So I'm getting money for my birthday (Saturday) to help me towards building a PC. The aim of this PC is gaming, but it's going to be rather cheap. by rather cheap, I'm talking no more than £350, ideally less than £300.

The two games I'm wanting to play are Starcraft 2 and Portal 2, so this should be easy enough.

Minimum res is 1280 x 1024, ideally it'd be 1080p, I'm not fussed about Anti Aliasing.

I'm in the UK, but I can do some slouching for deals myself, I'm mostly looking to see if anyone has any specific parts suggestions.

I'm considering this barebones from Novatech

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/barebones/Novatech/BB-2554G.html


I have a spare DVD writer drive and also a spare hard drive that'd get me off the ground and running, and I'd add likely a Radeon HD 5770 to it, so even after buying a Spinpoint F3, I'd still be a wee bit under £300.

The price doesn't include windows, I have a spare license key for XP, so my laptop is getting downgraded to XP and the windows 7 installation is getting transferred to the new rig when bought.

EDIT: It was fixed >.<
I would highly recommend upgrading to atleast a phenom x2 550 for your processor

For gaming, the benchmarks between the Athlon X2 and the Phenom X2 don't justify the price.

Add to that, if I save up more and decide to pump an extra £100 into the machine at christmas, I could always upgrade the CPU easily and simply, likely going to a Phenom II X4 955 BE, which is around £40 more than the Phenom x2 550, but offers twice the core, better L3 cache I believe, and is a better supported Black edition which means that it could be stretched out to a longer life.

Wait... Do you already own the 5770?

im a bit confuzzled

No, I don't, but I've looked around and it's by far the best price to power card I can get (can get one for just around £85) so the graphics card is the part I'm MOST sure about buying.

Well you can get a GTX460 for about £90 in some places, But still the 5770 is a solid card indeed,

Plus whats the deal with the res? Like im on a 22" monitor using 1280x1024 and its fine, saves graphics memory too :D

Btw are you gonna overclock your CPU?

My monitor is a 30", so the higher res would be desirable, but I'm not too fussed. I've not seen the GTX460 as cheap as £90, but that is a good deal. Might see if it's worth the price difference.


Re: overclocking, unlikely in the short term, especially with an Athlon II if I end up getting that barebones. Not too interested in overclocking anyway.

I've been looking at that very same barebones.

So I'll have what you're having. Except I'm throwing in the Nvidia card which is £30 less than the 5770.

Roll on the tips.

Im not really good at building cheap pc's as i want all stuff to be exceptional quality.

This is decent

https://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Bundles/Barebone+Bundles/Gladiator+Core+i3+Home+%26+Office+Barebone+Bundle+?productId=43978

The case is great build quality, i3's are what you should look for IMO cheap and they pack a punch for the price, Never sure about cheap PSU's but i do here good stuff about mushkin PSU's but still :/

/E Wait the case is the asgard, Thought it was the bigger version but still a decent case overall.

Problem with that is, it's £250 BEFORE adding in a decent graphics card. I don't care what people say, Clarkdale is no substitute for a discrete gfx card.

I can see that being a good option for thos desperate for an intel system, but bang for the buck, I'm am AMD man for budgets under £450

I have a 5770 and it runs most of my modern games at high settings and a 1440x900 resolution (Fallout 3, Street Fighter 4, Mass Effect 1&2, etc.). I bet it could run games at 1080p with no problems. It is a great card for your budget.

Quick decent build.

i5 540
MSI H55M ED55
4GB Patriot signature
Xigmatek Asgard

£190 including VAT

But... that makes it your choice to go with a cheap PSU or not.

You mean i3?

Also: I can configure an Athlon II in a coolermaster 330 (good case) WITH PSU for £180 inc VAT. (which I'm currently considering instead of the barebones. It's a toughy.)

TheJoe: I'll let you know what I get and how it runs. it's gonna be good having awesome res/fps to play TF2 on the server :D

I'm quite suspiscous about benchmarks when it comes to AMD processors. Most benchmarks are optimized for intel cpu's and may not reflect correctly the actual performance of Athlons and Phenoms.

As a matter of fact , Phenom X2s, especially 555 and 560, are quite attractive. They may offer less long term perspective than quad cores, but they offer solid performance compared to athlon x2s and don't heat alot ( heat management can be an issue on phenoms 2 X4 955 & 965.

Another option is the phenom ii X4 840. Actually, it's an improved Athlon, but it combines a fair performance and 4 full cores.