Pc Help for novice

[letshavesome]

Hi ppl,

I am new to this forum and need help in building a new computer. Ive got a budget for aroudn £450 and the use of the base unit would be to play some of the latest pc games or new pc games. At the moment i have these components;

Maxtor 160gb Harddrive
Soltek SL-KT400-C motherboard

the motherboard is quite old and might not even work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

thanks

James

[Hans Voralberg]

Uhm £450 is a bit tight to "play all the game". Bit more specfic would help. What kind of res you want? 4xAA 8xAF ? Or just playable ?

[whoatethepies]

I'd recommend having a look to see what you can find on ebay. Probably get a better system that way for the money. Otherwise try and get a hardware bundle from Scan (or wherever) in your price range. This should guarantee a balanced system, and all the components will definatly work together.

[YorkieBen]

i wouldn't bother with that motherboard it is an old socket A mobo and is obselete.

something like this from scan:

LN8232 Scan 3XS '2012' 4 in1 Kit. Black/Silver inc Keyb/Mouse/Speakers ATX Midi Tower 400W Passive PFC PSU £26.66
LN14243 AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3000 Orleans Core, 1.8GHz, 512KB Cache, Retail £73.34
LN13308 NEC ND-4570A-GNB Black 16x16 DVD±RW/RAM Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM UK £23.96
LN10405 1GB (2X512MB) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15 £60.81
LN13980 256Mb Point of View 7600GT Mem Clock 1400 MHz, GPU 560 MHz, 12 Pipes, Dual DVI-I S-Video/TV Out £119.84
LN14170 MSI AM2 K9N NEO-F NF550, Socket AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £58.92

£375 inc delivery, plus you'll need windows on top of that

[FatalSaviour]

I was thinking along the same lines.
You could use your existing motherboard, but you would be severely limited in your upgrade options.
Most games are now dependent more upon the graphics card than the CPU...at the higher resolutions anyway.
Your motherboard will have an AGP slot. These graphics cards are being phased out, in favour of PCI Express. It's getting harder to find one of these cards now, let alone in a few years time.
Same goes for CPU, and memory.
The hard drive will be fine, but as Yorkie says, I'd probably do away with the motherboard.
His recommendations seem pretty sound

[ExceededGoku]

i wouldn't bother with that motherboard it is an old socket A mobo and is obselete.

something like this from scan:

LN8232 Scan 3XS '2012' 4 in1 Kit. Black/Silver inc Keyb/Mouse/Speakers ATX Midi Tower 400W Passive PFC PSU £26.66
LN14243 AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3000 Orleans Core, 1.8GHz, 512KB Cache, Retail £73.34
LN13308 NEC ND-4570A-GNB Black 16x16 DVD±RW/RAM Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM UK £23.96
LN10405 1GB (2X512MB) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15 £60.81
LN13980 256Mb Point of View 7600GT Mem Clock 1400 MHz, GPU 560 MHz, 12 Pipes, Dual DVI-I S-Video/TV Out £119.84
LN14170 MSI AM2 K9N NEO-F NF550, Socket AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £58.92

£375 inc delivery, plus you'll need windows on top of that

That's a very nice system for that price, man scan owns. I'll sort the linkies for you

LN8232 Scan 3XS '2012' 4 in1 Kit. Black/Silver inc Keyb/Mouse/Speakers ATX Midi Tower 400W Passive PFC PSU £26.66
LN14243 AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3000 Orleans Core, 1.8GHz, 512KB Cache, Retail £73.34
LN13308 NEC ND-4570A-GNB Black 16x16 DVD±RW/RAM Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM UK £23.96
LN10405 1GB (2X512MB) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15 £60.81
LN13980 256Mb Point of View 7600GT Mem Clock 1400 MHz, GPU 560 MHz, 12 Pipes, Dual DVI-I S-Video/TV Out £119.84
LN14170 MSI AM2 K9N NEO-F NF550, Socket AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £58.92

That will definitely "play all the games"

[peaceandlove]

£450 is crazy. ure looking at that 4 software alone (if u want office). what games u wanna play?

