Im in the UK, and need help putting together a build for £500 or less.
It will be used for gaming (nothing too demanding) and also general use.
I don't need extras like monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc) but I only have a laptop atm so I cant reuse any parts from a previous build.
Do you think this is realistic? Thanks for any help in advance guys.
It's perfectly possible, but if it is at all possible - I'd wait.
Prices for hard-drives are phenomenally high at the moment due to the Taiwan floods. If you'd still like a build made now, tell me. Either way, I'm happy to help.
I can manage, so if its ludicrously expensive for a hard drive I would rather wait. I would really like to have it by christmas, possibly January. Do you think the prices will go down again by then?
Based on the news coming out it looks like hard disk drives won't be coming back down for quite a while - 6-9 months depending on the news source. It'd probably be a lot easier if you had a hard drive already.
Ugh, Ill need a build regardless then - can anyone make me a £450 excluding hard drive build?
Actually, upon checking, the hard drive prices won't affect your build too much. Here's a build, and it should be able to play practically any game, while retaining only a price of £488.37, including hard drive. I don't know if the hard drive is good, as I've never used it before, but hey-ho, I guess.
This should max everything that you throw at it, and work great on pretty much all desktop applications. Not sure you need the thermal paste/HDMI cable though.
[img]http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/9770/ss20111105185318.png[/img].
This build is from [url=http://www.ebuyer.co.uk]eBuyer[/url], by the way - they're generally very good and offer free delivery.
If you go with an i3 2100 (which by the way at some points outpreforms the 955) with a z68 motherboard then you'd have the option of upgrading to a i5 2500k in the future, as the am3 socket is quite dead anyhow. It will cost you 30£ more on the motherboard, (and 3£ more on the cpu lol), but you would get a truckload better upgrade compability. Your choice.
But a sandybridge build for 450£ build without a harddrive is more then manageable. Will preform better regardless of whether or not you decide to upgrade in the future, as you will be able to afford a 560ti even.
[QUOTE=naos;33141237]If you go with an i3 2100 (which by the way at some points outpreforms the 955) with a z68 motherboard then you'd have the option of upgrading to a i5 2500k in the future, as the am3 socket is quite dead anyhow. It will cost you 30£ more on the motherboard, (and 3£ more on the cpu lol), but you would get a truckload better upgrade compability. Your choice.
But a sandybridge build for 450£ build without a harddrive is more then manageable. Will preform better regardless of whether or not you decide to upgrade in the future, as you will be able to afford a 560ti even.[/QUOTE]
It's actually more than "at some points outperforms the 955". It beats out even the Phenom II X4 980 in almost every scenario.
[url]http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/07/01/intel-core-i3-2100-review/1[/url]
[img]http://puu.sh/8aXf[/img]
You can of course drop down to a 6850 and get a harddrive too, but you'd be paying about 40£ above your budget, and you will get a significantly worse performance within games.
Kikatek are doing F3 500gb's for £40 which is very reasonable considering the recent development: [url]http://www.kikatek.com/product_info.php?products_id=130624[/url] and yes they're reliable.
Naos gave you a solid rig honestly, i3-2100 route is definitely more preferable and combined with the harddrive I mentioned it's a very capable build, you can't do better on £500.
The only issue is you can't just slap a second 560 Ti in later without getting a better PSU and a full SLI capable motherboard, but if you were to get a 650w PSU and atleast an x8/x8 motherboard you'll be spending another £50-60 and you'll
have to drop a couple parts, but if this wasn't your intention it's a non-issue.
The AMD Phenom route will leave you some money at the end of the day, but an i3 will usually outperform it.
You can get the rig I put together with the harddrive for under £500 though, so if price is a massive issue, then you're going to want to go AMD at this time because of the hard drive prices.
Your choice.
[QUOTE=Juggernog;33148754]The AMD Phenom route will leave you some money at the end of the day, but an i3 will usually outperform it.
You can get the rig I put together with the harddrive for under £500 though, so if price is a massive issue, then you're going to want to go AMD at this time because of the hard drive prices.
Your choice.[/QUOTE]
I think he'd be better off with spending the extra few dollars on an i3 setup. It gives him the ability to jump to ivy bridge when it releases in Q1 2012, AM3 is going nowhere. Even if you save a bit of cash a Phenom II X4 build just isn't worth it.
I'd say that the preformance gain and upgrade compability is well worth the extra 40£ you have to pay to get on the sandy bridge route.
Might be worth using the laptop's hard disk and/or buying an SSD
[QUOTE=Darkimmortal;33169377]Might be worth using the laptop's hard disk and/or buying an SSD[/QUOTE]
It would be better to get an SSD than a hard disk? Wouldnt that be far better for the price atm?
Also thanks for the help everyone, and I can stretch the budget a little if it means I get a lot more performance but obviously I would rather not.
Naos' i3 build is the best one, as apposed to the Phenom?
Yes, go i3-2100, AM3 is dead.
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