Guide - the Budget Gaming PC

giggsy664 wrote: »

Thanks for the head up as regard the Card Reader :P
Gonna go for this instead

Also, I intend to start purchasing around December so I can exhaust any other routes of getting cheaper stuff 2nd hand from people I know.

You do know this renders your current build less than irrelevant? :P Come back in December! Much will have changed by then...

Also, will the 120mm fans fit in automatically?

Good point! Virtually any sub-€20 fan on the planet will come with a pack of self-tapping screws but they are utter ****es to play with so if you could find a bumper pack of these you won't go wrong. I can't find the big cheap 12- and 20-packs of these that HWVS and a few others used to sell though

AAANDDDD while looking through an ancient computer I have I found a 60mm fan on the CPU heatsink. I don't intend on reusing that PC ever again, and this is the only thing I think worth salvaging. Would it be worth using?

Absolutely ...not!

Inspired by the last few posts I have done something very silly.

Note that while the mobo is a bit naff and I haven't specced a cooler... €620?!?!?!? :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

The SuperFlowers are an insanely mixed bag; some almost Corsair-like units mixed in with some timebombs that Solytech would be proud of The Amazon range is one of the better ones; they're basically garish Corsair clones with few but decent reviews and decent efficiency and stability. They used to be laughably overpriced but I noticed that recently the prices have halved making them extremely competitve units; they blow those nasty Coolermaster GX units out of the water

thc4me wrote: »

of the above builds for 550-650 which one would you go for if your main priority was for photoshop and working with large raw image files

I'd be tempted to go with the i5-760 build above, using the spare ~€30 of your €650 budget to upgrade the mobo to something a bit more classy and/or add an aftermarket cooler. IMHO the above build is fine as-is so long as you don't intend to overclock it and fine for light OC if you throw on a Hyper 212+ (once it reappears ) or even an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev2.0. A better mobo will cost you an extra €15 for the MSI H55M-E33 (or the cheap Asus, but it has eff-all onboard sound ) so getting the cooler as well would put you overbudget (€655 shipped)

marco_polo wrote: »

So there are still a few exploding varities around then

Yep, older ones mostly. I don't trust the nicely understated-looking 550W unit either as €35 doesn't usually buy you that much PSU...

Yes

Only in the way of slightly lower stock clocks, and this has far more to do with managing the CPU's power envelope than actual performance constraints

The vast majority of them, yes. Most PC games favour either dual or quad threads, XBox ports need three fast cores or they go down the pan, and PS3 ports need at least a tricore too or they bail, and prefer lots of slower cores to few fast ones. Many PC titles are fairly adaptable but trying to run a modern console port on a dualcore CPU results in a massive drop in FPS

Length of string to moon? :pac: All depends on the game, what resolution you're playing at and what quality you enjoy. On average most mid-range builds get by fine on a cheap AM3 tricore running at 2.5GHz+ even up to 1080p; upper-mid-range builds running GTX460s and the like prefer 2.5GHz+ quads and ones with decent L3 cache to boot. High-end multi-monitor builds sporting HD5850s and/or multiple GPUs really need the grunt of an i5 quad (preferably OC'd!) or better!

Had huge trouble with the mobo, as most new mobos on the market under €70 use dodgy VIA audio! :mad: We're now heading backwards to the days of needing expensive discrete soundcards! :mad::mad: PSU was also a pain as HWVS have dropped the CX400 and the SF Amazon 450W is out of stock until next month! :eek: So a naff PSU as opposed to an abysmal one

Anyway... €465 shipped:



You have a spare €35 to play with... you could get a quadcore CPU, or upgrade graphics to a HD5770 1GB. Or neither

Certainly

Everyone needs a DVD drive :pac:

Unless you really mean you need a BluRay drive... or a second DVD drive for some reason...

And FireWire isn't too hard... some mobos have it, some cases have it (and almost all mobos have an internal FireWire header for it) and if both avenues fail there's always PCI adapter cards...

Anyway, €700 is the very highest "budget" amount for a budget PC and can probably get you either an i5+GTX460 or an X4+GTX460 1GB build

Just over €480 shipped:



There's nearly €70 spare in that budget, whether it be for fancy new peripherals or beer Or you could go with a slightly better system... an i5 quad build is probably a bit out of reach on €550 but you could easily go for a 95W Phenom2 X4 Just note that a Phenom over 95W TDP or any attempt to OC will require a better PSU for more wiggle room and probably an aftermarket CPU cooler too. HWVS are crap at PSUs right now! :mad:

1. It would bring the price down to €590 excluding shipping, actually Which means €620 all in. And we're not fininshed yet...

2. You can get the mobo elsewhere or get the GA-P55-USB3 or the GA-P55A-UD3 instead.

3. That PSU is drivel, and I wouldn't dream of running an i5+GTX460 system on it. Sadly HWVS is a bit naff for 500-600W PSUs right now, with everything overpriced, out of stock (no Amazon 550W units until the end of the month!! :() or vanished from the lists :eek: You'll be dropping €70-75 for a decent 500W+ unit there right now

At that price? Yes! Nearer €200? Not so much

It really depends on what you're willing to pay. Under €170 is excellent as the GPU of the 1GB version is almost always OCd and regardless of speed always has 33% more memory, at least 33% higher memory throughput and - easy to forget - at least 33% more rendering capacity. The former helps with higher resolutions (beyond 1080p, including multi-monitor), the second helps with demanding AA/AF settings and the last helps avoid bottlenecks with geometrically-intricate hi-poly scenarios.

As the price climbs the benefit wanes. Sure, a heavily OCd GTX460 1GB performs as good as a HD5850, but a heavily OCd HD5850 will blow it away and for not that much more money either!

From what I can see the CX430 has been in the wild for six weeks already - the thing with HWVS suggests a justified and nasty dose of DO NOT WANT!! They could have had it in back at the very end of August, but made sure every CX400 was long gone and the Amazon 450W was out of stock before they'd even touch it with a bargepole :eek:

Still no sign of Corsair sending review samples to anyone, not even cherry-picked ones; word on the street is that it's a cheap, overrated (should be sold as a 380W max!), badcaps unit based on CWT's DSA platform. A few years back you'd only see that design in emerging markets; nowadays half the mediocre-but-okay-ish budget units are DSA, and the fact that the CX430 is considered sub-par even then, and not making it into budget shootout reviews, isn't allaying anyone's suspicions. Not good, not good, not good :(:(