uber(ly small) budget rig

[Jamsand]

Right so friend has watched me(slowly) construct my rig and has decided he'd like a go just to have a lil fun to toy around and what not however he's set me a budget of £300 for a build for him. I started keeping up with tech news and the such about October so my knowledge of hardware before then isn't great(terrible actually) but basically I'm wondering if we could make a rig out of older parts to save on the budget. there is a lil sway but not much. I'v suggested afew aria pre-builts for him to consider but he's asked what I could make.

With the budget I'm thinking sandy bridge if I was going new with integrated graphics and an i3 at a push? he mainly wants it for games like minecraft(anyone else gettin sick of hearing about it lol)

SO!

1. would intergrated graphics be good enough

2. system suggestions new and old

3. pre-builts if they are cheaper?

there is a little wiggle in the budget but not much so set the ceiling about 350?....400 very max?

 

[stevebarnes15]

motherboard bundle

Graphics

A good little system there,and would be capable of playing minecraft and other games.

I'm using a gt 430 gpu at the moment,with an x6 cpu,and get on average 90fps,with everything on in black ops.

And it comes in at less than £300

 

[yggdrasil]

What Steve suggested is pretty good, you can get AMD dual cores for cheap now.

I building a cheap Dual core system with a cheap Asus mobo get a case with a power supply I dont know what other guys get but Themaltakes low budget cases with the 430w PSU included seems not to bad. some 1333 ram, don't need to go to cheap here as good ram is only a tiny bit more than cheap no name brand RAM.

see how much money he has left and get the best video card he can afford with whats left push him to splash out for a 450 they are pretty cheap now days.

If he wants to play if he has more money get a low end CPU cooler (one that dose good in reviews) then your mate can mess around with OCing, everyone gets a kick out of that. So long as it ain't go boom!

 

[Jamsand]

he wants to learn to OC but is terrified he'll fry the system....I on the other hand bought a silver arrow and headed to the forums lol!....and thanks guys that should be perfect

if he complains about pre-built we'll rip it apart and build it again rofl!

 

[Pat123]

I'd suggest the i3 bundle tom used in his budget gaming rig. As most programs only use two cores at the moment and it a faster chip on it's clock per core.

i3 Bundle

 

[stevebarnes15]

That may be true,but having extra cores will prolong the logitivity of the setup,and will also be able to do much more in terms of mulitasking.

 

[Tartsy]

I dont mean to hijack the thread, im in a similar position and took some inspiration from the other posts. I liked the bundles but i have the crossfire itch and was wondering if the below setup would solve mine and offer the original poster the same opportunity.

Sticking to the £300 mark for the below components, do they fit well together?

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955

MB - Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H AMD 880G

Memory - 4GB Mushkin Silverline

GFX - XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770

Getting the second graphics card at a later date...

 

[stevebarnes15]

Yes they go together fine,should have a nice system there for the price.

 

[Tartsy]

Yes they go together fine,should have a nice system there for the price.

thanks Steve!