Budget Gaming Build

Im looking to make a new system that will play games but wont break my bank, im not after a liquid cooled star trek styled job since im not really into playing crysis on max i just enjoy MMO/RTS games and the odd killing spree on HL2.

Ive been trying to keep below £500 which is incredibly hard especially when fishing for a monitor aswel.

Heres what ive spotted:

mobo/ram/pcu - £120

GPU - £100

PSU/Case - £50

Monitor - £150

Hard Drive - £40



It comes nicely within budget, im gonna salvage a CD drive and keyboard from an older system and just use one of the XP disks i have already for the OS.


The CPU/Mobo/RAM bundle worries me slightly, will this bottleneck my system?

Also will all that fit into the case? and will the PSU(460W) be enough to power the graphics card?

Thanks for looking!

Crappy PSU, barely powerful enough, a single 6-pin connector.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Show [...] wer+Supply

I know its depressing, reading through all the other builds and seeing how much you can buy in america for £500 compared to what you get from here is sick.

Pretty much stuck with ebuyer and a couple of others like ariapc and microdirect.

Anyone got any suggestions for changes on the CPU and mobo front? looking for something roughly the same price from a website thats based in europe

That does look more solid, thanks for taking the time

I would replace the GFX card to this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] X88T512HP)

Mainly because ive been informed that MSI are awful.

OEM on the hard drive typically means you don't get any cables or software. That DS3L motherboard should come with 2 SATA cables, and the software, if needed, can usually be downloaded for free.

Yes, 460W is enough, but very close to the limit. Also, that PSU works at 70% efficiency, which means 30% of what you pay for becomes heat. Typically a good PSU works at 80% or even 85%. Can you afford a Sonata 3 case with the 500W Earthwatts PSU in it?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128045

Just from shopping with Ebuyers im saving a few quid.

Memory - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139662 - £28.99
Case/PSU - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128045 - £75.99
Processor - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145258 - £82.95
Cooling - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/105994 - £15.62
Motherboard - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143176 - £58.14
Hard Drive - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124735 - £36.17
Graphics Card - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143325 - £108.99
Monitor - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142612 - £139.99

Totals up to £546.84

Im gonna compare across a few other sites and see if theres any deals about especially on the monitor and graphics card.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] otherboard

Thanks for all the help!

I just ordered it all, hard part is putting it together since this is my first build.

I know my way around PC's but never had to do anything more than change a graphics card or add RAM so il look up a few videos.

Well i was just fretting over the thermal paste but then i remembered that the cooler already has it pre-applied so thats one thing less to worry about.

Also the mobo mentions something about being robust because all its capacitors are solid state so i supose theres less chance of me screwing that part up aswel

Well its all put together now and working great, thanks for all the input.

I was thinking of overclocking the PCU as Why_me suggested, ive looked(got hopelessly lost) at a few guides to overclocking but i dont really want to push the limits and mess around with temps and voltage i just wanna reach 3.16GHz.

Is it as simple as going into the bios and shifting the FSB to 333? no voltage change of software downloads needed?

Seems too good to be true but after seeing what other people have said about the PCU it would be a shame not to do something with it.