My £400 budget to finish a full rig (need a quick check before I press buy please!)

[ERU]

Ok, as you may know, i've been following the other threads trying to judge what is best to buy within my set budget of £400. 'CAT-THE-FIFTH' seems to be awesome help in other threads for example and i've been following strengthofmind's build thread. I may be able to increase my budget a little .. if it's worth it. I've got £450 max tho!. The rig is going to be used as a home computer, the odd game and the odd bit of Adobe CS4/5 chores. Nothing too taxing - so just looking for something to do the job, and get some value for money, whilst being able to upgrade well in the future

Here is what i'm looking at based on the advice given below:

Ebuyer order:
Sunbeam 3D Storm Black Mid Tower Case with Unique Core-Fan Design - No PSU 150296 £22.99
I like this case. Cheap and cheerful.

Compucase 52-In-1 Internal 3.5" Bay Card Reader 191697 £8.99
I do a bit of photography so therefore need something to read my SD cards.

Edimax Wireless-N150 USB Adapter 161823 £11.99
The only way I can currently connect to the router. I'm lookng at how to drill holes in the walls for a wired setup.

Samsung SH-S223 22x DVD±RW DL & RAM SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black 145450 £11.99
Might look at lightscribe.

Acer X203 20" Wide LCD Monitor 1600x900 50,000:1(Dynamic) 5ms - Black 193681 £91.98
Again I added this as a final item with money leftover in the pot. I presume they can all be of a half decent quality now? That said the whole rig might be near a window, so glare could be a consideration. Bigger is better due to CS5 being installed.

PALIT 9800GT Green 512MB GDDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI_E Graphics Card 205449 £67.16
Is this card throttled in any way?

Scan order:
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 LN32202 - £62.22

MSI 770-C45, AMD 770, AM3. LN28876 - £51.68

AMD Athlon II X3 445 LN33527 - £59.27

Be Quiet Pure Power L7 530 W Power Supply (PSU) LN33021 - £48.75
As suggested below.

Bits I already own:
~WD Raptor 74 GB HDD (150 MBps / 10000 rpm) as a boot drive.
~I may add an old WD 500gb drive for storage too? Should I bother updating. I'm worried about noise!
~I also have a MX1000 mouse / Saitek keyboard combo for input.
~Finally I intend to use some old Creative 5.1 subwoofered speakers that connect via the green, blue and yellow lines.


Running total (£215.10 + £220.92) = £436.02

[geezerone]

That Kingston memory is not right. Searching for the part number shows it to be 2x1GB not 2x2GB modules. Bit of a difference and Oyyy don't always get their numbers right!

Would change psu to BeQuiet 530W. 5xSATA and 2xpci-e conns plus. 700W does seem cheap and powerful but quality PSUs don't combine these words in most circumstances. It might peak at 700W for 1ms at 1khz but not continuous smooth o/p. The BeQuiet unit I read will provide o/p well above the stated rating.

CPU is a little cheaper at Scan Today only. You could opt for Athlon II x4 640 for £76 at scan too for some future-proofing.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What type of games do you intend to play BTW??

[ERU]

Ok hear what your saying about the PSU so edited the first post with your suggestion. Cheers.

I won't risk the buying the memory if it's wrong as i don't want to mess around with RMA's. Looking for suggestions here.

I'll check back to that CPU tomorrow as it seems likely that's when i'm deffo going to order all this.

[ERU]

What type of games do you intend to play BTW??

Heh I knew i'd lure you in ... welcome.

I'm looking at Civ 5 and the Total War series. Maybe a 3d shooter if I get time.

[geezerone]

Processor for those types of game may be better going quad - cheap athlons not far off Phenoms. Shooter games would need a discrete solution for decent frames per second.

x2 555BE may unlock 3 or 4 cores but no guarantee.

Don't know how often you upgrade but you could find yourself holding onto the rig longer than you think and have to change mobo etc anyway

Memory usually Corsair are good value.

[ERU]

Processor for those types of game may be better going quad - cheap athlons not far off Phenoms. Shooter games would need a discrete solution for decent frames per second.

x2 555BE may unlock 3 or 4 cores but no guarantee.

Don't know how often you upgrade but you could find yourself holding onto the rig longer than you think and have to change mobo etc anyway

Memory usually Corsair are good value.

I guess i'm not looking to upgrade too often at all due to the hassle. The CPU listed above may have the chance to unlock according to the feedback but as always I have to accept it if it doesn't.

