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Guide - the Budget Gaming PC
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Well maybe, as long as similar quality components are used, ie, corsair & Antec 300. No point getting everything cheap if it stops working after a year!..
Didn't have to look to far......
:rolleyes:Pertaining to the topic itself rather than any specific build, here's the current spec for an all-round games machine that can just about manage 1080p gaming while staying under €500 - delivered
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Update? Okay, just bear in mind that being a template I've ignored temporary stock shortages this time around:
This may be a budget build but it has more than enough CPU grunt for most things (three fast cores) and the GPU can be pushed (read: OCd) to perform well at 1080p, although 1650*1080 is its forte. Added some cooling this time around. Bear in mind that the PSU has been tailored to stay around 50% utilization when gaming which is best for both the PSU and your ESB bill. Under torture testing this system can hit over 60%, maybe over 70% if heavily OCd. But so long as it stays under ~65% during normal (gaming) use its all good. On the same note, given its high OC ceiling you may want a PSU with greater 12V capacity (not just wattage!) if you try to run a HD4890 in a similar build. At stock speeds its power consumption isn't really that much higher than a HD4850 anyway (even in Furmark ) 0 -
Update? Okay, just bear in mind that being a template I've ignored temporary stock shortages this time around:
This may be a budget build but it has more than enough CPU grunt for most things (three fast cores) and the GPU can be pushed (read: OCd) to perform well at 1080p, although 1650*1080 is its forte. Added some cooling this time around. Bear in mind that the PSU has been tailored to stay around 50% utilization when gaming which is best for both the PSU and your ESB bill. Under torture testing this system can hit over 60%, maybe over 70% if heavily OCd. But so long as it stays under ~65% during normal (gaming) use its all good. On the same note, given its high OC ceiling you may want a PSU with greater 12V capacity (not just wattage!) if you try to run a HD4890 in a similar build. At stock speeds its power consumption isn't really that much higher than a HD4850 anyway (even in Furmark )
What website is all of this from?
Is tax included and is the delivery included?
Looks good for the price.
More money could be saved I think, if the ram amount was reduced to 3gb's as Xp/Vista 32-bit wont use 4gb anyway- Just a thought0 -
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HWVS has a flat rate of €30 for shipping. Oh, and DDR3 is insanely pricey there too. No idea why. If a big saving can be made then just buy from Komplett or MemoryC instead (yes, on a bad day the saving is big enough to cover the hassle and the second shipping charge!).
On the other hand, their CPU, mobo and HDD prices are just plain embarrasing. And the graphics cards are cheap too. And they have a better selection of cases. And the cooling parts they do have are dirt cheap... yes, those prices are with VAT. And as an Eurozone country there's no insane taxes or excise charges
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HWVS has a flat rate of €30 for shipping. Oh, and DDR3 is insanely pricey there too. No idea why. If a big saving can be made then just buy from Komplett or MemoryC instead (yes, on a bad day the saving is big enough to cover the hassle and the second shipping charge!).
On the other hand, their CPU, mobo and HDD prices are just plain embarrasing. And the graphics cards are cheap too. And they have a better selection of cases. And the cooling parts they do have are dirt cheap... yes, those prices are with VAT. And as an Eurozone country there's no insane taxes or excise charges
Thats excellent, I just looked it up and put in the build that I posted here and it came to only €455.89 including delivery. My friend will be delighted, saved him a potential €50 if he goes with the build.
Thanks a lot!:D0 -
I'm trying to build my first gaming computer,
i wanna spend around 400/500 ,
i already have a Monitor, OS, Keyboard and so on, i want games like warhammer online to play fairly well and run smoothly,
could anyone give me a good build, really appreciate any help0 -
I'm trying to build my first gaming computer,
i wanna spend around 400/500 ,
i already have a Monitor, OS, Keyboard and so on, i want games like warhammer online to play fairly well and run smoothly,
could anyone give me a good build, really appreciate any help
Sum: HV20P545DE AMD Phenom II X2 545 Box, Sockel AM3 HV13H7K3DE Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B 320GB, SATA II (HDT721032SLA360)0) HV203NZSDE NZXT Beta Case BETA-001BK - Black Metal, ATX, ohne Netzteil HVR550ABDE Antec Basiq 550W 80Plus HV20OI96DE 4096MB-Kit OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Fatal1ty Edition Dual Channel HV207H2ADE LG GH22NS40/NS30 bare schwarz SATA II HV1134UFDE ASUS M2374-AM SE, Sockel AM2, mATX HV1022XIDE Palit Geforce 9800GT Super+, 1024MB, PCI-Express0 -
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elazar55: Okay, some issues:
CPU: The X2-545 is nice, but the X3-720BE is much easier to OC and has the huge advantage of a third core. And many newer games will be designed with more than two cores in mind.
