Hi there, I'm new to these forums. I'm thinking of building my own mini system for the purposes of gaming over the summer and was hoping to get some advice.
I was thinking somewhere along these lines:
Lian Li PC-42 case.
MicroATX Motherboard.
AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ CPU.
4GB (2 x 2GB) RAM.
NVidia GeForce 9600GT.
250GB HDD.
DVD/CD Drive.
I am on a budget, which is roughly £400 - 500 and I'm hoping to include a monitor which I figured I'd see how much I had left for.
Anyway, onto a few questions...
The case I want only supports microATX motherboards and PSUs. If I get a microATX mobo will it have sufficient slots to run the graphics card? I don't know an awful lot about motherboards and was wondering if it needed PCI-E or something to run? And whether this kind of feature would be provided on a motherboard (without paying over the odds)?
Secondly, PSUs... I've not seen many powerful microATX PSUs and it would seem that a requirement of the graphics card is 400 watts. I was thinking I should maybe go somewhere in the region of 450 - 500 watts to be safe and to make sure it could compensate for other components drawing from it. Are there such power supplies of microATX size?
What do you think of these bundles I keep seeing on eBay? They're for motherboards, CPU and RAM combined. I've seen some that offer microATX mobos with the CPU I want and RAM for about £135 with postage. Is this a good deal or would I be better off buying the components seperately? I've not really done anything quite as daring as this before so I've never glued(?) the CPU to the mobo before.
Also, compatibility. I realise I need to get an AM2 socket motherboard, but are there any other things I need to be especially careful of? Am I right in thinking if the motherboard says I need DDR2 RAM then that's all I need to check when purchasing it? Are there any other things to look out for? Why are there several versions of the same CPU?
What's your general opinion on building a computer of this size for gaming? I realise a larger computer would be more ideal, but I'm on a budget and at uni so I don't really want a huge tower taking up too much space. Can a microATX gaming computer be done effectively?
Anyway, thanks for your help in advance. I hope you can help me clear these things up for me.
Cheers, Chris.
I was thinking somewhere along these lines:
Lian Li PC-42 case.
MicroATX Motherboard.
AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ CPU.
4GB (2 x 2GB) RAM.
NVidia GeForce 9600GT.
250GB HDD.
DVD/CD Drive.
I am on a budget, which is roughly £400 - 500 and I'm hoping to include a monitor which I figured I'd see how much I had left for.
Anyway, onto a few questions...
The case I want only supports microATX motherboards and PSUs. If I get a microATX mobo will it have sufficient slots to run the graphics card? I don't know an awful lot about motherboards and was wondering if it needed PCI-E or something to run? And whether this kind of feature would be provided on a motherboard (without paying over the odds)?
Secondly, PSUs... I've not seen many powerful microATX PSUs and it would seem that a requirement of the graphics card is 400 watts. I was thinking I should maybe go somewhere in the region of 450 - 500 watts to be safe and to make sure it could compensate for other components drawing from it. Are there such power supplies of microATX size?
What do you think of these bundles I keep seeing on eBay? They're for motherboards, CPU and RAM combined. I've seen some that offer microATX mobos with the CPU I want and RAM for about £135 with postage. Is this a good deal or would I be better off buying the components seperately? I've not really done anything quite as daring as this before so I've never glued(?) the CPU to the mobo before.
Also, compatibility. I realise I need to get an AM2 socket motherboard, but are there any other things I need to be especially careful of? Am I right in thinking if the motherboard says I need DDR2 RAM then that's all I need to check when purchasing it? Are there any other things to look out for? Why are there several versions of the same CPU?
What's your general opinion on building a computer of this size for gaming? I realise a larger computer would be more ideal, but I'm on a budget and at uni so I don't really want a huge tower taking up too much space. Can a microATX gaming computer be done effectively?
Anyway, thanks for your help in advance. I hope you can help me clear these things up for me.
Cheers, Chris.
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