Gaming PC (~£500)

L

LSR

New Member
Hi all,

Here I am making my apperance as I did 2 years ago and about 2 years before that, asking for advice on components for a new build.. I'm from the UK and have around £500 to spend. I already have 2HDDs, an optical drive, sound card, network card, monitors and peripherals.

My current computer is a GTS250 (which is dying), Q6600, and a PSU (also dying).

So, few questions:

1. Don't follow the economics of components at the moment, but GFX prices don't seem to have shifted much in the last 6 months. Are there new cards coming out soon that are likely to alter the market?

2. With 500 squid, do you reckon I could get a performance upgrade reasonable enough to make it worthwhile? If not, I'll just buy a PSU and graphics card and doddle along for another year or so.

I play games, SC2 in particular, and max would be nice. Also MMOs, Crysis etc.

Thanks in advance.
 
You can get a decent increase in performance for £500, yes.

Motherboard: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-167-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1906

CPU: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-360-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1275

Video Card: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-132-MS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1341

PSU: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-146-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1088

Total - £481

If your current motherboard does not support DDR 3 memory, you will also have to get memory:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-057-GS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Which would bring the total to £517.

You can cut down on price if you don't plan on overclocking, by downgrading the motherboard to H67 rather than P67, and the processor down to a 2600 or lower
 
Thanks a lot Aastii, few questions:

My mobo is an old Asus Commando.. not DDR3, and running some DDR2 800mhz at the moment, hence why I can't salvage the RAM.

1) Only 4gb of RAM? I guess 8gb is a minimal improvement in gaming performance as it's the GFX that's the bottleneck?

2) Nice CPU! I didn't think such a powerful CPU would be necessary - I'd assumed I'd be spending more like 210 on the GFX and 110 on the CPU, as I thought those high end CPUs don't add much to gaming. Am I off the bat completely then?

Will dig around for a cheapish case for the parts as well as my current one is knackered.

Thanks again.
 
k is more for overclocking and ups the price 20 or 20 usd, and no you can't use your ddr2, now everything is 3 running at 1333 or 1600 unless you o.c. it to a higher speed, so you should notice a big diff in that alone even if there is less of it in the end.
 
LSR said:
Thanks a lot Aastii, few questions:

My mobo is an old Asus Commando.. not DDR3, and running some DDR2 800mhz at the moment, hence why I can't salvage the RAM.

1) Only 4gb of RAM? I guess 8gb is a minimal improvement in gaming performance as it's the GFX that's the bottleneck?

2) Nice CPU! I didn't think such a powerful CPU would be necessary - I'd assumed I'd be spending more like 210 on the GFX and 110 on the CPU, as I thought those high end CPUs don't add much to gaming. Am I off the bat completely then?

Will dig around for a cheapish case for the parts as well as my current one is knackered.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

1. 4GB is plenty for gaming. Even now, no game is going to be utilising 4GB of memory. When that time comes, even if memory prices stay the same, it is fairly cheap to jump up to 4GB, so that isn't an issue.

2. The CPU does and doesn't make a difference. You could drop it down and see similar gaming performance, however you would lose performance everywhere else in the system. If you aren't going to be overclocking at all, you can knock it down to a 2600 to save you some. Because you can't overclock the locked processors (the ones without k) at all, unlike the older lines of unlocked processors, the extra cost is more than justified.

jonnyp11 said:
k is more for overclocking and ups the price 20 or 20 usd, and no you can't use your ddr2, now everything is 3 running at 1333 or 1600 unless you o.c. it to a higher speed, so you should notice a big diff in that alone even if there is less of it in the end.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. The speed of memory isn't just about the frequency. Although the frequency has gone up, the timings have too. Overall it is quicker, but not all that noticeably so other than in benches, it is more about the much lower power consumption of DDR 3 memory
 
Thanks again. I may well overclock at some point in the future so I don't mind paying a little extra given the phenomenal increases I've heard about from the new Intels..

So one last thing - I'll probably be buying from eBuyer as usual, so I need to find an equivalent motherboard on there. Will this do the job?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/261402

I always buy ASUSes, but I'd be flattering myself if I said I knew anything about how they affect performance and reliability. Is there any downside to getting the above slightly cheaper one from eBuyer compared to the one you linked before?

Thanks
 
Yes.

You won't be able to overclock because the H67 boards don't allow the multiplier to be changed and unlike previous Intel and AMD CPUs, the bus speed can't be changed by any more than ~5MHz, which would equate to ~.1GHz.

There are only 2 DIMM slots, so less maximum memory available and more expensive upgrades as you would have to get larger DIMMs, rather than say 2x2GB now, and then another 2x2GB set later down the line.

The cheapest P67 board on Ebuyer is cheaper than the MSI I linked, and is actually a better board:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/267321

even though it is more expensive than the Asus you linked.

I wouldn't stick to just Asus for two reasons.

Firstly, there are other excellent, and usually better brands out there, Gigabyte and ASRock are two examples. There are other good brands of board, like MSI, but those are the 4 you should be looking at.

The second is personal, but I know a lot of others that share the same view. I won't buy Asus boards again because the support is atrocious to say the absolute least. To get in contact with them, it is like pulling teeth, the RMA times rather than being the 4-6 weeks max you would expect are much longer. I have yet to find anyone that has had their board back with in 2 months. You get told nothing whilst the board is with them, unlike other companies that will email you and tell you where the board is, whether or not they have found a fault, when they have returned the board/replacement.

For one of the largest motherboard manufacturers, and the largest for custom-built systems, they do not deserve it considering the quality of their support. Companies of similar size allow for very fast, efficient and helpful support, but Asus, as I said, from experience and other's experience, absolutely don't.

I will say though, their boards are of decent quality, but, again, from experience, not great. Of Asus 6 boards in the last 3 years, only 1 is still going, but bare in mind that is probably extremely unlucky on my part. Asus make millions of motherboards a year, and the vast majority work for more than mine did, even though none of mine weren't treated incorrectly, so should have still worked really. Whilst working though, as you will know from your own time using them, they are good components
 
Awesome, all taken on board.

One last thing I thought of as getting to the checkout -

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/251596

Doesn't say it comes with a heatsink/fan anywhere. Do I need to get one on top? If so, what's good (and cheap!) - won't be overclocking at all to start with, will slap on a better one in a year or so if needed.

Thanks,

EDIT:

Also, no reasonable difference between these, right?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/267725
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/269172
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/267730
 
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