Advice for gaming rig on crazy £300 budget

[slovenlyjimmy]

Ok I'm on a crazy tight budget and as much a I'd like to raise it I really can't!

Looking to build a half decent gaming rig, initially for Indy gaming as I'll keep my Xbox for higher spec games, but with the potential to upgrade to be able play top spec games as I don't plan on buying the next generation Xbox.

So, based on this I'm currently planning the following build. I already have a 250GB 7200 Sata drive with a Win 7 install to get me started.

AMD A10 5700 3.4GHz Quad Core £91
AsRock FM2A75 PRO4 Motherboard £60
8GB Kingston Hyper X Predator 2400MHz RAM £41
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W PSU £65
Fractal Design Core 1000 Micro-ATX £30

Total build cost £282

I'm hoping this will get me started with some Indy games using AMD's integrated graphics which look surprisingly good, then allow me drop in a good Graphics card in 8-10 months to allow me to play top spec games.

Would love any advice on the proposed build, feel free to rip it apart and suggest something completely different if I'm on completely the wrong path!

Thanks in advance for the help.

Jimmy

 

[AndyM95]

Looking good but may I suggest the Seasonic M12II-520 instead of the OCZ unit. It has much higher build quality, it's more efficient and is still high enough wattage to allow you to drop in a graphics card if you want.

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

Thanks, I'll take a look.

Choosing a PSU and case has probably been the hardest bit so far, so wasn't really sue if I'd made good choices or not!

Thanks

 

[J-a-c-o-b]

Also OCZ I are struggling as a business, I think they are in administration or something, but yeah, if the PSU broke, you might not be able to do anything about it.

 

[Bang]

You could always go with some 1866 ram and save a few quid.

 

[jamesriley94]

You could always go with some 1866 ram and save a few quid.

Yeah. I highly doubt you'll get the RAM to run at 2400mhz with your processor and board, so you may as well save money and get a 1600mhz kit for half the price.

Tbh though...I really wouldn't waste your money on this.
You say you want to upgrade it to a higher spec later...but with this build, there isn't going to be much you can actually upgrade without an entire new build.

Can you try and save a little more and get something like an i3. That will at least serve you better as a processor, and should play indie games. Then get a second hand graphics card off ebay for like £25 and it should be better.

 

[seumasbeathan]

I would recommend you save up a little and then as James said go with something like an i3, You can always get a cheap 5770 off of ebay for around £50

 

[Deejeta]

I personally reckon stick with the high speed memory. Will do wonders for gaming performance when using the onboard gpu.
Review below shows how well the trinity chips perform at various memory speeds.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2106/6/
As stated above. Avoid OCZ like the plague. Always safe to go with a trusted brand.
Review of the OCZ unit. Notice the high ripple on the rails.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/OCZ-ModXStream-Pro-600-W-Power-Supply-Review/936/7
Something like a Corsair CX500 or thereabouts should still be withing the budget of the OCZ price range.
Best of luck with everything.

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

I personally reckon stick with the high speed memory. Will do wonders for gaming performance when using the onboard gpu.
Review below shows how well the trinity chips perform at various memory speeds.

That was exactly my thinking with the high speed RAM, some review sites have seen as much as an extra 10-15 FPS with the extra speed. Chp and board seem to happily overclockers on RAM speed to 2133MHz and for some reason the 2400Mhz ram seems to be cheaper everywhere, so would just run this under speed.

 

[seumasbeathan]

But rather than spending all that money on high speed ram you are better off putting it towards getting a graphics card

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

Maybe, but the extra speed only costs about £10, which wouldn't go that far towards a decent GPU. But it does significantly increase the performance of the IGP to the point of running top games at medium settings at over 30 FPS.

My other option was to go for a Intel Pentium Dual Core G870. With cheaper cost of the CPU, Mobo and cheaper RAM I could stretch to a Radeon 7750 or possibly a 7770? I guess this way my upgrade path would also be very easy to an i5 or i7 in the future?

