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Guide - the Budget Gaming PC
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Looks good I have to say Tom. There's actually a HTPC/Media Center forum here for more info, I have to say my knowledge of such cards - that is to say specifically the tv and digital ones - is essentially non-existent. From a hardware point of view, the base machine itself and the GPU are good solid choices. You might have saved money on the board by going cheaper, Komplett used to have a good range of cheap matx boards with onboard video capable of HD around the 50-60 price range, which would have saved you the guts of 100 euro but they're all gone now, not to mention you already have a card regardless so it's not a big deal. Personally I have a Gigabyte 750i S2h, cost 57 euro and has onboard 7150, with is fine for HD content - I actually use it in my main build, it's a good board, even for overclocking. Not only would you be saving money but also saving on power consumption. All in all though it's hard to fault your build.
Pabsoo....use the sub 500 euro machine above as a base point. It has a 4830 not a 4850 but at such a low resolution, it'll perform the same give or take a frame - and still more then enough to max out COD4 and COD5 easily, it's a great card. But if you really insist, you could replace that 4830 with a 4850 and still come out at about 500 euro.
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Edit: Apologies, didn't see the OS there, driving the price up another €90+. Everything else there is fine other than the fact the HIS HD4830 is a good €15 cheaper for a slightly better card than you have. I'm not a huge fan of mATX mobos either, that's a full ATX case you're getting there so you might as well use it And the Antec Earthwatts 650W is less than a tenner more than the Corsair if you want a bit more futureproofing. Both are excellent PSUs. 0
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komplett would suit me better as I will be getting the vat back.
Gaming rig.€500 max(ex vat)
I'd like specs of an mATX system aswel as a standard sized system.
I have an idea of what I want but I want to make sure of compatiblity and am afraid to buy a bad GFX card.
500gb hdd
2-4gb ram
non pentium dual core.core 2 duo only.
wifi
dvdrw.basic
will be using a 22" monitor(currently a 17")
would this be a good mATX rig.its ex vat
Intel Core™ 2 Duo E7200 2,53GHz -€98.35
Intel(r) DG45ID, G45, Socket-775, mATX -€85.12
Thermaltake LanBox Lite Black -€62.81
Sony Nec Optiarc DVD±rw Burner -€19.75
Sapphire Radeon HD 4830 512MB GDDR3 -€86.83
Samsung F1 500GB SATA2 -€45.46
TP-LINK Wireless PCI adapter -€13.22
NorthQ Powersupply 4800, 400W -€32.10
Akasa cold cathode case light, Blue -€11.16
Akasa Cable Management Kit -€9.09
Crucial DDR2 PC8500 2048MB CL7 -€19.75
SUBTOTAL -€483.64
PLUS P+P -€20.66
TOTAL -€504.30
oh and i have xp32/64 vista32 and w7 ultinate beta.
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TheZenWithin: Okay, this'll take awhile and you may not like the result of this postmortem (other posters will probably disagree with it anyway.. meh :rolleyes: )
First big question: Why do you hate the E5200? If you dont OC then the E7200 isn't very good value in comparison. If you do OC, its even worse. Some disturbing results do suggest the current batch of mid-grade chips (E7000/Q8000) have "issues"; they're behaving worse than the low-grade chips (don't be fooled by the "Pentium" badge, they're just a minutely less power-efficient version of the better Core2s set to run on a lower FSB) If you're dead set against the E5200 for no reason other than its badge then forget about your budget and get a E8400 (cheapest of the high-grade chips and actually superior enough to the E5200 to warrant the price, especially if you don't OC)
In any case:
CPU: E5200 saves you money and will usually boast much better stability at higher frequencies (current E7000 batch seems to fall apart horribly past 3.5GHz, requiring increasingly mad voltages for tiny speed increases), only caveat is that you have to OC (albeit only to 3.33GHz) to get PC8500 memory up to full rated speed. Given that it runs at a very low stock voltage I doubt there are any mATX boards out there that can't reach that with ease.
Mobo: Why the Intel? There's a plentiful supply of MSI and a few Gigabyte mATX G41/43/45 there for less.
RAM: Crucial fails nowadays
Those modules are nice but the huge latencies hurts the performance. At least they're not Ballistix... (mmm RAM BBQ!) Plus with just the one module you won't have Dual Channel.
