I've decided to buy a new PC as mine is quite old (7yrs) & very tired & out of date.

I just tried installing the game Gears Of War & my PC said no way.

Would someone kindly take the time to read through this for me & tell me if it's any good for the money. I have no idea about PC's.

I only need the base unit as I have everything else.


9500 QUAD CORE PHENOM 4GB 500GB GAMING PC 8500GT SLI on eBay, also, Desktop PCs, Computing (end time 06-Feb-08 21:33:16 GMT)


Cheers

 

Its not bad, but in all honestly you don't know what your getting.

They will use the cheapest parts, warranty will be impossible and it looks poo

If you can't build it your self I would go with a well known brand. Least then you have the security if it goes wrong !

Thats my opinion...

 

Seconded, apart from the fact I like the look of it.

It seems WAY to cheap to be the real deal. The price of the components themselves should be coming to more than they are asking for it. Someone has to be paid to build it, test it, and provide a warranty.

The price is just too low for that to have taken place.

 

In fact, in 30 seconds I have knocked this up, its more expensive as Overclockers is an expensive site..

but the bit are good and the makes are ok !!

You need to spend more to get a great PC

 

Wow! Thanks very much for your help & advice.

That shopping list looks tempting & you say these are quality parts?

I could put it together myself so the parts on the list might be a better option.

 

Give me a budget and I'll throw something worth buying together for that amount

You can then ask others on here to throw in their ideas

 

Cheers mate, that's very kind of you.

I have about £400 to spend. I don't mind what it looks like as the base unit will not be seen that much.

The ability to play Gears Of War to a better than minimum standard would be nice LOL!

 

pimmo

you missed a PSU off your list

 

Spending that little makes it hard to get a good games machine. Relatively small increases in budget can get a much nicer machine. £500 will get a nice base unit. You would still have to get a monitor, speakers, keyboard & mouse on top of that if you did not already have things you could use.

 

Okay lets say I have £500max to spend. I think I paid over £700 from PC World for the one I have now...

80gb HD
512Ram
2.6ghz Intel III
64mb Nvidia Graphics Card

I already have the monitor, mouse, keyboard, dvd burner so ideally I just need the tower unit.

What I struggle to understand is compatibility, what works with what.

Once again thanks for your help & advice

 

Computer dont need power

Right, here's the setup.. best for cheap I could do without a graphics card !!

This would be where you decide how well you want to play your games

Total of £315.93 including delivery.

 

Cheers bud!

So if I bought a really good graphics card to go with that I would have a pretty sweet system. Is a game like GOW very taxing on your system, I would like it to play with most features enabled.

Do games perform mainly to the quality of graphics card installed?

 

Well that leaves us with say £200 to spend on a card !!

OcUK GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - OEM

 

Basically yeah.. but obviously it depends on drivers installed, OS etc..

You'd have a budget gaming system, I'm not gonna pretend it's the bollox cause for £500 you wont get top end !

My build so far consists of a case £115, PSU £90 and a Cooler for my processor £40..

the rest totals £just under £700 (see below) and it wont be the any where near the best system around !


Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 G0 SLACR, 95W, S775, 2.40 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB Cache, OEM

Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP, iP35, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX

4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2 Pro, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12

512MB Asus 8800GTS, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), Mem 2070MHz GDDR3, GPU 740MHz, HDTV/2xDual Link DVI-I

250 Gb Western Digital WD2500AAKS Caviar SE16, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 9 ms

Pioneer DVR-215BK 20x DVD±R, 10x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, DVD-RAM x12, SATA, Black, OEM

 

OH and don't buy the parts based on my quick build, look into it, I'm not responsible for anything ****

 

I hope that makes sense to you mate cause you lost me with all the jargon

This is why I thought it might be better for me to buy a tower already built.

If the list you suggested is all compatible with each other & I whack a half decent graphics card in then that should satisfy me. It's a damn sight better than the PC I'm using now & it won't break the bank too much.

Thanks again for your help

 

Would this setup work & am I missing something important?

 

It would work with a PSU.. but you have lower quality parts, for example the memory is only PC 5300... which to be honest sucks !

The graphics card aint great either... this is likely to be what ebay sells cheap!

go to Overclockers UK Forums - Powered by vBulletin

General hardware and ask them to SPEC you a gaming PC for under £500

 

Why not just buy a 360 and GOW?

 

Cheaper and it'll run right

 

Not with those parts you've suggested, a foxconn mb and a cheap psu, never with any system there's only so cheap you can go before you start sacrificing reliability.

As for the choosing the 8800gtx, why, the 8800gt is nearly the same speed at only a fraction of the cost.

As for using amd processors, they have been beaten for a long while now.

 

Doubtful. Then throw in the ease of Xbox Live and it's a no brainer except for ***** and geeks.

360 will probably break at some point but at least you know it will be replaced

 

Never, ever, ever scrimp on the PSU

Also the ATI 3870XT's are a good deal at the moment

PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 3870 XT Extreme 512MB GDDR4 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

 

If you mean me ? I was talking about the Xbox and the GTX is a better model that the GT

 

I mean the Xbox

 

Third time and lasr,

there's always too many opinions on a build..

I'm not gonna argue. I've suggested. Work on that and decided what you want !

Cheers

Pimmo

 

What for all of 2fps it gives you in crysis for an extra £80 plus the gt runs cooler/quieter and the cooler doesn't hog the second slot.

The ati 3870x2 is worth a look.

As for processors you suggested an amd phenom, the quad intel floors the thing and that's before you start overclocking it.

For little extra outlay it's a much better system.

 

You'll be able to run Gears of War MAX everything on this. Only slightly over budget but a very good system with loads of room for expansion.

 

Thanks for all your help it is greatly appreciated.

From what I've read & understood to the best of my ability, I've decided to go with this setup...



I think it will perform well for what I will use it for & more importantly, isn't going to break my wallet.

 

Here what I would go for, offers good disk performance as well (if used in raid setup)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz 95W G0 Stepping (Retail 775) £ 143.45
OCZ 4GB PC2-8000 Platinum XTC (2x2GB) £ 69.95
XFX NFORCE 680I LT SLI INTEL SOCKET 775 DDR2 Motherboard £ 59.35
nVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB PCI-E £ 135.95
250GB Hitachi SATA2 Hard Disk - 7200rpm - 8MB x2 £ 68.90
New Ferrari- 500w Midi ATX - Silver £ 27.50


Total £593.49

That should run everything you can throw at it and in time you can get another identical gfx card and run sli mode for extra performance.

You can save some money by having 1 hard drive (bigger capacity but ultimately slower as not used as raid), also get a lower spec cpu, cut down on memory so you have 2 gb instead of 4, and maybe get a 8600gt gfx card instead of the 8800 (bit less than half the price)

In my opinion the above specs are what I would class as a mid end system