Should I just go for the cheapest 2x2gb Corsair DDR3 I can find?

[Cheapy]

I would stick with the Phenom II over the athlon for gaming as most games wont use more than 2 cores and will rather have the high clock speed. And with a nice cooler you can easily overclock it as its a unlocked multiplier too. Just in case u ever get the urge to overclock

Memory wise I dont think you can really go wrong. Somthing like the 4Gb set below should be fine.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173122

EDIT: Oh and unlock like u said is hit and miss with them. IF you get it then thats brilliant if you not u still have a very fast dual core at least

[geezerone]

Even if the x2 555BE doesn't unlock you should get a good overclock out of it with aftermarket cooler (Coolermast Hiper 212 on sale Today only Scan £11.74). That will give you better cooling regardless of overclocking.

Corsair ram about £61 with Scan.

Games that are cpu intensive (think football manager) benefit from more processing cores. More cores better overall as you are to use for Adobe too you say. If you can stretch to £109 then go for x4 955BE and get cores and overclock but horses for courses.

Anantech have benchmarking tool for comparing GPUs/CPUs if you're interested.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would look at getting:

Athlon II X3 445 ~ £59

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

MSI 770-C45 ~ £52

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-7...dio-GB-LAN-ATX

4GB 1333MHZ DDR3 ~ £61

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-(...-9-9-9-24-150V

512MB Gainward 9800GT Green ~ £70

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

Edimax EW-7711In 150Mbps wireless 802.11b/g/n 32 bit PCI adapter ~ £14

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

Be Quiet Pure Power L7 530 W Power Supply ~ £49

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/530W-...n5xSata4xMolex

Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±R, 12x DVD±R, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM ~ £13

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Samsu...SATA-Black-OEM


The total comes to around £318 including postage and excluding a case,card reader and monitor.

If you do any serious image editing you will need to spend a decent amount on a monitor which has decent colour accuracy.

[nibbler]

Can vouch for the x3 445 - it's a great CPU for the money.

[ERU]

Cheers for the help folks. All food for thought and much appreciated! I can't help notice that i'm getting a lot of reference to Scan when eBuyer is often cheaper - obviously not always however... To be honest i'm a little worried some people work there? or have just built up good reputation here? Anyhow ... horses for courses.

I 'think' i'm happy with the CPU choice as i'm keen to see if the 'AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition 3.2GHz' will unlock, i.e. take the chance. If it don't then no worries i've still got a good CPU. If it does i've hit gold.

I'm now very interested to hear how the 'MSI 770-C45' fares against the 'Asus M4A785TD-V EVO 785G' as a board? From what i'm reading here the latter seems the better choice for me. Mainly as it has onboard gfx that I can upgrade if/when needed and save the extra cost.
If I get the '512MB Gainward 9800GT' and 'MSI 770-C45' combo it just seems like my budget is spiralling upwards to £120. Something the 'Asus M4A785TD-V EVO 785G' provides for a mere £65.

[Terbinator]

Empire:Total War will eat up as many threads you can throw at it.

[ERU]

Empire:Total War will eat up as many threads you can throw at it.

I know i've tried it on a single core... without success...

[Terbinator]

I know i've tried it on a single core... without success...

Haha.

With that said, and as suggested, minimum you wan't to be looking at is an X3.

[scaryjim]

I'm now very interested to hear how the 'MSI 770-C45' fares against the 'Asus M4A785TD-V EVO 785G' as a board? From what i'm reading here the latter seems the better choice for me. Mainly as it has onboard gfx that I can upgrade if/when needed and save the extra cost.
If I get the '512MB Gainward 9800GT' and 'MSI 770-C45' combo it just seems like my budget is spiralling upwards to £120. Something the 'Asus M4A785TD-V EVO 785G' provides for a mere £65.

You will not be able to play the games you are interested in using the onboard graphics on a 785G motherboard. Civ 5 minimum graphics requirement is a 256MB ATI 2600XT. To give you an idea of relative performance, have a look at the graphs in this hexus review of the 2600XT: the IGP on the ASUS motherboard is roughly equivalent to (in fact slightly lower performing than) the 2400 XT, which as you can see provides only half the performance of a 2600XT. I imagine the same is true of many of the Total War games.

If you're genuinely that worried about cost, you could replace the 9800GT with a GT240 DDR3 @ £50, but IMNSHO the 9800GT is a much better value card as it's performance is *much* higher than the GT240. But you are definitely going to have to go for a discrete graphics card to play the games you're interested in.