So £200, recommendations?

[Hicks12]

My friend who has been stuck with a p4 dell for many many years has finally decided to upgrade( aliens vs predator and me commenting managed to, eventually ). So he wants to spend as little as possible due to funds going on uni and a car shortly and i think we came to around £200 but less is better, now i know this is extremely hard to achieve but we are aiming for second hand parts and so far ive come up with the following spec to look out for :

CPU: Amd athlon x2 240 / x3 425
Motherboard: Unsure but the Sapphire 52023-00-40R, AMD 780G, AM2+, PCI-E 2.0 from scan is £46 and seems pretty good.

Ram: DDr2 4gb anything hopefully
GPU: Now i havent had much time to look for specific benchmarks(i normally look at the gtx260/4870 level) but i think the options were the 5670/4670/9800GT(if this is available)/gt240 (now what is this? 9600gt or 9800gt cause its inbetween with SP's so i dont know).

Case: Some cheapy £10 one but he will pick that later, unless his dell can take new stuff

PSU: Dont know if we need one yet but he said he didnt pay much for the replacement psu he got so im 80% sure he will need a new one, hes checking tonight hopefully. Am i right in thinking 300W is plenty?

Now as said we looking at getting these secondhand but somethings im betting we will need to get brand new. Do you think the £200 budget is achieveable?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would look at the following motherboards:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ASRoc...SATA-RAID-mATX

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-7...-8ch-AUDIO-ATX

I would get an X3 425.

Regarding the PSU I would consider the following ones:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152505

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150985

Check out the reviews from Hardware Secrets for both PSUs:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/750

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/794

Both PSUs can actually supply 450W.

[Hicks12]

Thanks as always cat .

But what do those motherboards offer over the sapphire one? The sapphire one uses the 780 chipset which is better or am i wrong?(please correct me if so!).

You think the £200 is possible or would he need more cash? would you recommend looking for ddr2 or ddr3 ram i know that means a new motherboard but cant see much in terms of ddr2 right now...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks as always cat .

But what do those motherboards offer over the sapphire one? The sapphire one uses the 780 chipset which is better or am i wrong?(please correct me if so!).

You think the £200 is possible or would he need more cash? would you recommend looking for ddr2 or ddr3 ram i know that means a new motherboard but cant see much in terms of ddr2 right now...

The Asrock has the 780G IGP but has 128MB of RAM for the IGP and the SB710 southbridge meaning it can unlock cores. However the Sapphire motherboard has the SB700 southbridge but has 4 RAM slots.

The MSI motherboard has the 770 chipset with no IGP but has the SB710 southbridge and is a decent budget motherboard for overclocking too.

Perhaps the budget needs an increase - let me have a quick ponder over this for a second!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would do:

1.)Get a new motherboard

The MSI motherboard would be a good start in either its DDR2 or DDR3 versions.

Cost ~ £50

It would be better to go for a new motherboard if possible.

2.)Get a new processor

I would look at getting the X3 425.

Cost ~ £55

3.)Look for some suitable RAM on Ebay.

There should be new DDR2 and DDR3 RAM for sale on Ebay. I would start with a pair of 1GB sticks.

Cost of 2GB DDR3 ~ £40 or less

4.)Get a new PSU

The ones I suggested are quite decent.

Cost ~ £40

I would not go for a used PSU if possible.

5.)Look for a secondhand graphics card

I would be looking at 8800GT,9800GT,8800GTS 512MB,HD4830 and HD4850. Also check the HD3870,9600GT and HD4670.

Cost ~ £50 or less

6.)Look for a secondhand or new case

There maybe sellers local to you so you can save money on postage.

7.)New hard drive ~ £30 from retailer or Ebay

It would be better to get a new hard drive.

8.)Secondhand or new optical drive

TBH,even an old DVD-ROM driver would suffice for the build.

