Hey guys & gals, 
I've never posted before, although I have been a faithful reader of TH off and on for a number of years.
Anyway I was wondering if anyone could assist me with a UK build, budget ~ £400
The OS and all the peripherals can be discounted -- I'll probably be running XP initially, but will be picking up a copy of Windows 7 soon. I have keyboard, mouse, and hopefully my old wireless ethernet bridge is in the loft. I also have a 1080p monitor.
I have a pretty solid idea of what to get in most respects - but I was looking for some advice on CPU/MB combos mostly - and also how they affect anything else.
I want to run Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, Tropico 4, Starcraft 2, Dragon Age 1/2, Magicka, Portal 2, Deus Ex HR, etc. -- so mostly single player RTS or RPG style games.
I may push the GPU at times with online Crysis 2 or something, but tbh I play most things like the Battlefield games with mates on Xbox Live - so it would be a bonus to run the odd FPS online like that, but I don't care about super high settings or anything.
I don't need it for anything else, and I want to be building it in the next week or two.
Prices are mostly copied & pasted from Amazon.co.uk who (as I have Prime membership) are in most cases competitive with Scan.co.uk and overclockers.co.uk when delivery is accounted for. I saw someone on here in the UK recommended Scan, and I've never bought from overclockers, although they seem ok. I will probably buy most of it from Amazon.co.uk in the end, but RAM might be best bought from elsewhere where they have a better range and/or search function.
Current shopping list for parts...
PSU -- £48 -- OCZ 500W ModXStream Pro Power Supply - UK
HDD -- £33 -- Seagate ST3500413AS 3.5 inch Barracuda 500 GB 7200rpm SATA Drive with 16MB Buffer
Case -- either reuse my 6 year old midi tower, or buy e.g. £33 Elite 330 Mid Tower Chassis by Cooler Master. Don't want to spend more than £35 here really unless e.g. an extra tenner gets me a case that is *notably* better.
Optical drive -- £18 -- LiteOn IHAS624-32 24x DVD-RW SATA LS LT Retail BLK
GPU --
£63 -- Sapphire (11168-30-20G) HD 5670 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card (btw, is the 1 gig 5670 worth getting over the 512 5670 which is £54 I think)
... or hopefully I can stretch to:
£86 -- Sapphire (11189-00-20G) HD 6770 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
In terms of RAM I'd be looking at about £30 including delivery for e.g. Crucial or Corsair 2*2GB DDR3 1333MHz. I don't need anything fancy with low latency - just something solid enough.
So as a running total that comes to between £192 and £250 depending on the case and GPU. I could potentially also re-use my old 250 GB SATA HDD - if it's still alive. I also have 2 old IDE optical drives too.
My biggest problem is matching the CPU/MB - and how that in turn affects what frequency and voltage RAM it is worth getting, as well as whether it means I can recycle the old IDE optical drives.
For CPU/MB combo itself then it is pretty close to either the September 2011 or June 2011 System Builder Marathon $500 Gaming PC builds:
1) (September build) AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition/ASRock M3A770DE
(For which I can now get the AMD Phenom II X4 965 - 3.4 Ghz AM3 Black Edition for £92.50 - which is about £7.50 cheaper than the 955 on Amazon.co.uk; although I'm not sure what MBs are now available and comparable).
or
2) (June build) Intel Core i3-2100/ASRock H61M-VS
(The i3 2100 is about the same price as the 965, something like £93 on Amazon.co.uk; Mobo I'll maybe need advice on too)
I know that the i3 is effectively limited to stock speed only, while I could overclock the X4 965 - although I would probably just be using stock cooling on it for now.
Basically though I am happy with either of these - they are not going to be too different to each other for anything I want to run based on the results of recent assessments here on TH.
Personally I would have liked to have gone for the i5 2500K and Z68 chipset - but I just don't have the cash for that right now. Basically in a years time I should have a lot more money to spare - so I could potentially be upgrading or replacing the lot in 12-18 months if I really want to.
For that reason I am not too bothered about future proofing the Intel chipset in particular - as from what I can see you don't get as much for your money compared to the AMD AM3+ ones. Plus I guess that to get the most out of a later upgrade to a 2500K I would need the Z68 and not H67 or P67 chipsets.
**As far as I understand**, when it comes to motherboards then I'm not too bothered about having anything other than a reasonable quality, preferably full ATX (any real difference given the limited number of cards I have?), with HDMI/DVI and USB 2 connectivity, plus an old-school 3.5 mm audio jack port. No need for SLI/CrossFire as far as I can see.
I reckon that will be £45 to £65.
If the old IDE optical drives I have can be re-used that would be a bonus as I would rather spend that extra cash on upping the 5670 to a 6770 as mentioned above. Although I just checked and realised one is CD-ROM and the other is DVD+RW, but I have no idea what speed. Hmm. May have to get the SATA optical drive in the end anyway.
As usual I have kept it brief!
Thanks in advance for any help.
In summary I need some help with what chipset, series and model of mb to get -- especially if I go for the AMD route, as I have much less idea what is what there.
