Guide - the Budget Gaming PC

IrishMetalhead · 14-03-2011 3:20am

yup i would recommend this one:
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=42246&agid=631
mainly because it ships with 2 140mm fans plus i don't think it looks too bad either

Keggers2 · 14-03-2011 3:36am

I like it!

And I hate to be overly picky or anything but this would be able to run new games relatively well?

IrishMetalhead · 14-03-2011 3:42am

yea it should and the 5770 should still be able to run most game maxed out with 2 AA but that depends on what res your running

Keggers2 · 14-03-2011 3:58am

Awesome!

I'm really looking forward to this!

A2LUE42 · 16-03-2011 12:42pm

So my 5150 is on its last legs and the motherboard seems to be on the way out. I have decided to replace it rather than put money into a 5+ year old machine. I have done a few rebuilds of various Desktops, but this would be the first complete build. I'll be keeping the 24" FP monitor I currently have. I could also reuse the DVD and DVDRW drives, unless it would be better to just put new ones in.

The below spec is what is currently running(just about). The budget gaming PC for about €500 looks cool, but I'd like to be sure I was building something that was fit for purpose, as it isn't really used for gaming(kids use for wow), It's mainly for Internet Browsing. Downloading of media and the storage and sharing of the media files on a home wireless network to a couple of Netgear Digital Entertainers. Also need to be able to burn CD's and DVD's.

Current Spec is as follows;
Dimension 5150 PentiumD 820 DualCore(2.80GHz,800MHz fsb,2x1MB cache)
2048DDR2-400Mhz (4X512)
2 x 250GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive
16x DVD+/-RW & 16x DVD
256MB ATI Radeon X600 HyperMemory graphics card
Integrated Audio with Dolby Digital 7.1 capability
Cant remember what sound card is in it....Nothing fancy anyway
Had a pinacle tv card in it, but took that out a while back as it was never used.

and 3 x 1TB USB HDD's and 1 x 2TB USB HDD.
I'm waiting on my new external HDD from IBOOD as well.(Western Digital My Book ® Live ™ - 2 TB NAS Server with Gigabit Ethernet)

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks.

deconduo · 16-03-2011 2:29pm

€32,80 - 4GB Crucial RAM
€46,75 - Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB
€40,41 - SF Amazon 450W PSU
€36,25 - Thermaltake V3
€62,32 - Athlon II X3 445
€57,64 - MSI 870-C45
€30 - Shipping

Comes to €306,17

Throw in whatever graphics card you think you need. The 5770 is fine if you want it, but even a 5570 for €53 would be a massive jump from what you have.

Tea_Bag · 16-03-2011 3:31pm

Id sell on your 250gb HDD's or move them into external inclosures, and buy a samsung F3 2Tb or the ecogreen F4 2Tb (slower)
having loads of small HDD's is a nucance.

what resolution is that 24" screen, and what games besides WOW do you want to play?
WOW isnt very demanding, but if you want to dabble in something like FPS or similar, id suggest the HD5770 graphics card.

The rig Deeconduo spec'd (with the 5570 or better still 5770) will run circles around that old banger you have.

A2LUE42 · 16-03-2011 4:16pm

I'll have to check what the monitor is later this evening. But it is a decent spec.
I don't really play any games, but want something that will last for a while.
I'd be reluctant to reuse the old hard drives for anything, as they have been running for over 5 years and I have plenty of storage on external USB drives already.

Would I be better having 2 x 1TB internal drives, or 1 x 2TB ?

IrishMetalhead · 16-03-2011 4:37pm

well with 2 x 1tb hdds you get a massive speed increase in transfers and booting up but that involves configuring it in a raid0 array which is very risky because if one hdd fails you'll lose all your data and since it's 2 seperate hdd's the chances of ailure will have doubled than rather just running one hdd so i just say go with the 1 hdd for that extra piece of mind

Tea_Bag · 16-03-2011 4:52pm

IrishMetalhead wrote: »

well with 2 x 1tb hdds you get a massive speed increase in transfers and booting up but that involves configuring it in a raid0 array which is very risky because if one hdd fails you'll lose all your data and since it's 2 seperate hdd's the chances of ailure will have doubled than rather just running one hdd so i just say go with the 1 hdd for that extra piece of mind

on the other side of the coin, having 2x 1Tb HDD's (and not using a RAID config) will mean that if something goes wrong with a HDD, you'll only lose 1Tb as opposed to 2tb's, bad, but could be worse.

that said, I'd still get just a single 2Tb HDD. HDD failures are few and far between these days, and samsungs are the best on the market.

what OS will you be using? you cant use a 2Tb HDD with windows XP. id suggest a flavour of windows 7 64bit.