[Hicks12]

1. ill have a look at that msi, probs will go for that though
2. yeh i saw u mention the x3 in some other threads, i just worried about the 95w tdp, compared to like 50 on the dual core. its mainly a gaming rig so should outperform the x2 240 even with the low cache?
3. i guess it just depends on whats cheaper really, iirc amd work better with low latency than higher bandwidth so ddr2 would be better yeh?
ill try abd get a 4gb kit from ebay or here for £40 hopefully if not wil probs settle for 2gb
4. yeh they seem good probs get the corsair since they well eegarded.
5. yeh they were on my list so will keep eye out on here and the bay.
6.case is simple as ibprobs have a spare and if not we will get one if we order anythin online or go pcworld ha.
7. probs aim for new cause i dont always trust old drives lol would u agree the f3 is the best drive to get?
8. drive is fine if the mobo has ide but if not ill just grab one on the cheap.

so will probs get mobo/psu/harddrive brand new and the rest second hand. how does all this sound then?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

1. ill have a look at that msi, probs will go for that though
2. yeh i saw u mention the x3 in some other threads, i just worried about the 95w tdp, compared to like 50 on the dual core. its mainly a gaming rig so should outperform the x2 240 even with the low cache?
3. i guess it just depends on whats cheaper really, iirc amd work better with low latency than higher bandwidth so ddr2 would be better yeh?
ill try abd get a 4gb kit from ebay or here for £40 hopefully if not wil probs settle for 2gb
4. yeh they seem good probs get the corsair since they well eegarded.
5. yeh they were on my list so will keep eye out on here and the bay.
6.case is simple as ibprobs have a spare and if not we will get one if we order anythin online or go pcworld ha.
7. probs aim for new cause i dont always trust old drives lol would u agree the f3 is the best drive to get?
8. drive is fine if the mobo has ide but if not ill just grab one on the cheap.

so will probs get mobo/psu/harddrive brand new and the rest second hand. how does all this sound then?

Sounds like a good plan.

The MSI is a surprisingly capable motherboard:

http://edgemeal.110mb.com/AMD_Unlock/index.htm

http://www.mitramsi.com/80-msi-770-c...x4-unlock.html

Remember that there are DDR2 and DDR3 versions available.

Here is a comparison of the X3 435 and the X2 250:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=112&p2=96

[scaryjim]

... i think the options were the 5670/4670/9800GT(if this is available)/gt240 (now what is this? 9600gt or 9800gt cause its inbetween with SP's so i dont know). ...

There was a recent Hexus review of an Inno3D GT240 (note: that's the DDR5 version, the DDR3 version will be slower) that puts it slightly ahead of a 4670, but a bit behind a 5670. IIRC, the 9600GT was a similar amount ahead of a 4670, so it's more or less a 9600GT equivalent.

As far as your listed options go, if you can find a 9800GT for ~ £75 that's probably the best choice. Otherwise it's a compromise between price and performance: the 4670 is cheap but slower; the 5670 is faster but overpriced - particularly if you want to get the full feature-set: cheaper 5670s tend to do without Eyefinity support, and some also drop CrossfireX support...

[kurosagi01]

To be honest you would need more than £200 to get a full upgrade of what you want.
DDR2 isn't worth the money now that they are expensive but if you can get them 2nd hand that be good.
This would be best option to go in my opinion:

[Hicks12]

SO is ddr3 actually better than ddr2? Because surely the lower latencies are better for an AMD chip than having much higher bandwidth and higher latencies?.

Planning on getting secondhand gpu ram and the cpu so that should cut off around £70 off the build.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

SO is ddr3 actually better than ddr2? Because surely the lower latencies are better for an AMD chip than having much higher bandwidth and higher latencies?.

Planning on getting secondhand gpu ram and the cpu so that should cut off around £70 off the build.

I would look at these articles comparing DDR2 and DDR3 using the Phenom II:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/17...nce/index.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...55,2278-3.html

This article about DDR3 memory scaling on the Phenom II is also worth reading:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ddr3,2319.html

OTH,it is hard to say whether the Athlon II memory controller has any additional tweaks or not!!

[kurosagi01]

SO is ddr3 actually better than ddr2? Because surely the lower latencies are better for an AMD chip than having much higher bandwidth and higher latencies?.

Planning on getting secondhand gpu ram and the cpu so that should cut off around £70 off the build.

thing with DDR2 now that they cost almost the same as DDR3 now so you might aswell get DDR3 as its newer technology.