Help with buying a "gaming" desktop

Lum

Right now at the mid range both AMD and Intel are pretty much equal in terms of price/performance so go with whichever company you like best and/or can get the best deal on,

Personally I'd go with a "Wolfdale" Core2Duo (not really and need for quad core) a board with the Intel X48 chipset (I personally prefer Asus boards but it doesn't really matter), just make sure to get an X48 board that takes DDR2 rather than DDR3. There really isn't any notable gain from DDR3 but it costs more so you'd be better putting the money into a faster CPU or something.
For graphics, the ATI 4770 seems to be a bargain in terms of price:performance and is probably a better buy than the 3650s that those systems have.

Case, CD drive, hard drive etc. can you scavenge these from your old system?

Trevelyan

The GPU comment, yeah, I was considering buying another one separately for around £100 if necessary at a later time.. but that Arbico CD 8465 EX looks nice - or the Arbico CD 8467 XL - I cant make up my mind which is better really...


Also, another deal I found on CCLonline:

AMD Phenom X4 9950 Quad Core Processor
4GB of Kingston Hyper-X 800MHz (4x 1GB)
Geforce 9800GT 1Gb
Hitachi 500Gb Hard Drive
No Operating System
£456.63 ex VAT, £525.12 inc VAT


However, if I was to go with the suggested Arbico one, which would be preferable?


Choice of Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 OR Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 CPU

4GB (2 X 2GB) Kingston OR Crucial OR Corsair PC6400 800Mhz DDR2 Ram (three companies, over two deals)

Choice of 19" Edge W193 Widescreen OR 19" I-INC iC194 Standard Aspect TFT


Finally, if I was to go with the Arbico one, would there be any of the extra upgrades worth going with (like, spending another £20 for a better motherboard or another £45 on a graphics card upgrade)?

Thanks for all the help so far by the way, maybe this can help others on a budget of around 500ish!

-TangleFoot-

DatabaseError wrote: »

Wow...with its integrated graphics that really does reach the dizzying heights of mediocrity

The base configuration includes a discrete graphics card, but you're right: it is mediocre.

Marty_J

DatabaseError wrote: »

Wow...with its integrated graphics that really does reach the dizzying heights of mediocrity

A 512MB ATI Radeon HD4350 card is integrated?

DatabaseError

Trevelyan wrote: »

Also, another deal I found on CCLonline:

AMD Phenom X4 9950 Quad Core Processor
4GB of Kingston Hyper-X 800MHz (4x 1GB)
Geforce 9800GT 1Gb
Hitachi 500Gb Hard Drive
No Operating System
£456.63 ex VAT, £525.12 inc VAT

However, if I was to go with the suggested Arbico one, which would be preferable?

As a CCL fanboi (along with a few others here)...what can I say? It will certainly play the games you mentioned at decent resolution (unlike ALL your other options) but be aware NO OS..so you'll have to source windows seperately.
I'd also be tempted to look at a dual core rather than quad...it will be cheaper...and few games yet utilise the extra 2 cores...

Psychofly

Stick it down to 2GB RAM and improve the graphics card. The grpahics card is the most important part for gaming given that it's MUCH cheaper to upgrade the RAM than the graphics in future.

Lum

Trevelyan wrote: »

AMD Phenom X4 9950 Quad Core Processor
4GB of Kingston Hyper-X 800MHz (4x 1GB)
Geforce 9800GT 1Gb
Hitachi 500Gb Hard Drive
No Operating System
£456.63 ex VAT, £525.12 inc VAT

At the high end, which that Phenom is, Intel is the more cost effective choice.

The GeForce 9800GT isn't a bad card, but be aware that it is quite simply a rebadged 8800GT

Kingston Hyper-X is also a rather blingy memory that they aim at overclockers, it has fancy heatsinks on it. There's nothing wrong with it as such but you are paying extra for a fancy name and some bling. I'd go with Kingston ValuRam personally.

As others have mentioned, no operating system. The OS on your old PC is probably an OEM licence and thus is not legally transferrable to the new PC, so you'd need to budget for a copy of Vista. You can get an OEM copy online (which is subject to the same restriction next time you upgrade) providing you buy it with some computer hardware, such as a cheapo mouse, and save a bit of cash vs buying a retail copy.

I'm about to go get some food, but I'll come back later and see if I can come up with something good buying parts from Scan.

4743hudsonj

Marty_J wrote: »

A 512MB ATI Radeon HD4350 card is integrated?

my thoughts too

at least we know people here pay attention and are able to give good advice based on what they read:D

globalds

this is how to make the perfect gamer PC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

Trevelyan

I get my OS through MSDNAA :P

Anyway about the CCL stuff.. im wondering.. E7500 or Phenom 9950? And then GTS 250, Radeon 8750 or the 1GB 9800?

The E7500s are cheaper but the 9950 is quad core.. ahhhhh I dont know.

Oh and another site - Powerc.com. They're based in my town so I might bias toward them. No deals to see though. But I might go with them as theyre close!