Building PC for friend

[SPS]

So I'm building a friend a cheap gaming machine on a budget of £480 and this is what I have put together.

It is first time building for a friend and I just want to be 100% sure everything is compatible

Here's the list:

::UPDATE made a few changes thanks to ruthless::

Windows 7 64bit £71.99 (Aria)

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £83.99 (OcUK)

Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £90.10 (Aria)

£162.09

Asus M4A88T-M AMD 880G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £59.98 (OcUK)

MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £46.99 (OcUK)

£209.08

G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit £31.99 (OcUK)

4GB Mushkin Silverline #996768 (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz 9-9-9-24 £25.99 (Aria)

£235.07

500W Corsair Builder Series 500CX Power Supply £43.72 (Aria)

500w Coolermaster Elite Power ATX2.3 Power Supply - OEM £28.79 (Aria)

£263.86

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache WD10EALX - OEM £48.98 (OcUK)

1TB Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 3.5" SATA II Hard Drive £35.99 (Aria)

£299.85

MSI GeForce GTS 450 Cyclone 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £94.99 (OcUK)

MSI GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card £109.99 (Aria)

£409.84

Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £44.99 (OcUK)



£454.83

Any thoughts/suggestions would be highly appreciated. Cheers

 

[ruthless_villain]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172779 This case and = £30

This gpu instead: http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...C+1024MB+GDDR5+Graphics+Card+?productId=44316 = £110

oh and this PSU:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...er+ATX2.3+Power+Supply+-+OEM+?productId=44244 = £28

and this memory

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...2x2GB)+DDR3+1333MHz+9-9-9-24+?productId=41783 = £25

and this is a slighly downclocked version of the cpu but its still decent :

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...(Socket+AM3)+Processor+-+OEM+?productId=44794 = £60

and no point in getting a sata 6 drive cuz a mechanical one cant do 6gb/s so this HDD:

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...A332+3.5"+SATA+II+Hard+Drive+?productId=39369 = £35

should leave you with £50/60 quid or so to play about with maybe a aftermarket cpu cooler or a AM3+ board for future upgrades etc maybe even a small SSD

 

[SPS]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172779 This case and

This gpu instead: http://www.aria.co.u...productId=44316

That GPU looks like it's worth paying that little extra for and the case looks like a pretty good deal too

 

[SPS]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172779 This case and = £30

This gpu instead: http://www.aria.co.u...productId=44316 = £110

oh and this PSU:

http://www.aria.co.u...productId=44244 = £28

and this memory

http://www.aria.co.u...productId=41783 = £25

and this is a slighly downclocked version of the cpu but its still decent :

http://www.aria.co.u...productId=44794 = £60

and no point in getting a sata 6 drive cuz a mechanical one cant do 6gb/s so this HDD:

http://www.aria.co.u...productId=39369 = £35

should leave you with £50/60 quid or so to play about with maybe a aftermarket cpu cooler or a AM3+ board for future upgrades etc maybe even a small SSD

Thanks for those suggestions, they are really good

I've made a change to the parts list

 

[ruthless_villain]

I Still say change the case the casecom one is flipping awesome for a £30 case. like CM STORM Scout in disguise.

 

[SPS]

Yeah if it was me I would probably go for the casecom case if I was on a tight budget. I'll have a chat with him to see if I can persuade him to save some pennies

 

[JezEngland]

Hi. If you have money spare or get a cheap case to suit a Noctua fan you'd get good quiet cooling with durability. That'd satisfy well and you can keep the fan for other cases, future builds! &it's easier than faffing with a fan costly tacky controller

Cheap fans are a pain in the ear and budget ultimatley. Noctua fans are around £15-£20. Good luck!

 

[SPS]

Hi. If you have money spare or get a cheap case to suit a Noctua fan you'd get good quiet cooling with durability. That'd satisfy well and you can keep the fan for other cases, future builds! &it's easier than faffing with a fan costly tacky controller

Cheap fans are a pain in the ear and budget ultimatley. Noctua fans are around £15-£20. Good luck!

