New Gaming Rig £450 Budget : Suggestions?

[sammorris]

I know the E5 does, not sure about the E7 - I was initially worried about this, until I realised there's no hardware support in Virtual Windows in Win7, which is the only time I can see most people using virtualisation, so I don't see where I'd use it...

[Cheapy]

When I was looking at building mine about a month ago my orginal list for £400 was

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition - £74.74
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...MHz-85W-Retail

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P - £68.98
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/GIGAB...770T-UD3P-MOBO

Case: Coolermaster RC-330 Elite - £28.97
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coole...Scan-Exclusive

Extra fan: 120mm AKASA AK-191SM fan - £4.01
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/120mm...value-case-fan

Graphics card: 512MB XFX HD 4850 XXX - £79.91
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...VI-XXX-EDITION

Power supply: 450W Corsair HX Power Supply (modular) - £56.87
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W-...-year-Warranty

Hard drive: 320 GB Samsung HD322HJ Spinpoint F1 - £33.89
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/320-G...MB-Cache-89-ms

Memory: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS3 DDR3 1333 Memory - £56.47
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-(...d-CAS-9-9-9-24

Comes to £403.84 altogthere for a AM3 platform that can handle most games out there on high to meduium settings. Dont forget the optical drive though as I salvaged mine from my old machine. Feel free to pull this build apart

[sammorris]

Not much to fault in that build really. A little thin on the hard disk space these days for a gaming PC, but apart from that it looks good (I say this becaue a 500GB drive would have been an extra £7 or so)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

When I was looking at building mine about a month ago my orginal list for £400 was

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition - £74.74
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...MHz-85W-Retail

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P - £68.98
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/GIGAB...770T-UD3P-MOBO

Case: Coolermaster RC-330 Elite - £28.97
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coole...Scan-Exclusive

Extra fan: 120mm AKASA AK-191SM fan - £4.01
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/120mm...value-case-fan

Graphics card: 512MB XFX HD 4850 XXX - £79.91
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...VI-XXX-EDITION

Power supply: 450W Corsair HX Power Supply (modular) - £56.87
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W-...-year-Warranty

Hard drive: 320 GB Samsung HD322HJ Spinpoint F1 - £33.89
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/320-G...MB-Cache-89-ms

Memory: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS3 DDR3 1333 Memory - £56.47
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-(...d-CAS-9-9-9-24

Comes to £403.84 altogthere for a AM3 platform that can handle most games out there on high to meduium settings. Dont forget the optical drive though as I salvaged mine from my old machine. Feel free to pull this build apart

Great build for the price IMHO. Remember that there is also the Vapor X HD4850 for a few quid more from Novatech. You maybe also able to unlock the CPU to a quad core too!

[barney_2k]

Ok well ive been speccing up all day at work, probably been through about 100000000 setups, but i think ive decided on this



What does everyone think?

That mobo / CPU combo should allow me to unlock the extra cores on the 550, and if it doesnt then oh well, i still have a 2 core highly overclockable mobo/cpu combo

Will that PSU be enough? I should hope so

Let me know what you think people!?!?!

P.S. Thanks for everyones advice today, been a great help!

[sammorris]

I'd recommend a WD1001FALS over the HD103UJ, I don't know if they ever fixed the controller issues. Rest of the build looks fine.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The build looks fine to me too.

[joel_spencer]

If you do fancy the look of the Coolermaster Elite 330 there's a bundle with a 460w PSU (Quite a good model) for about 50. But the future upgrade capacity will be limited as with any sub 500w PSU.

[barney_2k]

Have you got a link for that joel? Would like to see that!

Is it a today only offer on scan?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Have you got a link for that joel? Would like to see that!

Is it a today only offer on scan?

Here is the link for the various Coolermaster case bundles with 460w PSU:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168628

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161317

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146338

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135101

The PSU is not bad for the price and is actually a 430w unit:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/550

IIRC does not have dual PCI-E power connectors.

However the Corsair unit is superior IMHO.

You could always go for this 600w OCZ unit if modular cables are not important:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127861

[sammorris]

joel: especially a coolermaster. Most coolermaster 460W PSUs are NOT 460 watts, that one included, as hardwaresecrets found. A Corsair 400W CX is realistically a more powerful unit.

[shadowmaster]

Spec looks fine to me, I'd still go with the tri core for an extra £20 or so.

[barney_2k]

Thanks to everyone that helped me out with this! Now got it running!

Impressed with what ive done so far, which is very little, got a bit of overclocking to do tonight

Heres a little pic of my new pc (next to360) and you get a pic of the music setup for free




Sorry about ****ty pics, damn 5800

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What parts did you get in the end?

I assume you are going to try unlocking the CPU?

[barney_2k]

Yeah going to try unlocking today, i tried last night but couldnt get it to work...

I updated the bios last night in an attempt to do it. Ive read im supposed to set the ACC to "Hybrid".. but i cant see that option on my bios, maybe i just updated it wrong, ill give it a go later on!

I went with the above setup but reduced the 1tb hd to a 650gb one and used the spare money to buy a gigabyte lite cpu cooler, seeing as im going to be overclocking and ive got external hard drives here.

[holy god of nil]

The Acc setting should be something like auto/all cores etc (differs according to bios I think). I unlocked my 4th core on a 720 and it promptly immediately failed prime95 etc, so make sure to test it thoroughly if you do unlock it.