Case: Nice and good value! Bear in mind it might be a bit bigger than you imagine, those LAN boxes usually are
Just hate the fact that it only has 2*60mm exhausts, they're allegedly very quiet but this suggests the PSU will be the extractor of most of the hot air in there... Also bear in mind that the PSU will leave very little vertical clearance over the CPU for coolers!
Optical: Meh. Seems grand, up for suggestions. Some said NECs can be noisy. Try Asus, they're worse
Graphics: Epic win. A great performer at stock speeds and has amazing OC headroom (GPU OCs approaching 40% and raw FPS increases exceeding 30% are quite possible, plus that card has the cooling to go the distance). Be wary of some heat pooling with that wireless card in there. Just note that a 22" monitor may have a very high native resolution (at least 1900*1080) that you may have trouble hitting without taking full advantage of said OC and scaling back some graphics settings. Or lowering resolution and putting up with some loss of visual quality. No way around that other than completely blowing your budget apart on cutting-edge graphics
HDD: No problems here
WiFi: Never heard of TPLink before. Plus you're limited to 54Mbps and taking up valuable real estate in the case (mATX remember?) Other than that it seems fine.
PSU: Please don't tell me you're buying that insult to computing for that retarded keyring gimmick?! BTW that PSU has blown up in reviews. I doubt it could power your build at stock speeds... Not a huge amount of data on this specific PSU, but NorthQ are known for good high-end PSUs and truly vile low-end ones. Like this. Its actually a Kingnod (lol) who have a history of overrating their PSUs - this is probably a ~300W model in real life. They really cheap out on dodgy capacitors, but its actually the PFC that explodes, typically when you try to approach 350W. D'oh. Unless you're thinking of a Corsair CX400 I'd suggest you revise the wattage upward. And the price upward. Far upward.
Edit: apologies, slow updates. Komplett seems to be having a bad web day :rolleyes:0 -
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Depends on whether you overclock or not. If you do then power and cooling will be slightly more of an issue, but some cheaper components and combinations thereof suddenly become very good value. The E5200 and the Sapphire "value" HD4830 are good examples of such. They still cannot beat a much, much better part, but such parts can cost 2-3 times as much. DO you overclock (or intend to with this build)? It changes some things a bit.
As for mATX or not, is portability or looks a concern? ATX boards have better expansion options and more stable (plus Intel mATX boards are getting curiously expensive) but cases for such are a pain to cart around; if sheer weight is an issue then mATX and that case are perfectly good alternatives, just don't expect to get an E5200 running over 4GHz on one mATX boards have far less options for increasing CPU and memory voltages than full ATX boards can manage. You don't need that if you aren't overclocking of course! But if you do want to then boards like the MSI G43M2-F (~€20 cheaper than the Intel you picked) can reach CPU voltages close to the official Intel safety limit and power almost any memory modules you can throw at it, so light to moderate OCing is quite possible. Big complaint with the above motherboard: it only has two DIMM slots, so only two memory modules.
The PSU listed was a dog alright. Unfortunately you tend to get only what you pay for with PSUs and there's no way to overclock those Certain brands tend to be better than others, not least because they actually supply the power they claim to! (many cheapo units quote the peak values, which can only be sustained for ~60 seconds) Again, its what you want to do vis-a-vis overclocking that has an effect here. Komplett isn't swimming with cheap-and-cheerful PSUs (and believe me you wouldn't want a non-cheerful one!) so I'm sticking with Corsair (among the best you can get) here. I'm not 100% sure if you can get away with a 400W PSU with this build, but if its possible I bet the Corsair CX400 would be it. ~€39 sans VAT. If you want to overclock (and/or you intend to get a HD4850 instead), or even just for peace of mind, you'd be looking at the Corsair VX550 for ~€55. A bit of a jump eh? But the Antec 430HE and the Corsair VX450 are on the wrong side of the jump, so there's little point saving €3-5 and losing ~25% of the power output. And before anyone jumps in, no, I don't care about the Fortrons there, they're not much cheaper and FSP is fail. (seriously, FSP/OCZ cheapo PSUs could just cut it before Corsair came out to play, but 3 years have passed since!)
