New Build - £500

[aerai]

Hi I am looking for help on a new build for a friend for around £500. He wants it initially to play Diablo 3 but will also use it for future games, so would like it to last 3-5 years. I'm not talking max settings, just being able to play games is fine.

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Approximate Purchase Date: Soonish, next month or two
Budget Range: Around £500
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming
Parts Not Required: Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, PSU, DVD Drive
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Any, preference to buying from the same place to keep postage costs down.
Country: UK
Parts Preferences: He has no preference although I personally prefer Asus parts and nVidia cards.
Overclocking: Maybe in the future
SLI or Crossfire: Maybe in the future, would like dual PCIE 3.0/2.0 slots incase he wants to push up his performance down the line.
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080 (I assume)

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The part I am having the most trouble with is finding a cheapish MB that will support SLi. Also for gaming is an i3 worth considering, as that cuts a considerable amount off the price?

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[ddan49]

What PSU do you have? Also, are you including the OS in the budget? I'm assuming you're not.

I could unfortunately get it down to only 600 (pounds). Now, here's the thing. We can get it lower, but we'd need to either cut the CPU or the GPU. I'd recommend cutting the CPU before the GPU. So cutting the CPU to an i3-2120 and discarding the CPU cooler would bring it down to the below price:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-2120 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor (£83.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£75.98 @ Dabs)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£34.89 @ Ebuyer)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£70.00 @ Ebuyer)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card (£179.00 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Corsair 400R ATX Mid Tower Case (£77.28 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £521.14
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-05-29 14:44 BST+0100)

Adding a CPU cooler with an i5-2500k would push it up 100 pounds. An i3 is worth considering, but hopefully, you'd look at a better CPU down the line. Getting an i5-2400 (no cooler) would make your price 564.

Hope I helped!

 

[aerai]

Yeh, there are massive savings with the i3 that can be plugged into the GPU, will have to look how effective it will be, we all used to have dual cores right! I can definitely get some information off of what you have provided. I wasn't including the OS no, think I have that covered. Think I can save some cash on the case and HDD. If it comes to it I have an old case, just my mate lives a long train ride away so not sure I want to transport it!

Thanks for the help!

 

[aerai]

Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz £124.99 (dabs)
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 £79.99 (ebuyer)
Kingston 4GB DDR3 1600MHz £20.00 (ebuyer)
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 2GB £179.99 (ebuyer)
Seagate 500GB HDD £47.99 (ebuyer)
650W PSU Already Own
DVD Drive Already Own

That comes to £452.96 which leaves about £50 towards the case and hopefully a little something towards me for the PSU and DVD Drive!

Didn't think he would need more than 4GB of RAM or 500GB of HDD. Can always look at increasing those in the future if needed.

This MB supports x8x8 SLI and Crossfire and also has some headers for USB3 and has SATAIII ports. Seems good for the price!

 

[ddan49]

Get a HAF 912 case (don't know about availability in the UK, though) or something like that if you need to cut. Otherwise, that looks pretty good. Sure you don't want 8GB of RAM? It won't hurt, and it's not that much more. Dual-channel is great, anyway.