Mobo: Fair, I prefer the 770 or 780V for budget builds but that's just me
RAM: Given they usually have similar latencies and only a slight difference in price I find faster 1066MHz DDR2 to be better value.
Graphics: Sorry, this is just pretty bad. HD4850 >> 9800GTX+ >>> HD4830 > 9800GT. And I can get the top of that little heirarchy for less than that stock 9800GT.
HDD: Why 320GB when 500GB is less than a fiver more?
DVD: Perfect here
Case: Wow. Its like a CM Elite 330... only... half again as dear. But wait? What's that? The fan... has little lights! R0x0rs!! Then again the modded CM330 with the lovely window is still cheaper. Unlees you're utterly in love with the styling the Beta's just not worth it.
PSU: Wow, welcome to the land of merry overkill. Nearly half again as much PSU for a weaker system than my spec. And my spec wasn't trying to set the PSU on fire exactly to begin with. You'd only need this if you were intending to OC my higher-spec system, here its just plain unneccessary
Oh, and to add injury to insult the 600W Xilence PSU you put up later is a lot flakier than the good 550W. In fact its a lot worse than the CX400 which is a lot cheaper :P
Not trying to be mean, a lot of the points above are very common traps to fall into
As for my template? Its just that. Prices and stock go up and down so some adjusting is normal. Plus I left a couple of easy ways to drive the price down further: first, go for a €40-50 AM2+ 770/780V mobo which also lets you avail of the cheaper, lower-latency DDR2-8500. Second, drop the CPU to a X2-5**. You lose a core and some futureproofing, but also save some cash and heat/power. Plus if you're not going to OC then you don't need to worry about getting an aftermarket CPU cooler either 0 -
Update? Okay, just bear in mind that being a template I've ignored temporary stock shortages this time around:
This may be a budget build but it has more than enough CPU grunt for most things (three fast cores) and the GPU can be pushed (read: OCd) to perform well at 1080p, although 1650*1080 is its forte. Added some cooling this time around. Bear in mind that the PSU has been tailored to stay around 50% utilization when gaming which is best for both the PSU and your ESB bill. Under torture testing this system can hit over 60%, maybe over 70% if heavily OCd. But so long as it stays under ~65% during normal (gaming) use its all good. On the same note, given its high OC ceiling you may want a PSU with greater 12V capacity (not just wattage!) if you try to run a HD4890 in a similar build. At stock speeds its power consumption isn't really that much higher than a HD4850 anyway (even in Furmark )
Thanks for doing the legwork Sapphire:)
I'm ashamed to say I've reached the age of majority and have yet to build from scratch. "Epic Fail" as some would say.
Being a student cash is not plentiful, but bar those good old GPs and CEOs its not plentiful for anyone right now. The above now comes to 475 + 30 shipping. I can just about afford that, I think, I have to do some calculations and see if I can survive on an empty pocket till christmas. I'll spend a few extra quid if its worth it though.
HD4850 512MB(currently out) -> HD4850 1GB for 12 quid? I do some amateur video work, and some gaming. Is it worth the upgrade? I'm hoping to get a nice big hi res <4ms monitor at christmas so I'll need something decent to operate it:)
PS: How much surplus for new HDDs will that give me? I'll probably end up getting a few more TB drives(collecting junk is in my nature:p) and I dont want to overload the system. I probably wont be messing with anything else for a while so it'll just be HDDs.
Extras: Having never done this before, will I need to add Sata and PS cables or are they inc? Thermal compound? Anything else. I have all the external goodies I need lying around.
Also, how would Adobe Premier perform on this system? I think I might be able to get a lend of a copy:)0 -
Lethal_Bullet wrote: »HD4850 512MB(currently out) -> HD4850 1GB for 12 quid?
Thermal compound? Anything else. I have all the external goodies I need lying around.
Also, how would Adobe Premier perform on this system? I think I might be able to get a lend of a copy:)
Adobe and AMD unfotunately don't get a long too well
If you will be using them quite a bit then you may just have to go with an intel build!
