~€800 Gaming PC w/Monitor & Upgrade Path

TouchingVirus

It's been quite a while since I built a machine, and this one is for a friend. He's running on a laptop at the minute that's about 5 years old, so this is really going to be a massive jump.

While I'm trying to stretch this budget as far as possible, some things will be skimped on because he can upgrade them later (e.g. no speakers atm, using a basic optical mouse & keyboard instead of a backlight gaming keyboard & mouse etc).

Here is what I have come up with thus far:

Monitor
LG W2261VP-PF 22" - €150 on pixmania

Case
Antec 300 - €58 on Komplett

Power Supply
Cooler Master Silent Pro M500 - Recommended by Tom's Hardware. €76 on Komplett.ie

Processor
AMD Phenom II X4 955 6MB L3 Cache - €140 on Pixmania

Motherboard
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO - AM3 Socket - 890GX - €113 on pixmania

Memory
1x2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600Mhz 1.65V (8,8,8,24) - €60 on Komplett.ie.

Graphics Card
Sapphire Radeon 5770 GDDR5 1GB PCIe (VGA, DVI, HDMI) - Full DirectX 11 support is a must - €150 on Pixmania

Hard Drive
WESTERN DIGITAL Caviar Green 500 GB Hard Drive - 32MB cache, 7200rpm €45 on pixmania

DVD Drive
LG GH22NS50 22x SATA Internal DVD±RW €17.90 on pixmania

Keyboard
Logitech Deluxe 250 OEM black€12 on ebay


Total = €825; If I could get it a little lower that'd be good


Strikethrough = Purchased

ED E

Get the ST2210, those pixels are worth the slight price increase. Lovely screen, you wont be disappointed.

TouchingVirus

Can't stretch the budget there to be honest, not given what I've chosen already. If there are reasonable savings elsewhere then I'm all ears

Solitaire

Wouldn't a 1080p 22" LG be a better bet?

Also, the 1GB version of the HD5750 can be had for €100 on Pixmania. I'd like to see a 1TB version :P

JasonMcNulty

You should go onto the komplett forum here on boards before you buy anything off them. id recommend pixmania for most of the parts that you're getting from komplett. also pix has great deals on monitors right now

TouchingVirus

Solitaire wrote: »

Wouldn't a 1080p 22" LG be a better bet?

Also, the 1GB version of the HD5750 can be had for €100 on Pixmania. I'd like to see a 1TB version :P

Which LG 22" and how much?

Also, *facepalm* about the 1TB gfx card

Do Pixmania not have a bad rep for returns?

ScumLord

All I can say really is that I've had a gigabyte board in my home PC for over 5 years and it's solid as a rock. I'll be buying them from now on I think, thinking about the abuse it got when trying to fit a fancy heatsink that didn't really fit I don't know how I didn't kill it.

TouchingVirus

I'm an advocate of the Gigabyte brand myself, love them

marco_polo

Not sure about the upgradability of 1156 being better than AM3? I was under the impression that Intels future plans for the 1156 were a little unclear whereas at least you know for sure with AMD that a X6 core Thuban will be an option. Is there any plans for a hexacore 1156 CPU in the future? I am not sure to which socket will last longest TBH, so don't give too much weight to my comments .

Mainly I am throwing it out there because with a budget of just 800 for the time being you could aggressively cut CPU costs now with something like a tri/quad core athlon for between 70-100 and put the extra 100-130 into other components. And be guaranteed to be able to drop in a X6 core AM3 chip in a year of two FTW. I still think that i5 is a fine choice if you go that way, just giving you options :pac:

I think it would make sense to get a HD5770 and a 22" monitor now if at all possible, would second the 1080p 22" LG model as quite budget friendly. I would say that both can be sourced of pixmania for about the same price as the 5750 and 20" monitor in your OP.

TouchingVirus

At the minute the Monitor is an LG W2261VP-PF 22" which is €150 on Pixmania. The GFX card is €100 on pixmania (still the 5750). Bumping to a 1GB 5770 adds €40 to the total.


As far as the processor/motherboard combo goes, can you give me some recommendations?

marco_polo

TouchingVirus wrote: »

At the minute the Monitor is an LG W2261VP-PF 22" which is €150 on Pixmania. The GFX card is €100 on pixmania (still the 5750). Bumping to a 1GB 5770 adds €40 to the total.


As far as the processor/motherboard combo goes, can you give me some recommendations?

Sry I was looking at the price for the 512, Would probably be better to get the 1Gb 5770 rather than the 5750 as a better match for the the 1080p monitor if at all possible (I have that LG and I think is great BTW). Not that well read up on AM3 boards with USB3 support at the moment so perhaps somebody else has a good suggestion there, but if you are not set on USB3 then you could probably target even more savings (esp if Crossfire is not important to you). You are looking at 7** (785/790 etc ) boards for USB2 or 8xx (870/ 890 etc) boards for native USB3 support. A 870 board may be the best bet for you as it as only one PCIe slot (so no crossfire) and USB 3.0 support, and are priced around the £80 sterling mark on ebuyer.

CPU wise I was thinking something along the lines of the Athlon II X4 620 for about 100 euro (or even Athlon II X3 435), which would be more than aequate for gaming for a couple of years before replacing it with an X6 of something like that.

TouchingVirus

Swapped to an AMD based system, shaved ~50 off the price. I like the thinking on the lack of news for the LGA 1156 socket, an X6 as an upgrade path is very nice

Any more opinions would be welcome

hare05

On a high note, great choice of case. Have one myself. Plenty of room inside, good build quality, dust filters in the front and good looking too!

Mad Mike

One extra thing to consider before choosing a monitor is that a 1080P (1920x1080) will always need a fairly hefty graphics card to drive it well. If you try to run at anything lower than the native resolution your games will look crap.

If video is not an issue and the machine is mainly for gaming then a 1600 x 1050 monitor might be a better bet - allowing you to get away with a lower spec graphics card.

TouchingVirus

A HD 5770 can fairly run some games at 1920x1080

Mad Mike

TouchingVirus wrote: »

A HD 5770 can fairly run some games at 1920x1080

Undoubtedly but a lesser card running a 1680x1050 monitor would look just as good for gaming not to mention next years games or the year after. Just a thought.