Crucial used to be the name for performance memory, but then there was Burning Ballistix year
...and their new mainstream stuff is pretty rank. CL7?! No heatspreaders either, although the modules run at a curiously low voltage, the big advantage of which being that a very limited mATX board can actually run them at the full 1066MHz (most mATX motherboards can run modules with higher rated voltages nowadays anyway). I'm not sure how much of a performance hit you'd take as a result, plus you really need two modules (which would give you more memory but at twice the price) for full benefit. 0 -
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Depends on whether you overclock or not. If you do then power and cooling will be slightly more of an issue, but some cheaper components and combinations thereof suddenly become very good value. The E5200 and the Sapphire "value" HD4830 are good examples of such. They still cannot beat a much, much better part, but such parts can cost 2-3 times as much. DO you overclock (or intend to with this build)? It changes some things a bit.
As for mATX or not, is portability or looks a concern? ATX boards have better expansion options and more stable (plus Intel mATX boards are getting curiously expensive) but cases for such are a pain to cart around; if sheer weight is an issue then mATX and that case are perfectly good alternatives, just don't expect to get an E5200 running over 4GHz on one mATX boards have far less options for increasing CPU and memory voltages than full ATX boards can manage. You don't need that if you aren't overclocking of course! But if you do want to then boards like the MSI G43M2-F (~€20 cheaper than the Intel you picked) can reach CPU voltages close to the official Intel safety limit and power almost any memory modules you can throw at it, so light to moderate OCing is quite possible. Big complaint with the above motherboard: it only has two DIMM slots, so only two memory modules.
The PSU listed was a dog alright. Unfortunately you tend to get only what you pay for with PSUs and there's no way to overclock those Certain brands tend to be better than others, not least because they actually supply the power they claim to! (many cheapo units quote the peak values, which can only be sustained for ~60 seconds) Again, its what you want to do vis-a-vis overclocking that has an effect here. Komplett isn't swimming with cheap-and-cheerful PSUs (and believe me you wouldn't want a non-cheerful one!) so I'm sticking with Corsair (among the best you can get) here. I'm not 100% sure if you can get away with a 400W PSU with this build, but if its possible I bet the Corsair CX400 would be it. ~€39 sans VAT. If you want to overclock (and/or you intend to get a HD4850 instead), or even just for peace of mind, you'd be looking at the Corsair VX550 for ~€55. A bit of a jump eh? But the Antec 430HE and the Corsair VX450 are on the wrong side of the jump, so there's little point saving €3-5 and losing ~25% of the power output. And before anyone jumps in, no, I don't care about the Fortrons there, they're not much cheaper and FSP is fail. (seriously, FSP/OCZ cheapo PSUs could just cut it before Corsair came out to play, but 3 years have passed since!)
Crucial used to be the name for performance memory, but then there was Burning Ballistix year ...and their new mainstream stuff is pretty rank. CL7?! No heatspreaders either, although the modules run at a curiously low voltage, the big advantage of which being that a very limited mATX board can actually run them at the full 1066MHz (most mATX motherboards can run modules with higher rated voltages nowadays anyway). I'm not sure how much of a performance hit you'd take as a result, plus you really need two modules (which would give you more memory but at twice the price) for full benefit.
I was told that about crucial.
Ok i have wanted to OC anyway but no point OCing a laptop that already struggles to keep itself cool.lol. So what can u OC the pentium dual core to? I'll also OC the 4830.
what ram do u suggest i get then?
the reason i want mATX is for portability. i go to a boarding school so i want to be able to bring it back and forward every weekend. but its not a must, it is just a preference.
i'll probably get the VX550 if not the one below. As i get more funds i will add more upgrades such as crossfire,extra hdd blah blah blah the usual stuff but i just want something that will be a very good start that will be good enough for gaming and video encoding.
so...
e5200
hd 4830
atx mobo
corsair VX550
4gb of anythin but crucial ram
im getting there.
keep the advice coming.
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Hi everyone, brilliant thread! It's time for me to get a new PC and I want to build this one. It will be my first time building one so I don't have much of a clue. I can get around the inside of my desktop so I'm not at a total loss but I thought I'd see what you guys would think.
My budget would be around the 800 mark. I'll need everything. Case, monitor, OS... my budget can go a bit further than 800 but not much.
I'd be looking for high end everything really. Vista, plenty of RAM (would 4 Gigs be plenty?), A large HDD, The best possible prosessor and a good solid graphics card. Something that could manage the latest and greatest. The price would have to include delivery of parts. I'd like a big enough monitor and I'd be looking for high resolutions.
