What To Get For £370

mobohobo

November 11, 2010 5:28:24 PM

ok, i have done multiple threads, but was wondering weather one of those combo people could put together a system for me, for up to max £370 absolutely no higher, that is it :S i am getting the gpu later, and have not included that in the price.

i want crossfire compatable, amd or intel dont mind, monitor, mouse, keyboard, win7, etc is bought separately, just the components. preferably on board graphics, but doesnt matter as i have a spare.

will be used for primarily gaming and some light 3d rendering, with searching web done daily.

if you need any other info, i can tell you

Approximate Purchase Date: up to a month after christmas

Budget Range: Max £410

System Usage from Most to Least Important: gaming, surfing web, 3d render

Parts Not Required: keyboard, mouse, monitor, wireless thingy, harddrive, gpu

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: anywere in the uk

Country of Origin: england

Parts Preferences: no idea

Overclocking: Yes

SLI or Crossfire: Yes

Monitor Resolution: 1440x900

Additional Comments: i would like a window xD

More about : 370

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mobohobo

November 11, 2010 6:51:34 PM

ok, iv been looking and have come up with the fact that if i wait till next year, i could get this in march, it would probably be cheaper due to sandy bridge, so was wondering, what do you think? could you suggest better??

NZXT M59 Classic Series, Black, Mid Tower Gaming Case, with Side Window, w/o PSU £39.77 £46.73

Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus, 4 Heat Pipes, LGA775/1156/1366/AM2/AM2+/AM3 £17.50

Asus P7P55 LX, Intel P55 Express, S1156, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2200(OC), SATA 3Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATx£75.85

Corsair 650W TX Series PSU £66.53

Intel i5 760, S1156, Lynnfield Quad Core, 2.8 GHz, 8MB Cache, Core Ratio 21x, 95W, Retail £144.70

4GB Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 8-8-8-24, 1.65V £58.64

Total£424.71

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MadAdmiral

November 11, 2010 6:53:03 PM

Here's what I'd look at, but I have no idea how much it will cost over there, so I'm going to throw out a lot of options. I will point out that with you're budget, you're looking at an AMD build, which means you should ony be looking at ATI GPUs. AMD doesn't do SLI.

CPU: X4 955 or X6 1055T
Mobo: ASRock 870 Extreme 3 or Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3
RAM: Any non-OCZ 2x2 GB DDR3 1600 mhz CAS Latency 7 kit. Brand preference in order: G.Skill, Corsair, Mushkin, Kingston/Patriot/A.Data, everyting else. Don't touch OCZ, as their DDR3 sticks are known to have issues.
PSU: Any 650-750W unit from Corsair, SeaSonic, Silverstone, Antec or XFX. If you're planning on getting a huge GPU (like the HD 5970), bump that up to the 850W range.
Case: In price order: Coolermaster Elite, Coolermaster Centurion 5, Antec 300/300 Illusion, Coolermaster 690/690 II, Antec 900/902, HAF 922. Add any case from Lian Li to that list.
Optical: Whatever is the cheapest SATA DVD burner
HSF: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus or Sycthe Mugen 2 Rev. B

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mobohobo

November 11, 2010 6:55:23 PM

Hmm, seems like nice info, didnt know if corsair was good ram! if you see what i put a minuite before you posted, you can see if its any good

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MadAdmiral

November 11, 2010 7:15:35 PM

I'm not a huge fan of mobohobo's build.

First, the board is an old one. It doesn't have USB 3/SATA III support, which is becoming necessary quickly. It also only has one PCIe 2.0 slot running at a useful speed (8x or higher).

Second, the current Intel socets are going to be replaced very soon. The LGA1155 is supposed to replace the LGA1156 by the end of the year. That means the socket won't see any new CPUs and will be obsolete.

Finally, I'm not a huge fan of the NZXT cases. I know some of the lower end ones have gotten decent reviews, but I've seen many bad reviews for the higher end, which makes me a tad concerned about using them.

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mobohobo

November 11, 2010 7:17:58 PM

ok, how bout this build?

1x amd phenom II x4 3.2ghz cpu : 110
1x Corsair 4GB kit ram : 56
1x Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 AMD 880G mobo : 77
1x antec three hundred case : 48
1x Coolermaster 120x120x25mm SickleFlow Green LED Case Fans : 5
1x Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus cpu cooler : 17.50
1x tx650W Corsair power supply : 67
1x Arctic Silver 5 Thermal paste thermal cpu paste : 5 hd : got
wireless thingy : got

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MadAdmiral

November 11, 2010 8:01:24 PM

Much better. My only real complaint is that the board only has the second slot running at 4x, which creates an issue with trying to Crossfire later, if needed.

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Silvune

November 11, 2010 8:03:20 PM

If you are buying from scan, which I think you are, could be wrong, then the XFX 650W Core Edition 80Plus Bronze is a better buy IMO, it is the same price, has higher efficiency, probably performs better in terms of voltage regulation, ripple and noise suppression, etc, and has 4 PCI-E graphics card connectors, whereas the Corsair only has 2, so it is more capable of powering two graphics cards.

I'm pretty sure that motherboard doesn't have it's second slot at x8 or above, so would only be suitable at best for crossfiring 5770s. The cheapest 800 series AMD motherboard that can crossfire and has SATA6G (altho not USB3) is the Asus M4A89GTD Pro £94. The cheapest with all three would be the Gigabyte GA-890-GPA-UD3H £101.

If you wanted to enable SATA6G on an older motherboard you could always get the Highpoint Rocket 620, which gives pretty good and competitive speeds according to this review: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/10/28/are...
Altho the cost could be put towards buying a motherboard already with that capability.