Hiya, Im confused about what you mean. Do you mean to get a noctua cpu cooler? Or replace all the chassis fans with noctuas?

 

[JezEngland]

Replace chassis fans if it has any of-course and you might need only 1 or 2, intake &/or outake as I guess the system will run at a safe temperature. If you want low quality fans running along-side Noctua you could slow them down via motherboard BIOS or resistor cable or maby software, to bring the noise down. Dust protectors are deserved

I have a leg tight stretched over a fan door, it's quite effective & clean them because the fans are damaged if they don't have a good air flow.

Intake fan maby is priority as the exhaust fan usualy less heard

 

[alienware]

Stay away from the Phenom 2. They's plop.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/264712

Or

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/185939

And

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/274290

Or

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/275979

Which cost less than the CPU you priced up for both and will perform the same if not better.

Oddly enough my pal was going to get the 955 and got the I3 above instead. Simply down to the fact that in gaming they were neck and neck. And the I3 consumes less power and is far cooler to boot.

 

[AMDFTW]

my phenom is still going strong :_)

 

[alienware]

Yeah but where do you go from there dude? Nowhere. Why base a system on two year old stuff?

With the Sandybridge bits I put above you can go straight to the I7 if you wish where as AM3 is a dead socket now.

 

[AMDFTW]

i no i no i just looked at comparison for the phenom and the i3 and the i3 owns it the i5 obliterates it lol

 

[alienware]

Yeah the only bummer with the I3 and new Pentium (same with no HT) is that you can't overclock them. The bonuses, though, is that they run so cool at stock you don't need to buy an aftermarket cooler as there's just no point.

Very cheap way to get a gaming pc running. Can invest into a better gpu with the left over cash

 

[SPS]

I completely overlooked the i3. I'm not fully up to speed with intel at the moment either. The only i3 processor in his price range would be the i3 540 and from what I can find on google the x4 955 performs better. I'm not sure now :/

 

[SPS]

Only the 1155 i3s would be worth getting because of the option to upgrade to a 2500k when he had the money. But he can't afford a 1155 i3 so I think that the x4 955 would probably be better.

::EDIT::

I can get him the i3 2100 for £90 and this mobo for £50 which is roughly the same price as the phenom II x4 and mobo listed above which would give him the option to upgrade at a later date. What does anyone think?

 

[alienware]

The dual cored sandy pentium would perform in games as well as the I3 2100 dude.

They're the same chips. The I3 has hyperthreading, but that will have little effect in gaming.

If you want to see how they would perform then check out what I have a core 2 duo @ 3ghz doing in my nfenix build log. I uploaded a couple of videos there. In a gaming PC core count is usually quite irrelevant. Games respect clock speeds more than cores. Simple case in point - the PC that Aria were doing last year that was cheap and contained an I3.

There's an 1156 Pentium that's pretty much the same thing. It's more than adequate for gaming. I would concentrate more on the gaming part that matters, the GPU. You can have the fastest CPU on earth with thirty cores but if your GPU isn't up to the task then you've had it. As I say, case in point - Core 2 duo E4500 @ 3ghz being powered by a GTX 295.

 

[Rastalovich]

Cores in gaming are normally like a 5th wheel on a car.

I would say this however, when testing Crysis 2, I noticed an E8400 (overclocked heavily), showed both cores at 100% for practically all the playing time. Not exactly a slouch of a cpu.

I'd get confirmation off someone who's played the off-the-shelf version, as there are often test routines running in beta apps and of course some finishing off to do.

May be an anomally, and if you don't care about the 1 game and/or you're not bothered about playing a game whilst something akin to orthos is running, it may be irrelevant.

(A Q9650 it leveled out core use sensibly)

 

[SPS]

Yeah I understand

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Make sure whatever ram you choose is 1.5v, 1.57v at a push