£450 gaming PC

Approximate Purchase Date: This week


Budget Range: £400 - £ 500


System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, HD movies


Parts Not Required: Monitor, speakers, OS, keyboard


Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Ebuyer.com, scan.co.uk


Country of Origin: UK


Parts Preferences: None


Overclocking: Maybe


SLI or Crossfire: No


Monitor Resolution: 1680x1050


Additional Comments:
At the moment I have chosen parts that add up to £500, which is my absolute maximum budget. I am wondering if I can bring that price down to £450 or less without sacrificing too much performance at my resolution.

If I were to downgrade the i3 2100 to an athlon ii x4 640, I would need to buy a cooler for overclocking, which would essentially make the athlon the same price as the i3 with lower performance. As for the rest of the parts, I don't have much experience as this is my first build, so I have just been going by the best reviewed parts in a reasonable price range.

Parts:

CPU:
Intel Core i3 2100 3.10GHz Socket 1155 3MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor - £93.32

Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-H61M-D2-B3 H61 Socket 1155 7.1 Channel Audio mATX Motherboard - £60.62

Graphics card:
XFX HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI Dual Mini Display Port Out Graphics Card - £128.99

RAM:
Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Memory Kit CL9 1.5V - £34.77

HDD:
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM Caviar Blue - £34.98

Optical:
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW & DL SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black - £14.99

Case:
Antec 300 Three Hundred Case - £46.77

Psu:
Antec 520W High Current Gamer PSU - 80plus Bronze 13.5cm Fan 3x PCI-E 6x SATA - £57.75

Mouse:
Logitech MX518 Optical Gaming Mouse - £21.99

Total: £498.03



Any help would be much appreciated.

^ For gaming, the i3 is very much suited,...
You can save some money going with this case -
It is the same case which Rosewill sells as Challenger in the US
Casecom 6788 Black
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172779

PSU - These are cheaper and are as good
XFX Core 550W
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/264380
Even this 500W would do,
OCZ Stealth Extreme II
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/204355

What games are you playing on it?
I could mirror my build for less than £450 I reckon
I notice you dont mention Operating system though, you have that sorted already or is that in the 450 budget too?

sites I frequent for bits, I'm U.K. based too
Overclockers.co.uk
Aria.co.uk
Pixmania.co.uk
Ebuyer.co.uk
Scan.co.uk
and occasionally Play.com have good tech deals, worth keeping an eye on for bargains