Gaming PC - sub £550 - recommend alterations!

[cptwhite_uk]

Hi everyone. Just a little about what I'm trying to achieve - I'm going for maximum performance with the aid of small amount of overclocking. This system is for a friend who will be playing games such as Microsoft Flightsim. This is a CPU dependant sim I believe and as such should benefit from a little over clocking. Anyway the spec so far is as follows:

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Socket 939 nForce 4-4X PCI-E ATX £56.49 + VAT

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket 939 512Kb Inc Fan (Winnie) £108.36 + VAT

Inno3D GeForce 6600GT 128MB PCI-E DVI-I VO £86.77 + VAT

2 x Corsair Memory CMX512-3200C2PT XMS3200 512MB CL2 Silver £112.40 + VAT

Samsung Spinpoint P80 80GB UDMA133 £33.19 + VAT

Samsung DVDROM 16x CDROM 48x IDE Beige £11.92 + VAT

DabsValue Gaming Case 400W - Silver £32.09 + VAT

TOTAL - £525.40


I'm cutting corners where possible to shave a few pounds off the cost.

80Gb IDE will suffice to save me £15
Doesn't need DVD / Cd Writer as there are others in the house
I've gone for a budget Case / PSU - It's a bit of a gamble but should be fine to power his system the case looks well ventilated anyway. He can always buy a better PSU at some point in the future.

View Case Here - It's a Dabs Value branded job but I trust Dabs as I've had there stuff before and it's been pretty decent for the price.

Information I'm looking for really are recommendations for a decnent CPU cooler (was thinking of the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 which I read a good review about but would welcome recommendations.

Also is the RAM going to give me a decent overclock. Also what's the motherboard like - I've seen good reviews of it but I'm not sure about it's overclockability - does it need a FSB lock on the PCI-E ? I've heard about AGP lock on AGP boards.

Would like to get Athlon 3500+ / 3800+ range performance.

All advise appreciated!

[DavidM]

I would advise spending more on the case and getting a good solid one with a decent PSU. A decent CWT PSu would cost about 30 quid - and a reasonable case about the same.... (Although I'd personally go Enermax or Tagan - cwt is a cost effective psu that is quite decent)

Also either the Corsair value select paired memory or TwinX would be a good alternative.

[RDL]

I'm just wondering where you get these cheap prices from. A winnie 3200 for £33.19 plus VAT, what's going on?

The Gigabyte isn't supposed to be that great an Nforce 4 board, but it is by far the cheapest.

I'd also watch out on that Dabs gaming case, the PSU will most likely be dodgy. Check the Amps on the 12V rail. You might be better off looking at a Yeong Yang case, with a seperate PSU; depends if you can go over budget though. Consequently, CPC just did an article on £500 gaming PCs, which have watercooling. Take a look at it.

For Athlon 64:

PSU - 400W 3XS - £12.04
Optical Drive - LG 16x DVD Rom - £16.91
Hard Drive - 80gb Hitachi Deskstar 7k250 - £41.71
Memory - 512MB Scan Elixir (OEM) - £44.34
Chassis - Cooler Master Centurion CAC-T05 - £39.95
Water-Cooling Kit - 120mm Cool River - £73.00
CPU - Socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 - £72.84
Graphics - XFX Geforce 6600 - £78.29

Total Cost INCL VAT - £478.13

Now you have an extra £80 to add to this, so upgrading your CPU to 3200 and upgrading your GPU would be a good idea - note however that the XFX 6600 clocks extremely well.

Also, your system has better RAM than the aforementioned system, so you might want to stick with yours. That case you got looks alright too, so you could save a bit and go with it.

The motherboard doesn't overclock too well though.

[DavidM]

I've a gigabyte myself - nice board... was considering the above myself if I get round to an nf4 system... but by the time i do that, nf5 will probably be out

[cptwhite_uk]

Sorry price corrected on the processor - typed them maually ...must have looked at wrong figure

[mike_w]

Please get a decent PSU. There's no point buying a great PC to risk it all to save a few pounds on a PSU.

[speedy_s]

You can get ANtec 1600 b with 350 Smart power psu (very good quality) for £45 @ebuyer.

[nvening]

I've a gigabyte myself - nice board... was considering the above myself if I get round to an nf4 system... but by the time i do that, nf5 will probably be out

Nforce5 will be pentium btw

[cptwhite_uk]

Thanks speedy - think I'll switch to an Antec PSU / Case Bundle for an extra £7 - Only 350W but assume that'll be fine. Sicne it's only 1 hdd / 1 rom / single 6600gt

[spazman]

Another £15 on the hard disk will get you over twice the capacity, and dont say youll never use it!!!!

[DavidM]

Nforce5 will be pentium btw

If you mean the current one... thats nForce 4 for Intel... it looks like they may be keeping the family names the same across the platforms

[speedy_s]

Believe it or not when you are doing desktop work or so you will need less than 100 Watts!!! Furthermore, when u are gaming i will be hugely surprised if ur pc will be using mroe than 200watts. So don't worry abt watts.

My recomendation:

Processor:AMD (Winchester) Athlon 64bit 3200

Motherboard: Asus A8N SLI (want more performance than sli!)

Memory:2 X Samsung Original 512mb PC3200 DDR400 will overclock quite well with good latency.

Case: Antec 1650 w/ 250w truepower

Hard drive: Seagate 120gb Barracuda 7200 - Sata Ncq

Graphic Card: Evesham 6600GT 128MB

Optical drive:Samsung DVDROM 16x CDROM 48x IDE Beige £11.92 + VAT


Total £543 with £7 pounds to spare (treat urself!)

Hope it helps.