The 4850 1gb is not worth it, there is little or often no increase in performance... If gaming at 1080 which it would seem you intend to a 4870 1gb is usually the minimum which would be advised!
All these things are achievable even on your budget...(maybe)
All the cables and such come with the components, some cpu coolers also come with thermal paste already applied too!
We're talking budget for you and i'd almost go with the stock cooler with whatever cpu your getting. (It doesn't sound like you'll be overclocking it) So it's prob best to save anywhere you possibly can. On a.....
I need sleep, soz i'll finish this tomarra 0 -
Thanks, I've had loads of Kick, now called KX for some reason, so I'm not sleeping anytime soon
I'm not a massive gamer tbh, I dont mind tuning down textures in order to get a decent framerate.
Right now I'm running Flash and PS CS3 on an AMD, no issues here.... Maybe premier is more picky, but I use Pinnacle mostly anyways, so that was just gonna be for a bit of fun for a few weeks.
The only thing I've OC'd so far is a Linux Netbook and that was very basic, but I'd definitely hope to OC this build. Running Dells for years so I never really bothered, they dont seem to like you messing with the clock, grrr.
The big screen is more for Photoshopping and the occasional movie. Once I can run TF2 and COH at a decent spec I'll be happy. Crysis does nothing for me.0 -
Effluo wrote:We're talking budget for you and i'd almost go with the stock cooler with whatever cpu your getting. (It doesn't sound like you'll be overclocking it) So it's prob best to save anywhere you possibly can. On a.....
I need sleep, soz i'll finish this tomarra
Young 'uns nowadays... no stamina :PLethal_Bullet wrote:Thanks, I've had loads of Kick, now called KX for some reason, so I'm not sleeping anytime soon
Or next week either
... You do know you'll sleep for the entire fortnight after that, don't you?
Not sure about Adobe CS3 but it's a known fact that everything Phenom has endemic issues with CS4. Photoshop lags over 30% behind what it should be going at
If you have a 1080p screen I'd recommend a HD4870 1GB if you can push your finances that far. If you want some "wiggle room" on theat PSU to fit in a couple of extra HDDs then you're talking a decent 550W. Even sticking with Corsair or Antec that's an extra €30 0 -
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One thing: If you go the X3-720BE route, if you get a graphics card better than the HD4850, or you OC anything or you add additional HDDs (or all three!) I'd strongly recommend paying the extra and getting a decent 550W PSU. Yep, an extra €30 gone but you're really talking a mid-range build here and you'll need a mid-range PSU to power it, so be prepared for a mid-range price trag to boot! :rolleyes: 0
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the dvd drive you've chose is ide, you should get a sata
+1case isn't the greatest for airflow
An Antec 300 is cheaper and better. And a Xigmatek Midgard puts it in the shade. And is cheaper...the vx550watt might be cheaper when including shipping from hrwd.de
Who? :P But seriously, that's a good price for a VX550 on Dabs right now - just so long as they're actually in stock!You could get a 4890 if you changed to a am2+ build and ddr2. On a budget it's a good option.
Just try to get a newish mobo like a 770 or 785Pretty good value on the screen even if it is a 24" screen with "only" 1080 resolution!
+1Also if you're overclocking you'll need a different cooler. If not then you might aswell not get a Black Ed processor. Save a bit more!
To be fair I don't think it's that big an issue if you're not OCing heavily; they should break 3GHz reasonably comfortably even with the stock HSF. But yes, spending even €15-18 on an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro R2 is a good investment for the future - you should be hitting 3.6GHz (or higher with C3 stepping) as a sane "everyday" speed with a decent cooler.I don't quite get the whole power connectors thingy! The vx550 only has 1 pci-e power connector(the 4870 requires two), they bundle a molex to pci-e power connector with the gpu but then they also say not to use it!
You sure you're not thinking of the VX450? Pretty sure the VX550 ships with one 6pin PCIe and one 8pin PCIe connectoryou could run quite easily a 4890 rig off a vx450watt(a psu with the right connectors). Safely too! The 4890 uses less power than the 4870.
Err... the VX450 lacks a second PCIe connector AFAIK. And throw in an OCd 95W triple-core CPU and a couple of HDDs and/or opticals and the VX450 is coming under a fair whack of pressure. Although its still more than doable. That setup might not be such a good idea on a CX400 mind...
