Best spec machine for £350.00?

[ukJAG]

Dear all,

A friend of mine has asked for the best possible spec machine (case and innards only) for a budged of £350.00. Must have decent processor and graphics card as it will be for gaming. Monitor and other peripherals not required as he has them.


Anyone have any advice please?

Thanks,

 

[GONNA-GET-U]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-027-OK&groupid=43&catid=781&subcat=

this 1 looks ok - need a graphics card too
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BB-X25DS

 

[floppybootstomp]

Gonna-get-u's links...

First one is no good for gaming as it has integrated graphics.

Second one is ok but adding a decent graphics card will take you over budget.

I'm guessing a decent gaming machine can't really be had for £350.00, I'd reckon £400 - £450 at least to play today's games.

However, if somebody can prove me wrong, this would be a good thing

 

[muckshifter]

At least GONNA-GET-U had a looksee ... I agree with Floppy, the first one is an office PC, and quite a crap build.


The second is better, but either I missed where they hid the graphics card, as I do not see one listed, or you don't get one ... it would be ok to build on.


You is gonna need more money.

 

[Ian]

I took a really quick look at Novatech and came up with this

LITEON 20x DVDRW / RAM Black Bare With Nero 7 Essentials

£14.99

Antec SLK3000B Midi Tower Case - No PSU

£29.95

Hiper 530Watt BLACK ATX Power Supply

£39.95

OEM AMD X2 Dual Core AM2 Athlon 64 5000 2.6GHz 2x512 Socket AM2 !!!REQUIRES

£56.00

MSI K9N SLI 2-F Socket AM2 nForce 570 SLI SATAII Raid GB LAN

£49.00

Maxtor DiamondMax 21 SATAII 250GB 8Mb Cache Hard Disk Drive <11.0ms 7200rpm - OEM

£34.08

Novatech GeForce 8600GT SLI 256MB GDDR3 Dual DVI/TVO PCI-E

£65.00

2 x Corsair Value Select 1024Mb (2x512mB) Kit 667MHz 240Pin 1GB DDR2 RAM DIMM 1.8V

£52.00

That lot comes to £408 inc Vat, but you can further skimp on some items. I don't know what that motherboard is like, nor if all of the bits are compatible (as I didn't have time to check all the specs - but I think they are).

I've not looked at components for a long while, so someone else will be able to come up with someone better I'm sure

 

[muckshifter]

You can't go too far wrong with that MB as a starting point ... I have used it to build a PC, unfourtunatly not my PC, I can highly recommend it.

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...+Extreme+Performance+(2x1GB)+?productId=26802
£70.44

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...(AMD)/+MSI+K9VGM-V+Socket+AM2?productId=24449
£35.22

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...MD+Athlon+64+X2+6000+OEM+AM2+?productId=27247
£109.22

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...errari-+500w+Midi+ATX+-Yellow?productId=24554
£34.08

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...y+ATi+Radeon+X1950+Pro+256MB+?productId=27834
£64.57

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...+Seagate+Barracuda+SATA2+8MB+?productId=24404
£32.84

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...g+18x+DL+DVDRW+BLACK+12x+RAM+?productId=23670
£17.50

So this lot comes to £363.87 without postage . You can save money by only getting 1GB of memory , an you could get a X800GT ALL in Wonder , an you don't need a DVD writer so you could get a CD ROM which would save you about £80 in total which you could spend on games .

There is a mobo with Sata 2 for the same price but it is out of stock which would be a better deal than the one I give .
Also as Ian shows HHD are cheap and I have recently got a Sata 2 16MB 320GB for £42 .

 

[V_R]

Thats an OEM CPU you will need a HSF.

You could try looking at hte Intel 2160's, cheap but clock very well.

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...maltake+CL-P0333+Blue+Orb+FX+?productId=27176
£22.27

So thats only 1GB of ram then and this would bring it well under budget .

 

[ukJAG]

Thank you very much guys for your advice. Have passed on all this info, to be honest I'm quite tempted myself

Very much appreciated