I'll take a look at the Corsair PSU's as well. I was hoping to be able to stretch to a modular unit as I'm going with a micro-atx to go beside the TV and wanted to be able to keep things as cool as possible, without being to noisy, but take your points on getting the brand.

 

[Xayer]

Go Corsair,if you're making micro atx pc then find a cheap and small case c:

 

[AndyM95]

Don't bother changing the RAM, getting 1600MHz memory will save you a tenner which is definitely not worth it. The A10 5700 loves high speed memory and even if you can't run at 2400MHz you will be able to run at 2133MHz which is still good.

 

[miniq]

My AMD Phenom x4 930 3.0ghz second hand on ebay = £50
Crosshair II mobo = £50

Mobo + CPU = £100... Can't really beat the price performance anywhere...

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

Ok taking on feedback from you all I decided to spec an Intel build for my budget and came up with this. I'd intend to upgrade to an i5 in 12 months or so if I went this route. Just a reminder that I have an HDD with Win 7 already.

Pentium G870 Dual core 3.1 Ghz £55
ASUS P8H61-MX Mobo £43
Kingston Hyper X Blu 4Gb 1600Mhz £16
MSI GeForce GTX 650Ti OC 1GB £115
Fractal Design Core 1000 Micro-Atx £27
Corsair 500CXM Modular 500W £50

Total £306

Slightly over but think I can find the £6.

Would love your thoughts on this build compared the AMD A10 5700 build I originally proposed?

 

[PEXON]

Yeah. I highly doubt you'll get the RAM to run at 2400mhz with your processor and board, so you may as well save money and get a 1600mhz kit for half the price.

Tbh though...I really wouldn't waste your money on this.
You say you want to upgrade it to a higher spec later...but with this build, there isn't going to be much you can actually upgrade without an entire new build.

Can you try and save a little more and get something like an i3. That will at least serve you better as a processor, and should play indie games. Then get a second hand graphics card off ebay for like £25 and it should be better.

Rubbish, the Llano APUs benefit a HELL of a lot from high MHz ram. An 8800GT isn't going to outperform an APU either.

 

[Blade of Grass]

The other option is to go with a 7770 and save £20.
And get something like http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...DDR3+PCI-Express+Motherboard+?productId=53353

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

The other option is to go with a 7770 and save £20.
And get something like http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...DDR3+PCI-Express+Motherboard+?productId=53353

I did look at the 7770's but looking at the reviews compared the 650ti the extra performance seemed well worth the £20.

Is there a reason for suggesting the more expensive board? honestly Mobo's are where I struggle the most in deciding what to get! Does this board offer something the one I picked out doesn't?

 

[Master&Puppet]

If it were me I'd go secondhand buying from last generation.

Look into locked cpus (that way they won't have seen any overclocking). There's a i5 2500 which will go for under £100.

Get a secondhand motherboard, I'd recomend the h67 chipset but something like this would do.

That's ~£125 spent.

Then GPU - there are a number of gtx 570s that you can get for under or around £100.

Say that's £225.

Have you got win7 64 bit? There's no point getting 8gb of RAM on 32bit. For what I'm suggesting 8gb of 1600 RAM will be perfect but 1333MHz wouldn't be a major issue frankly.

That's ~£250.

PSU - A decent corsair unit like this is easily more than you will need.

That's £275 roughly.

Just need a case which you can get for under £30.

I think that is an entirely possible build for £300 if you take the time and be patient on somewhere like ebay. Honestly nothing you can buy new at this price point is going to compare to an i5/570 build. That's what I would do anyway.

You will of course be getting parts which have been used but that's why the whole build will be so cheap. Looking into none overclockable parts from last generation means that they will only have been run at stock for about a year which will be well within their lifespan and shouldn't cause you any problems.

M&P

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

If it were me I'd go secondhand buying from last generation.
Look into locked cpus (that way they won't have seen any overclocking). There's a i5 2500 which will go for under £100.

I did look at the second i5's on Ebay, but they seemed to be going for around £120 on average and tbh I'm a little uneasy buying second hand in case something goes wrong. I've been burned before with second hand tech

I'll take another look though, £100 for the 2500 does seem like a steal!