Cheapo Build

[marshalex]

Looks good for now. Did you get any idea of what kind of games his son wants to play? I assume your thought is that he could try them on the GPU and you can always add a discrete GPU later?

If so and you're looking at a motherboard with SB710 anyway, I'd seriously consider seeing if you can get a 785G / 790GX motherboard with sideport RAM for the same price, e.g. this ASRock from ebuyer - the sideport will really help speed up the integrate graphics (and the 790GX IGP is clocked faster, too!)

didn't realise the 790GX IGP was faster, but the plan was to have the option to add a proper graphics card in later on, which I explained to him when speccing things out as the only games being played currently are basic spelling challenges etc, nothing worth having a dedicated graphics for currently.
I did like that the board I picked had usb 3.0 and sata 3, not important now but may be later down the line with thoughts of future upgrades (possibly an ssd a couple of years down the line).
Components were from Scan and Aria (thought it would be easier to stick the images together rather than seperate ones). All has been ordered and will be built monday! All in all i think for £375 (chucked in an extra fan as an exhaust for the case) I've done well. Certainly made me think about alternative routes for future builds.

[marshalex]

well its all build and runs fantastic! very impressed, especially the case, plenty of room, good size inside for the build. no luck unlocking the 4th core though, crashed each time enabled it. any suggestions on how to boost the power a bit, both gpu and cpu. not oced an amd for a while so any tips/tricks appreciated, even if its just a small boost