A2LUE42 · 16-03-2011 5:08pm

I was going to go down the Win 7 route, I have to say goodbye to XP at some stage:D. I was as bad switching from ME and 2K.

From reading here and looking at the hardwareversand.de website, I wanted to get everything I need in one go and build it over a weekend.

Should I be spending more on the case and fans so it's not as noisy ?

Tea_Bag · 16-03-2011 5:20pm

ME and 2k were shuiite. 95 -> 98SE -> XP ->W7 for me. i skip a generation usually. the move is painless really, and you'll hate it at first, but then love it much more than XP. its a beautiful OS, imo better and smoother than mac.

get everything in 1 go, because HWVS has a flat €30 shipping fee. also make sure everything is in stock.

IMO, getting a good case from day 1 is very important, and well worth spending a little extra on. its the only part of the PC that you see day in day out, so dont get something that looks (or could look in near future) tacky. You can also keep it for all future builds/upgrades.

IrishMetalhead · 16-03-2011 5:27pm

if your looking for a quite, nice looking, and great airflow case you should look into getting a fractal define r3 but they aint tho =/

http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?agid=631&aid=36379&lid=2

Solitaire · 17-03-2011 2:09am

I don't think they fit well with this thread...

Sparks · 19-03-2011 7:03pm

So the car's finally paid off, and my normal laptop isn't up to Battlefield 3 or any of the interesting-looking games, so it's time for a new box. Using Tom Hardware's Dec2010 $500 box as a reference and with a budget of €500 max, I've gotten this so far. Thoughts?

ASRock M3A770DE/A/ASR AM3 AMD 770 DDR3 ATX |€53.40
AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1GHz AM3 1.5MB L2 |€63.29
2x Crucial 2GB, 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-10600 |€40.34
Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F3 7200rpm SATA 3Gb/s 32MB |€48.00
Gainward GeForce GTX 460 800Mhz 1GB PCI-E HDMI "Goes Like Hell Edition" |€205.66
Best Value 431-62 Midi ATX Black 500W PSU |€24.20
Sony Optiarc AD-7260S-0B 24X DVD/RW SATA Burner Optical Drive |€14.73
Delivery (9.468kg) |€15.63
Total (Inc VAT) |€465.25

IrishMetalhead · 19-03-2011 7:18pm

going to be abit more than that because they didn't include an OS in the price plus there using a case\psu combo witch is a big no no but i'll have a look for you on hwvs for a simular specced pc

edit: sorry didn't notice your specced out pc below it but still no OS i see

Sparks · 19-03-2011 7:21pm

True about the software, but I wasn't counting that as part of the budget.
And HWVS wasn't around last time I did a custom build (which was a few years back

). I'm digging through there for comparative pricing now.

edit: Hm. Looks like €25 less for the same spec from HWVS including delivery.
Has anyone managed to give a full address to them for delivery though? I can't get even half the delivery address into their website forms...

deconduo · 19-03-2011 7:23pm

Looks good apart from the horrible horrible Case/PSU combo.

IrishMetalhead · 19-03-2011 7:35pm

Just specced out a slightly cheaper and slightly better system over on hardwareversand.de with a better quality PSU and I also included a case since you seemed to have skipped over that and I also left out the OS because I'm unsure if you need one or not:

CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 445 - €63.19
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=37139&agid=1242

Motherboard: ASRock M3A770DE - €54.10
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=29282&agid=1232

RAM: 4GB Mushkin Silverline Stiletto - €33.64
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=33951&agid=1192

Graphics Card: 1GB Palit GTX460 - €130.97
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=43170&agid=707

HDD: 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 - €46.61
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28152&agid=689

Disc Drive: Samsung SH-223C DVD+RW - €16.61
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=29466&agid=699

Case: Xigmatek Asgard - €31.51
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28607&agid=631

PSU: Super-Flower Amazon 550W - €51.47
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=30069&agid=1628

Shipping - €30

Total - €458.10

But I would highly suggest spending an extra €16 and get an Artic Cooling Freezer 7:
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28345&agid=669
Your ears will thank you for it as the Athlon's stock heatsink is noisy as hell plus it will keep you CPU alot healthier

Sparks · 19-03-2011 7:45pm

Any particular reason why the Palit GTX460 instead of the Gainward or just price?
And the overall price looks good, but I can't (and this is daft) get the full address into hwvs's web forms

Monotype · 19-03-2011 7:50pm

Three months makes quite a difference in graphics cards, if you were to go with HWV, have a look at either the GTX 560 ti or the 6950 for the €200 mark.

