfire
The PC will be for working/web browsing etc, but also for gaming in holidays
I had in mind that it should be able to run modern warfare 2 very well.

the reason I went with AM3 and DDR3 was to make it more upgradable, so that in a few years I could just change the cpu, since hopefully amd will still be using am3 for a while...

should i not bother with this and just get ddr2/amd2+ and a lower cpu and then
replace the mb, cpu and ram in a few years?

as the gpu, I wanted a really good one now, so that it wouldn't need upgrading for at least 3 years, if not 4

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

With the cost of DDR3 and AM3 motherboards plummeting I would go for them instead of the DDR2 and an AM2+ motherboard as there is a slight performance increase with DDR3 RAM. I would also stay with what you got as for around £147 the Phenom II X4 955 is excellent value. For £41 more you are getting 400mhz more on each core and an additional core too. IMHO the Phenom II X4 955 should be good enough for a few years and with games like ARMA II making use of multiple cores it makes sense and simply the longer you can go between major system overhauls(motherboard,CPU and RAM) the less hassle it is too!

With GPUs you need to upgrade every two years or so if you want to play the latest games at decent settings usually. With DX11 coming out and the speed at which graphics cards development is going even an HD4890 is not going to be very fast in 2011.

[marksct]

With the cost of DDR3 and AM3 motherboards plummeting I would go for them instead of the DDR2 and an AM2+ motherboard as there is a slight performance increase with DDR3 RAM.

OK.
You mention the price going down. I dont actually NEED this pc until spetember, so should I wait until late august before buying? will prices go down between now and then?

thanks

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OK.
You mention the price going down. I dont actually NEED this pc until spetember, so should I wait until late august before buying? will prices go down between now and then?

thanks

Build the PC later when you need it as in theory you should get better value for money IMHO. Intel are also releasing the Core i5 too(not sure exactly when though) so prices may start to drop a bit more on AMD Phenom II processors and Core2 quads.

It will also give you some more time to post on Hexus as you can get free postage after 20 posts from Scan!!

[Saulje]

I'm basically in the same boat with budget pc components^^ after reading this thread i will nt need phenom x4 for awhile and i'll go with an x2 550 BE instead.

I'd love to have x3 720 phenom priced at £93 ex vat for an extra 20 pounds i doubt it would be worth the performance boost while prices continues to drop. If i was you i'd go for the x3 720 if your not going to OC you seem to have the money for it^^

[Vimeous]

Remember if you're going for the 4890 you'll need 2x 6pin power leads ruling out many of the budget PSUs.
The 450W HX is about the smallest I'd suggest.
Do you need modular? If not you'll save cash.

+1 on the 1Tb Samsung F1.
Make sure it's the right version though as they now do three different 1Tb drives.

Case wise I'd go for a CM590 if you can find it at the same price as the Antec.

[shaneyp]

Just throwing this out there and im sure your aware but i'd suggest an Artic Cooling Freezer 64 pro it's worth the £17 if you want to OC your cpu etc.

[marksct]

If i was you i'd go for the x3 720 if your not going to OC you seem to have the money for it^^

What do people think about thiss cpu?
is it like a x4 955 but with 3 cores? so would there be any real difference in performance (seeing as im not encoding videos etc)

i would be willing to o/c a bit, since it seems to be very easy, so should I just get the x3 720 and o/c it a bit?

thanks

[marksct]

oh and, how much can you o/c before you need a different-than-stock cooler?