Bear in mind that while the HD4890 uses a smidgen less juice than the HD4870 the latter can't OC worth pudding unless a high-bin chip on water (Atomic Edition anyone?), while the HD4890 can and almost certainly will be maxed out in CCC by most users, resulting in a hairy bump in speed, sadly accompanied by a slight increase in thirst. So on average the HD4890 ends up even faster than the HD4870 (often eclipsing the GTX275 and heading for GTX285 territory) but also around the same or slightly more power dissipation 0 -
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JackieChan wrote: »case isn't the greatest for airflow.
I'll have another look at this. It seemed to get good reviews when I checked it out.
Also if you're overclocking you'll need a different cooler. If not then you might aswell not get a Black Ed processor. Save a bit more!
I'd like to have upped to 3 or 3.2Ghz. From what I have read it is very "doable" with the stock cooler!
Regadless of whether you use the stock HSF or a cheap-and-cheerful aftermarket cooler OCing is always best done in a case with good airflow. And on that front the Apollo is a reasonable case but nothing special, and decidedly last-gen - PSU at the top and a pair of 120mm fans for some traditional (read: dated) front-to-back action. That's perfectly reasonable (even desirable) in the €25-40 range but you'd expect a lot more for €65! There are plenty of €55-70 cases with bottom-to-top cooling and bottom-mounted PSUs (which if mounted upside-down are also handy for venting hot exhaust from the grapics cards!); hell, the Midgard has a 3-fan speed controller so you can slap in three cheap-and-noisy fans and drop the speed just low enough to stop the racket they make :P
Personally I'd just take advantage of having HWVS at your beck-and-call and get a cheap, decent cooler like the Freezer 7 R2 for future-proofing. You can always dial it up to 3.6GHz later when even the X3-720BE is getting datedI like that screen but I really am in 2 minds whether to just go with a 21/22 inch instead.Is 24' over kill?
Not at that price Well, if it had been a really "good" 24" with 2560*1600 resolution (which would even have a HD4890 on its knees!) it may have been overkill, but as those always cost three or four times as much I don't think it'll be an issue If the 4890 could run with a 450w psu I would certainly consider going for it and downgrading the power supply. But again from what I've read online although the 4890 has lower idle consumption is has a higher load consumption(up to 30w!)
Many websites differ including the only one that measures true component power usage rather than the usual "from the wall socket" method (which IMHO is a joke). The only one claiming the 30W difference is AMD (who always exaggerate; 51W HD4770 listed with 78W TDP anyone? :P) and maybe Toms Hardware (as they seem to be biased somehow... not that it'd be due to bribery! Perish the thought!) 0 -
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Correct me if i'm reading that wrong! but is that at 100% load and still over 80% efficient?
That's not even that remarkable any more - my Odin GT (another CWT) is sniffed at because it can't quite manage 80Plus Bronze on 110V and many cheap, nasty Sirtecs are hitting 80Plus Gold (close to 90% efficient at 50% load and something like 87% at 20/100% loads), although they often cut a lot of corners to achieve that.
[rant] The big issue is that it's pretty easy to trick 80Plus to give very marketable awards to any old PSU; they only test at 20/50/100% loads and only at room temperature, so many manufacturers are ignoring the stuff they don't test, such as high-temperature operation, low-load operation, stability, reliability etc. just to get the nicest 80Plus award they can. And 80Plus don't give a [CENSORED] - they only care about the (sustantial amount of) money paid to them for a unit to be tested :mad:
The most hilarious part of 80Plus' negligence is that they've created a culture that paradoxically awards PSUs for running very inefficiently and/or unstably at low loads, and given the enhanced p-states and energy saving-nature of thirsty CPUs and GPUs combined with the tendency to "oversell" PSUs we're seeing more and more PCs running at or well below 15% PSU load for much of the time (e.g. gaming rigs running Firefox and an .mp3 instead of Crysis) and at this point most modern PSUs are running far less efficiently than at 100% load, with the worst offenders often clocking in awe-inspiring ~65% efficiency. That's just naff :mad: [/rant]Here's also a funny video from corsair.
http://www.corsair.com/products/hx450/default.aspx
No video... that's the link for the HX450's product page...
If you mean the Raidmax "ad" (:D) hidden under one of the tabs then yeah, I had trouble linking it here a while back. Can't remember what I did in the end... only time I've seen it successfully linked was when Redbeard linked it on JohnnyGuru, and he works for Corsair :P
Found the link for that 0 -
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