£150 cheapy system challenge

[dougie_boy]

been a while since i last posted. my active days were when i had a 939 system which was a fair while ago.

currently building a gaming lan for me friends and myself with 4 PC on it. am amazed at how much PC you get for so little.

just recived all the new parts for the next on (PC-4) and shall commence the new build tomorrow. whoop whoop
what makes this special for me is that:

1. its my first AMD build in a few years and i am looking forward to it.
2. its cost my under £150 for all the new kit which includes the new case, power supply, motherboard, ram, CPU and graphics card.
3. its got an nvidia card, i am a die hard ATi fan

so to begin the specs are as follows;

£42.99 x 1 - Zotac 9500 GT 1024MB DDR2 HDTVDVIHDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(i know the 512 of DDR3 would be better but the price then was too high for the budget)

£39.99 x 1 - Asus Vintage V3-M2NC61P Barebones System - AMD64

£31.99 x 1 - AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ 2.40GHz (Socket AM2)

£14.99 x 1 - Elixir 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit

spares from other PCs

80gb HD (1 possible 160 SATA - might be dead)
1280x1024 19" Samsung screen
Windows XP pro or Windows 7 Beta
no DVD rom - after the key software has been loaded it will be removed. if it needs any files it can get them via the shared drive on the network.

The rig will be used on the odd occasion i have people over hence the low spec. The games we spend most time playing are Insurgency which is not hardware intensive. maybe some UT2004 and civ 4 but pretty light weight stuff.
Not to be used for video encoding or any thing else I am sure this rig should be able to handle it.

thoughts on the components would be great, espch the 9500 GT (its a zotac)
im stuggling to find out much about the average temps since the 55nm revision and the overclocking capabilities. only found a handful of reviews online.

also overclocking using a software tool is a must. the cheap hardware might mean that it lacks any real BIOS controls and may force me to use a windows based overclocking tool. i would love to squeeze an extra 500mhz out of it. the question is can the hardware take it.

any one interested in the rest of the lan we use:

PC1
intel 3.1ghz (e2160)
msi neo FR2 P35
4 gig DDR 800
2x 500 gig samsung RAID0
4850 512mb
1680*1050 Samsung

PC2
intel 2.33 (e6550 stock - dell)
1950pro 256mb
160 gig
2 gig 677mhz
1440*900 DELL

PC3
AMD 2.7 (3700+)
6600 GT
160 gb
1 gig ddr 400
1280*1024 generic

netgear router/switch 100mb/10mb

6mb down 300kbps up Broadband

 

[Shadow703793]

Imo, you could probably get a better system if you can save up a bit more money. But for 150GBP it's not bad.

 

[dougie_boy]

the low useage of the system (4 days per month approx) means that it would be wasted money. the hardware would date and become obsolete quickly.

the main rig is waiting for a new 5xxx series graphics card and when that is added new components shall be shuffled down the chain.

thinking about maybe running it as a pop3 mail server. thoughts?

 

[jcknouse]

Imo, you could probably get a better system if you can save up a bit more money. But for 150GBP it's not bad.

If it was not so cost preventative to ship, geeks.com has Dell GX520s or something with 512MB/80GB or something like that for $150, which is I guess about £80?

then he could just add some ram and a cheap disk.

but, sounds fun. i need to do that in my place too

 

[shiftstealth]

Well it will play cod4. probably better than a lot of people that play it on an 8400 lol.

 

[dougie_boy]

If it was not so cost preventative to ship, geeks.com has Dell GX520s or something with 512MB/80GB or something like that for $150, which is I guess about £80?

then he could just add some ram and a cheap disk.

but a dell is a b*tch to upgrade. Have one dell system and the case and MB are a pain. Extra fan powers connectors? No chance. Dual hight graphics card? No chance on a BTX board.

I like dells but not as a long term tinker toy. And secondly the shipping from America plus additional ram would be a too much of a cost. Nice idea tho.

Update on the system.

Asus motherboard is DOA. Rubbish. Overclockers.co.uk have been great and sent me another one! 24 hour turn around aswell so I get it tomorrow morning. I do love overclockers.co.uk
And the 9500 when overclocker is pretty good. Big fat fan on it at the moment. Shall be overclocked when they system is up and running. Shall do well at 1280x1024.

but, sounds fun. i need to do that in my place too

Do it! Your own gaming lan! Im going to use the pc for a mail server during the week maybe, maybe host a website…