No idea where to start piecing it all together.0 -
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TheZenWithin wrote: »yeah sorry for the typo. on paper it doesnt seem very good but what can u over clock to?
u seem to be the only person on this thread recently so i might as well ask u what would be a good atx mobo for €60-120?
Yes but what paper results are you referring to? Even at stock, the E5200 is quite fast - if you're comparing it to other fully fledged Core 2 Duo's, what you're seeing is probably 'Good vs Better', rather then 'Poor vs Good'. It's all about perspective, I doubt there's any test that shows the E5200 to be lacklustre in anything really outside of maybe professional requirements. I have an E8600, but I used to have an E5200, the difference in games is negligible as the frame rate was already so high/stable with the E5200 at stock that the difference isn't noticeable. The video card is far more important. Now, if you're doing a lot of multi-tasking and encoding, ripping, and similar tasks, then yes the E8600 will take the lead considerably and the difference would be noticable, but it's still far from a slow CPU. Lastly, it overclocks excellently - but all Core 2 based CPU's do. 3Ghz-3.2Ghz would be easily achieved on a basic board and the stock cooler.Hi everyone, brilliant thread! It's time for me to get a new PC and I want to build this one. It will be my first time building one so I don't have much of a clue. I can get around the inside of my desktop so I'm not at a total loss but I thought I'd see what you guys would think.
My budget would be around the 800 mark. I'll need everything. Case, monitor, OS... my budget can go a bit further than 800 but not much.
I'd be looking for high end everything really. Vista, plenty of RAM (would 4 Gigs be plenty?), A large HDD, The best possible prosessor and a good solid graphics card. Something that could manage the latest and greatest. The price would have to include delivery of parts. I'd like a big enough monitor and I'd be looking for high resolutions.
No idea where to start piecing it all together.
Here's an example from Komplett for you. All the parts are quality ones, you could easily save a hundred or so by cutting a few corners: Swap the E7300 for an E5200, the corsair PSU for an AXP one, the board for a cheaper mAtx one, the hard drive for a 500gb one, and so on. But at it is, at stock speeds, this build would absolutely tear through any game at the native resolution of the monitor (which is HD resolution) and has plenty of storage space, and quality components.
Long time lurker looking for guidance on a build. Whipped this up, as I am on a severely limited budget. Is there any thing I need to change on this or am I good to go?
Awaiting your replies,
Prejudice
As stated, switching that E2200 for an E5200 would be a wise move for a mere 10 odd euro, both overclock excellently but the E5200 has 2mb L2 cache versus 1mb on the E2200, and will be much faster at stock speeds if you're not overclocking. The machine itself is an excellent build for the price - the video card is actually not too bad considering your budget and monitor resolution (1366x768), it'll play games like COD: World at War and Left 4 Dead at high settings at said native resolution pretty well. Of course, the big games like Crysis and GTAIV will struggle much more noticeably at the same settings, but all in all what you've got the money for there is an exceptionally good build! Very impressed, well done.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 33541
Once you go over 10,000 to 1 I'd say it's all twaddle and just a pissing contest. I use mine for gaming a lot and it's fantastic. No ghosting or any of that crap and everything looks pretty.I notice a difference in specs listed between the two. The T240 is 20000:1 while the T240 HD is 10000:1. The Acer I linked to is 40000:1 and has what I assume is a refresh rate of 2ms but really I'm not sure what this stuff means. Which is the better quality option and why?
How do you find the T240 for gaming Cushion? It's great to hear actual user input with these things. Worst thing about it is samsung decided to use those stupid touch sensitive buttons for the power button. I hate touch sensitive buttons.
It has two usb ports on the monitor as well which is handy for plugging the keyboard and mouse into.0 -
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TerrorFirmer wrote: »Here's an example from Komplett for you. All the parts are quality ones, you could easily save a hundred or so by cutting a few corners: Swap the E7300 for an E5200, the corsair PSU for an AXP one, the board for a cheaper mAtx one, the hard drive for a 500gb one, and so on. But at it is, at stock speeds, this build would absolutely tear through any game at the native resolution of the monitor (which is HD resolution) and has plenty of storage space, and quality components.
I'm trying to put together my own build, but my budget's a little less, so I took your advice and cut some corners.
I already have a screen, and the Gigabyte case is just a placeholder for a Cooler Master that's around the same price.
The total cost got cut off at the bottom, but it's €427.46
This is my first build, so if anyone has any feedback, it'd be greatly appreciated
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