Could i turn this into a gaming rig, on a budget.

[Kathryne]

You may have seen my other thread, but regardless, my budget is £400.
For £299 i can get the following pre built.

OS:
windows 7 premium 64bit

Case

Standard Easypc Case with 450W PSU
CPU

AMD Athlon II X2 X240 AM3 45nm 2 x 2.8ghz
Memory

4gb Kingston DDR2 800Mhz (System Max 4gb)
Storage

250GB SATA II Hard Drive
Optical drive

Sony Optiarc 20X DVD+-RW Dual layer Drive This will also play and record CD/CD-RW (all in the same drive)
Motherboard

Asrock AM3 N68-S

6 Channel surround sound output
Connections

2 x Front USB

4 x Rear USB

1 x PS/2 Keyboard
1 x PS/2 Mouse
1 x COM
1 x VGA
4 x USB2.0
1 x LAN
3 x Audio

Supports RAID 0‚RAID 1‚RAID 5‚RAID 10
Expansion Slots:

1 x PCI Express x16

1 x PCI Express x1

2 x 32-bit PCI


Intergrated Graphics (default)

Integrated Nvidia Geforce 7 graphics with up to 256mb of shared memory

Which leaves me £100 to get a graphics card and fit better cooling.
Would you recomend this route, and if so do i need to change anything else for this to be useable as a budget gaming PC.

alternitavly i can get a quad core AMD for 350, but that only leaves £50 for everythign else, including a graphics card.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Not worth it. Firstly the motherboard is cheap and also uses an older chipset. Also the VRM does not even use solid capacitors which is not a good sign. Skimping on the motherboard is never a good idea.

Also the PSU has to be from a good company as many cheaper generic PSUs actually cannot supply their stated power. The PSU itself could go bang once it is loaded or suffer from poor voltage regulation which will end destroying other components in your PC over time. Since you are going to using a graphics card which is for gaming purposes this means much higher power draw than a card used for media decoding.

[Pob255]

As cat said the motherboard is old and none too good (PS they are lieing when they say it's AM3 because it's AM2+, which can use AM3 cpu's)

I would also question that psu, it might be ok, but it might not be

Now the real questions for you.
Are you looking at this as just a low cost solution?
Or as simple solution where all you need to do is bung in a graphics card?
What games?
What screen and resolution?

You may be able to get away with getting a mid/lower end graphics card in this, say an ATi 5750

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another problem is that the HT of the X2 240 will not run at full speed using the Asrock motherboard.This will mean lower performance for the X2 240. The build also uses slower RAM too.

If the OP wants a good value prebuild then they can have a look at this Mesh though:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/174596

OTH,it will have less scope for upgrades though as with many prebuilds the cheapest components will be used.

I try to list reasonably decent components for the builds I suggest.

[Pob255]

That Mesh is a nice little system

[12GaugeShotty]

Not worth it. Firstly the motherboard is cheap and also uses an older chipset. Also the VRM does not even use solid capacitors which is not a good sign. Skimping on the motherboard is never a good idea.

Also the PSU has to be from a good company as many cheaper generic PSUs actually cannot supply their stated power. The PSU itself could go bang once it is loaded or suffer from poor voltage regulation which will end destroying other components in your PC over time. Since you are going to using a graphics card which is for gaming purposes this means much higher power draw than a card used for media decoding.

There's nothing wrong with a cheap motherboard. My Abit IP35-E cost me $65 USD after MIR and it has ran my C2D @ 3.2GHz for 3 years now. I've been gaming on it all that time too and it currently has a Radeon HD 5850.

[kasuku]

There's nothing wrong with a cheap motherboard. My Abit IP35-E cost me $65 USD after MIR and it has ran my C2D @ 3.2GHz for 3 years now. I've been gaming on it all that time too and it currently has a Radeon HD 5850.

I agree, a budget motherboard also has the benefit of being around for some time, so most issues with it are resolved or work arounds are established. So it can often have less hassle if you are on a lower budget. Personally, I would use a GTX 260 instead of the 5850 though, but thats just me.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There's nothing wrong with a cheap motherboard. My Abit IP35-E cost me $65 USD after MIR and it has ran my C2D @ 3.2GHz for 3 years now. I've been gaming on it all that time too and it currently has a Radeon HD 5850.

???? Your motherboard has a P35 chipset which is not budget and was on special offer since you had a rebate which is virtually non existent in the UK. A 7025 is a budget chipset and the motherboard does not even have solid capacitors in the VRM. Why don't you look at the actual motherboard:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=N68-S

It runs the HT at reduced speed so the processor runs slower. Upgrade the CPU to something better and you may end up frying the VRMs on this motherboard.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I agree, a budget motherboard also has the benefit of being around for some time, so most issues with it are resolved or work arounds are established. So it can often have less hassle if you are on a lower budget. Personally, I would use a GTX 260 instead of the 5850 though, but thats just me.

An HD4890 is a better bet than a GTX260 at least with current UK prices. TBH,what you get depends on what features you want from the GPU.

[DanceswithUnix]

Some idea of what games you want to play would be good.

It might even be that just better integrated graphics is enough.

Otherwise, just get a graphics card that doesn't require lots of additional power, like an ATI 4670, to keep it gentle on the PSU.