This intel/nvidia option, versus another AMD/Radeon build. Under £400.

[Pylin]

Both great builds at near same prices. (Both exactly £400). Just to say I already have with me a corsair 500W PSU here at home. I don't plan to overclock that much if not at all. I'll be playing casual games but maybe the odd intensive game like Battlefield 3. Of course I was considering on including the new AMD FX-4300 CPU that was released last month but I've heard that there's not much difference between it and the Phenom. I'd love to know which one will be best suited for my needs, thank you in advance. This is my first real build by the way.

As you can see to compensate for the not so great processor in the first build I've put most of the money into the graphics card. However for the second build to keep all the components within my budget I've had to compromise on a quality GPU.

First the AMD Build:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core
Motherboard: ASRock 960GM/U3S3 FX Micro ATX AM3+
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7870 2GB

Now the Intel Build:

CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 3.2GHz Quad-Core
Motherboard: ASRock B75 PRO3-M Micro ATX LGA1155
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 650 1GB

 

[Guest]

You can easily overclock the hell out of the phenon if you get a nice CPU cooler, so thats your best bet IMO