Help with buying a "gaming" desktop

clausehelper

AlienWare do great gaming machines... bit expensive but they last a long time.... and they look super cool

globalds

I put the intel Q6600 Slacr in 2 machines this year .
A real beast for overclocking ..The price of this chip has gone up over the last 6 months though .
If you do go for this one make sure it is the SLACR chip with GO stepping

Trevelyan

Ok heres one

Powerc.com -

Premium ATX Midi Tower Case
Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
Corsair 750Watt PSU
AMD Phenom™ II 940 Quad-Core 3GHz 8MB Cache
Coolermaster Hyper TX2 Fan
Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz
320GB 7200RPM SATA II
nVidia GeForce 9800GT 1GB
No operating system (I have Vista Business x64 though)

Weighs in at £615 BUT given that they seem to alter stuff on request, I could say I have my own RAM (which I am sure I can get cheap elsehwere!).

Going down to a 9950 takes the price to 575. Still higher than my original £500 but the components look good and from what I know of them, theyre ok. However, the ram bugs me and im wondering if I couldnt get a cheaper graphics card.

Radeon HD4850 + 4gb ram = £100 - £110.

Lum

If it's just for gaming, you'll see more gains and a lower price by buying a faster dual core CPU to be honest.

And I can't believe someone just recommended Alienware. You're paying a lot of money for a brand name and some funky styling on the casing. I certainly wouldn't buy from them, especially not if I was on a £500 budget.

DatabaseError

4743hudsonj wrote: »

my thoughts too

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

Good point...I stopped reading a few lines higher at "[URL="javascript:portal.openPopup('/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRODUCTDETAILVIEWPAGE&USG=PRODDETAIL&ENT=PRODDETAIL&KEY=77221&POPUP=1',%20null,%201,%20null,%20null%20)"]....with integrated HDMI/DVI/VGA Graphics [/URL]" ..I should have continued to the naff GPU..
~Doesn't alter the fact that it still isn't a gaming PC...

-TangleFoot-

Is this the one you've been looking at? The default configuration seems fine to me. All it needs is a card reader...

cooki2222

Lum wrote: »

If it's just for gaming, you'll see more gains and a lower price by buying a faster dual core CPU to be honest.

And I can't believe someone just recommended Alienware. You're paying a lot of money for a brand name and some funky styling on the casing. I certainly wouldn't buy from them, especially not if I was on a £500 budget.

Alienware were much better before dell took them over imo

Trevelyan

Tempted to order now before the weekend, but overclockers, dell and some other sites might have new offers on tomorrow (or, after the 27th).

Ive never been one to wait for a "new release" but for the sake of a day or two..

Trevelyan

In the end I chose to go and make my own.

Bought all my components from overclockers.co.uk - would have gone one with cclonline (the CPU was cheaper there - Phenom II 940) except that I cheated and got a Phenom II 955 instead - as well as an AM3 motherboard and some DDR3 ram.

I decided to cheat and go a bit higher than £500 but I feel its worth it. The reason is, is that my old motherboard was a 939 with an expansion slot for AM2. The Asrock 939 Dual Sata-II motherboard was great but cheap. The result? No vista compatibility, ultimately leading to the decision to upgrade my PC (the fan makes horrid noises and has shown me how bad the current case).

Heres what I bought:


AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £169.56
Asus M4A79T Deluxe AMD 790FX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £119.12
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £68.69
OCZ StealthXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply £48.69
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 10666C9 1333MHz TwinX Dual Channel (TW3X4G1333C9) £46.95
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) £39.12
Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/LGA775/LGA1366) £33.03
Infiniti Professional DVD-R 16x 4.7GB (25 Spindle) £3.99
DPD Next Day Parcel: £12.50
VAT: £81.25
Order Total: £622.90

Hard disk was a 1TB Samsung F1 32mb cache for £65 I think and also a Samsumg S222A (I think?) For £15 - both from eBuyer

Total therefore comes to a few quid over £700 - justified by about £100 or so that unexpectedly came. Totally over budget but I figured an AM3 board would be worth the upgrade (AM2 didnt last long but the way things are going, AM4s might be compatible with AM3) given how some of the components listed were on offer.

DDR3 probably wasnt worth it but it was, again, on offer - as was the CPU and motherboard. I was tempted to get a cheaper MSI board with the 790GX chipset - which I could have used for hybrid crossfire. However, the memory banks are supposedly easily blocked by the CPU - almost guaranteed to have happened after I install the 3rd party cooler.

It all comes tomorrow - I hope - so ill get my room tidied. Oh did I mention, i've never made a PC before!

DatabaseError

I've never seen that cooler before...reviews are pretty good for it...
nice to see you've gone for a decent PSU....

one thing..you've specified some fairly quiet components...then added a 4850

...but....it will play games ..though i'd have been happier going a little further up the gpu hireachy with the 955 and ddr3 behind it...

top tip! use a lot less thermal grease than you think you'll need! Generally a grain of rice in the centre of the CPU is around the right size...let the cooler do the spreading!

Good luck