Edit: Oops, should have refreshed a bit sooner. IMH's build is fine, although I'm not that fond of the motherboard. I'd go for the 770 extreme 3.

Sparks · 19-03-2011 8:33pm

Hm. Mentioned the build and a friend (a programmer for EA Games) strongly recommended upgrading to an i7 build instead. Cheapest I can put together is coming in around the €800 mark though.
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, Intel X58, ATX, PCI-Express| 184,25
Intel Core i7-950 Box 8192Kb, LGA1366| 233,24
6GB DDR3 Triple-KIT Kingston HyperX XMP PC1600 CL9| 83,49
Special item: Gainward GeForce GTX 460 Golden Sample, 1024MB DDR5, HDMI, DVI| 139,46
Silverstone SST-PS04B, ohne Netzteil| 35,05
Corsair Builder Series CX430, 430 Watt| 37,04
Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7260S, SATA, Schwarz, bulk| 17,04
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ)| 46,61
Total| 776.18
IMH, can you do any better?

Unregistered. · 19-03-2011 8:40pm

Sparks wrote: »

Hm. Mentioned the build and a friend (a programmer for EA Games) strongly recommended upgrading to an i7 build instead.

Why? x58 chipset just pushes the budget up. Look to the i5-2500K if you need high performance, the new mobos should be available soon. Alarm bells on that PSU.

Sparks · 19-03-2011 8:44pm

He's concerned about the CPU demands of upcoming games (and I was looking at Battlefield 3 when deciding to buy the system). The PSU did look a bit generic, but I just grabbed a stock 500W one off the shelf to get an idea of price - the CPU, motherboard and graphics cards seemed to be the drivers of the cost.

IrishMetalhead · 19-03-2011 9:05pm

why would he recommend a high end cpu when you really need to worry about the graphics card?
honestly almost any cpu for the last 2 to 3 years (apart from the celerons, pentiums and athlons maybe) is fine just aslong as you have a good graphics card you can run the game on high setting maybe max if your going for a new high end card

edit: also i'll have a look for you in a minute bit busy with a client atm =/

edit 2: also you should consider upgrading the case as you'll need better airflow with higher end parts as they will run slightly hotter

Sparks · 19-03-2011 9:20pm

IrishMetalhead wrote: »

why would he recommend a high end cpu when you really need to worry about the graphics card?

I thought so too, but it's the whole programmer working for EA Games bit that gave me pause (he worked on the latest Call of Duty for example). I figure the guy looking at the code should at least get a listening-to

Odds are, reality will put a foot on my budget's neck, but I figured I could at least look, even if I wind up doing the budget box now and a better box in 8-12 months time.

edit: also i'll have a look for you in a minute bit busy with a client atm =/

Cheers IMH, appreciated.

edit 2: also you should consider upgrading the case as you'll need better airflow with higher end parts as they will run slightly hotter

True that. A quieter box would also be nice, and if I'm going to swap out parts in a year, it'd be nice if the other parts didn't fall apart in that timeframe.

It's just that it's hard to tell a quality case from a crappy-but-made-from-transparent-stuff-to-look-cool case based on a few photos and a pricetag

Solitaire · 19-03-2011 9:42pm

Never make assumptions based on brand or appearence with cases - always hunt down reviews!

And the CX430 is rubbish, period. Its horribly unsuitable for the proposed build as it gives little (and unstable!) 12V power, and both the i7 and the GTX460 have a substantial appetite for said

You need a PSU capable of pumping out 490-550W of 12V power alone for such a build

In any case, the older HyperThreading in the Nehalems is useless for gaming, so you'd really want the i7-2600K and its newer spin on HT if you were adamant on using a workstation-class CPU for the build. Otherwise you should wait for non-borked P67 mobos to show up in volume and get an i5-2500K instead. No HT, but stupidly fast and less power-hungry

IrishMetalhead · 19-03-2011 10:26pm

Heres what I would put up against that comp you posted earlier.
it has a better, newer graphics card, it has a sandybridge i5 and has a brilliant case for airflow, total came to €743.62 including shipping:

I can post links to all of them components if you like

Solitaire · 19-03-2011 11:35pm

Not sure about the case and the CPU cooler won't be able to handle the heat from a 4.5GHz OC but its looking good

IrishMetalhead · 20-03-2011 12:15am

the case will mainly because of it's two 140mm fans

but i see your point about the cpu cooler i would suggest a corsair a70 more but i chose the artic freezer 7 because it's still a good cooler and it would help keep costs down

Guide - the Budget Gaming PC

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