[peaceandlove]

That's a very nice system for that price, man scan owns. I'll sort the linkies for you

LN8232 Scan 3XS '2012' 4 in1 Kit. Black/Silver inc Keyb/Mouse/Speakers ATX Midi Tower 400W Passive PFC PSU £26.66
LN14243 AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3000 Orleans Core, 1.8GHz, 512KB Cache, Retail £73.34
LN13308 NEC ND-4570A-GNB Black 16x16 DVD±RW/RAM Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM UK £23.96
LN10405 1GB (2X512MB) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15 £60.81
LN13980 256Mb Point of View 7600GT Mem Clock 1400 MHz, GPU 560 MHz, 12 Pipes, Dual DVI-I S-Video/TV Out £119.84
LN14170 MSI AM2 K9N NEO-F NF550, Socket AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £58.92

That will definitely "play all the games"

i paid about £800 for a similar system (then again i spent 200 on the sound)

[letshavesome]

Ive got all the software but all i need is the hardware? I was planning to buy off ebay as sometimes it is cheaper but also there is a computer fair near me soon so im gonna check what deals there are. I just need to know what component i need at what prices so that i can compare them with the prices at the computer fair. The games i want to play are only games like fear and quake 4 etc so im not sure what kind of system i would need? thanks for your help everyone

James

[MantisCSS]

u cud easily buy a good PC for 450, they did it in a custom PC issue a few months back for 400, all ur really looking at is a
3000+ or a 3200+
Asus Sli SE
Cooler master Centurion case of scan, bout 40/50,
6600GT from ebay, CD-DVD drive 20 quid maybe,
PSU u can pick up fairly cheap.
i recon without a doubt u cud do it for less than 450.

i made one on scan the other day witht eh componants above for bout 400, if u want me to do it again and give u the link give me a shout.

[MantisCSS]

look at the system made by exceededgoKo, thats just liek the one i built, on scan. part form i went for a ASUS sli SE.

[YorkieBen]

hey I did that system

The good thing about the AM2 option is expandability and future-proof'ness'

its ddr2 and pci-e, and AM2 is the future for AMD. So in the future he can save up and put a X2 in there or something

[MantisCSS]

which system did u do m8, give the spec and prices.

[MantisCSS]

Coolermaster Centurion RC-534 Black Tower Case w/o PSU £36.49 £42.88

Artec Black x16 DVD-ROM (48x CD-ROM) OEM £7.99 £9.39


AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket939 , Venice Core, 2.0GHz , 512KB Cache, Retail £71.95 £84.54


256Mb Point of View 7600GS Mem Clock 800 MHz, GPU 400 MHz, 12 Pipes, Dual DVI-I HDTV £67.99 £79.89


LN11240 1GB (2X512MB) Corsair Value Select, DDR PC3200 (400), 184 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 2.5 £49.50 £58.16

ASUS A8N-SLI SE NF4 SLI, S939, PCI-E (x16), DDR 400, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £49.49 £58.15

LN14408 530W Hiper HPU-4M530 SLi Ready Black ATX2.2/BTX SATAx4 PCI-Ex2 £39.99 £46.99

LN10713 Scan 3 in 1 Desk Manager 2 Black - Office Keyboard Optical Mouse 280W Speakers £11.46 £13.47


Net Total £334.86

Carriage £0.00

V.A.T. £58.60

TOTAL £393.46

what u think of that? dont think ive missed anything

[dave87]

what u think of that? dont think ive missed anything

Only that that is 939, for the same price you may aswell shift to AM2, giving you a wide range of new processors to add in later....

[MantisCSS]

thats a gd point but he is on a budget, and that PC is easily fast enough to cover his needs for a long time.
which bits wud u change on that to make it AM2 then?