I've never posted before, although I have been a faithful reader of TH off and on for a number of years.
Anyway I was wondering if anyone could assist me with a UK build, budget ~ £400
The OS and all the peripherals can be discounted -- I'll probably be running XP initially, but will be picking up a copy of Windows 7 soon. I have keyboard, mouse, and hopefully my old wireless ethernet bridge is in the loft. I also have a 1080p monitor.
I have a pretty solid idea of what to get in most respects - but I was looking for some advice on CPU/MB combos mostly - and also how they affect anything else.
I want to run Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, Tropico 4, Starcraft 2, Dragon Age 1/2, Magicka, Portal 2, Deus Ex HR, etc. -- so mostly single player RTS or RPG style games.
I may push the GPU at times with online Crysis 2 or something, but tbh I play most things like the Battlefield games with mates on Xbox Live - so it would be a bonus to run the odd FPS online like that, but I don't care about super high settings or anything.
I don't need it for anything else, and I want to be building it in the next week or two.
Prices are mostly copied & pasted from Amazon.co.uk who (as I have Prime membership) are in most cases competitive with Scan.co.uk and overclockers.co.uk when delivery is accounted for. I saw someone on here in the UK recommended Scan, and I've never bought from overclockers, although they seem ok. I will probably buy most of it from Amazon.co.uk in the end, but RAM might be best bought from elsewhere where they have a better range and/or search function.
Current shopping list for parts...
PSU -- £48 -- OCZ 500W ModXStream Pro Power Supply - UK
HDD -- £33 -- Seagate ST3500413AS 3.5 inch Barracuda 500 GB 7200rpm SATA Drive with 16MB Buffer
Case -- either reuse my 6 year old midi tower, or buy e.g. £33 Elite 330 Mid Tower Chassis by Cooler Master. Don't want to spend more than £35 here really unless e.g. an extra tenner gets me a case that is *notably* better.
Optical drive -- £18 -- LiteOn IHAS624-32 24x DVD-RW SATA LS LT Retail BLK
GPU --
£63 -- Sapphire (11168-30-20G) HD 5670 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card (btw, is the 1 gig 5670 worth getting over the 512 5670 which is £54 I think)
... or hopefully I can stretch to:
£86 -- Sapphire (11189-00-20G) HD 6770 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
In terms of RAM I'd be looking at about £30 including delivery for e.g. Crucial or Corsair 2*2GB DDR3 1333MHz. I don't need anything fancy with low latency - just something solid enough.
So as a running total that comes to between £192 and £250 depending on the case and GPU. I could potentially also re-use my old 250 GB SATA HDD - if it's still alive. I also have 2 old IDE optical drives too.
My biggest problem is matching the CPU/MB - and how that in turn affects what frequency and voltage RAM it is worth getting, as well as whether it means I can recycle the old IDE optical drives.
For CPU/MB combo itself then it is pretty close to either the September 2011 or June 2011 System Builder Marathon $500 Gaming PC builds:
1) (September build) AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition/ASRock M3A770DE
(For which I can now get the AMD Phenom II X4 965 - 3.4 Ghz AM3 Black Edition for £92.50 - which is about £7.50 cheaper than the 955 on Amazon.co.uk; although I'm not sure what MBs are now available and comparable).
or
2) (June build) Intel Core i3-2100/ASRock H61M-VS
(The i3 2100 is about the same price as the 965, something like £93 on Amazon.co.uk; Mobo I'll maybe need advice on too)
I know that the i3 is effectively limited to stock speed only, while I could overclock the X4 965 - although I would probably just be using stock cooling on it for now.
Basically though I am happy with either of these - they are not going to be too different to each other for anything I want to run based on the results of recent assessments here on TH.
Personally I would have liked to have gone for the i5 2500K and Z68 chipset - but I just don't have the cash for that right now. Basically in a years time I should have a lot more money to spare - so I could potentially be upgrading or replacing the lot in 12-18 months if I really want to.
For that reason I am not too bothered about future proofing the Intel chipset in particular - as from what I can see you don't get as much for your money compared to the AMD AM3+ ones. Plus I guess that to get the most out of a later upgrade to a 2500K I would need the Z68 and not H67 or P67 chipsets.
**As far as I understand**, when it comes to motherboards then I'm not too bothered about having anything other than a reasonable quality, preferably full ATX (any real difference given the limited number of cards I have?), with HDMI/DVI and USB 2 connectivity, plus an old-school 3.5 mm audio jack port. No need for SLI/CrossFire as far as I can see.
I reckon that will be £45 to £65.
If the old IDE optical drives I have can be re-used that would be a bonus as I would rather spend that extra cash on upping the 5670 to a 6770 as mentioned above. Although I just checked and realised one is CD-ROM and the other is DVD+RW, but I have no idea what speed. Hmm. May have to get the SATA optical drive in the end anyway.
As usual I have kept it brief!
Thanks in advance for any help.
In summary I need some help with what chipset, series and model of mb to get -- especially if I go for the AMD route, as I have much less idea what is what there.
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