Budget Gaming Machine for a friend

Kirby

A friend asked me to put together a machine for him for college work and the odd game. It's mainly going to be used for college work, the gaming is just a bonus. His budget was around 400 euro all told. He isn't experienced at all and won't be overclocking. No monitor or peripheral's needed. He will be at 720p. That's all the details covered......

This is what I came up with.

Item|Price
Intel Core i3-2120 Box, LGA1155|€111.23
ASUS P8H61-M LX3 PLUS, Sockel 1155, mATX, DDR3|€44.16
4GB Corsair Valueselect DDR3-1333 CL9|€18.40
Xigmatek Asgard II Midi Tower - black/silver, ohne Netzteil|€32.05
XFX RADEON HD 6670 800M 1GB DDR3 VGA, DVI, HDMI|€61.79
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€43.01
Seagate Barracuda 7200 500GB SATA 6GB's|€61.03
LG GH24NS bare schwarz|€17.98
Total|€389.65


So, any advice? I'm open to any suggestions regards increasing performance while keeping the price down.

Also, a quick question with regards hardwareversands assemble option. Do they offer that 20 euro assembly option without an operating system? I was originally going to assemble it for him because he doesn't know how, but that would mean delivering it my address instead of his. It would be alot handier to pay the 20 quid and have it delivered to his address. Do they assemble without an OS?

Thanks in advance.

Bloodwing

Its not advisable to go for a cheap PSU or a cheap case/PSU combo as suggested. The super flower amazon in your OP is a good brand and some of the others lads will be able to advise you on what sort of power you'll be needing. Just don't buy a cheap one. Take a look at the guide Monotype did on this thread. It's well worth a read.

EDIT: the assembly doesn't include the installation of the OS as far as I know. That actually costs extra if you want it done. Looking at some of the threads recently a good few people have had issues with systems built by HWVS (possibly down to how it's handled during delivery). It might prove more beneficial in the long run if you build it for him.

Monotype

Yeah, you'd be mad to go with those PSUs.

If he could wait, AMD's Trinity APUs will be released in just over a month - the start of October, iirc. These processors have good integrated graphics and would be ideal for a low budget gaming build.

BTW, they don't put the OS on for the €20.

Kirby

I know that, OS costs 80 euro. But assembly costs 20 and the question was regarding if they offer assembly without buying an OS.....which I'm not sure they do.

I considered going with the 3rd gen Ivy bridges as they have HD4000 integrated graphics.....but the 6670 outperforms it by quite alot and it works out at roughly the same price.

Thanks for the input though. He doesn't want to wait a month so waiting for the new AMD's isn't an option unfortunately.

Bloodwing

Kirby wrote: »

I know that, OS costs 80 euro. But assembly costs 20 and the question was regarding if they offer assembly without buying an OS.....which I'm not sure they do.

I considered going with the 3rd gen Ivy bridges as they have HD4000 integrated graphics.....but the 6670 outperforms it by quite alot and it works out at roughly the same price.

Thanks for the input though. He doesn't want to wait a month so waiting for the new AMD's isn't an option unfortunately.

Yeah they'll build it without an OS. The point i was making about the extra cost is this. Even if you purchased an OS from them and paid the €20 for them to build it they still wouldn't install the OS unless you pay the extra.

Monotype

Don't go through their build system, but just add everything you want built to your cart and add this on top. They'll assemble the order then.
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/Service/746/Rechner+-+Zusammenbau.article

Hmm... looking at the original build... how about if you got the celeron G540 (€40) and bought a better graphics card...? The savings would easily allow you to buy something like a 7770.

http://www1.hardwareversand.de/Socket+1155/50379/Intel+Celeron+G540+Box%2C+LGA1155.article

The celeron is actually not that bad when you consider that it's on the Sandy Bridge architecture and that 2.5GHz is quite efficient. It's a dual core too. When it comes to games, you'll be more likely to benefit from the faster graphics card than the CPU.
The extra tenner you could save from that CPU and graphics card could buy you the Asrock H61 U3S3 board which has SATA USB 3 and 6Gbps.

http://www2.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/46918/ASRock+H61M+U3S3+(B3)%2C+Sockel+1155%2C+mATX.article

Kirby

Monotype wrote: »

Don't go through their build system, but just add everything you want built to your cart and add this on top. They'll assemble the order then.
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/Service/746/Rechner+-+Zusammenbau.article

Hmm... looking at the original build... how about if you got the celeron G540 (€40) and bought a better graphics card...? The savings would easily allow you to buy something like a 7770.

http://www1.hardwareversand.de/Socket+1155/50379/Intel+Celeron+G540+Box%2C+LGA1155.article

The celeron is actually not that bad when you consider that it's on the Sandy Bridge architecture and that 2.5GHz is quite efficient. It's a dual core too. When it comes to games, you'll be more likely to benefit from the faster graphics card than the CPU.
The extra tenner you could save from that CPU and graphics card could buy you the Asrock H61 U3S3 board which has SATA USB 3 and 6Gbps.

http://www2.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/46918/ASRock+H61M+U3S3+(B3)%2C+Sockel+1155%2C+mATX.article

Yeah if it was my machine on the same budget, I would probably do that. Better board and card.

But he is going to be using it for math applications in college with alot of calculations so I figure the quadcore will actually be of some benefit to him.

Procrastastudy

Kirby wrote: »

Yeah if it was my machine on the same budget, I would probably do that. Better board and card.

But he is going to be using it for math applications in college with alot of calculations so I figure the quadcore will actually be of some benefit to him.

GPUs are better at math.

Kirby

Went ahead and ordered the original list so the thread's done I suppose. Thanks for all the input anyway guys. Appreciated the different takes on it.