The £500 Gaming PC Challenge: pimp my build!

DevilGoesDown2Bristol

(Also posted on Build Your Own PC)

Hi folks,

I'm considering building rather than buying a PC for my girlfriend's son, as it rather looks as though the machines you get for your money from retailers and Ebay system builders don't offer great value, by and large. I'm hoping there might be some MoneySaving techies around who'd done something like this recently. The only trouble is, it has been *mumblemumble* years since I last built a PC and frankly I don't know what I'm looking at any more.

Believe it or not, I'm actually pretty technical myself but I've been away from hardware for longer than I care to remember, so I could seriously use a hand.

Requirements:

Very simply, the best bang-for-buck out of £500 or preferably less. It's for a just-turned-13-year-old boy, so sooner or later he's going to want it to run recent games, and run them well. I think any protestations to the contrary can be safely ignored

He will doubtless want to rip his DVD collection to the hard drive as well, but the main thing is going to be gaming oomph.

I'd love to be able to tell you which games and at what settings and resolution, but I frankly don't have a clue. The monitor we'll be using almost certainly won't go above 1600x1200, if that's any help.

I'm working on the basis of advice I've been given that:

1) AMD processors currently offer the best performance for the money unless the amount of money you're talking about is "lots"
2) Nvidia graphics cards are the ones to go for, in terms of performance and support

I'm quite prepared to be disabused of these notions though. Oh, and for now we were thinking of letting him have a 19" LCD monitor that his mum currently has, with a view to something better in the future.

Proposed specification:

Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium x64 £82.31
Processor: AMD Phenom X2 550 Black Edition 3.1GHz 6MB L3 Chche Socket AM3 £81.05
Motherboard: MSI 770-C45 AMD 770 AM3 140W DDR3 Support £59.99
Memory: OCZ 4GB KIT (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600Mhz PC3 12800 GOLD SERIES DUAL CHANNEL KIT (8-8-8-26) £62.99
HDD: Maxtor STM3750330AS 750GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm, 32MB Cache £58.60
Graphics: ASUS 9800GT 512MB DDR3 £82.99
Case+PSU: Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Mid Tower Case - With 500W EarthWatts PSU £94.65
Optical Drive: Sony DRU-860S 22X DVD/RW DL & DVD-RAM Serial ATA Black Drive - Retail With Nero £22.00

Total price: £544.58!

As you can see, I've failed my own challenge dismally... and that's without a new keyboard and mouse! I tried to pick the options at all stages that offered the best value for money, but I'm not remotely sure I've succeeded. It'd be tempting to say "stuff it" and up the budget a bit, but a) it's an article of faith for me that it's possible to do the job right for sub £500, and b) we've already stretched the budget from £400 to £500.

Main questions for MoneySaving Techsperts:

Would you go with Phenom II AM3/AM3 mobo/DDR3 or Phenom II AM2+/AM2+ mobo/DDR2?

What have I missed off? (e.g. Would I need a dedicated CPU cooler? If so, do I need that thermal gunk to stick it onto the processor? Extra case fans? That sort of thing.)

He's very keen on blue lights and whatnot (he is 13, after all) so am I better off buying a neverheardofit brand with LED's and neons or a respected case brand + case mods? The NZXT Tempest looks like the proverbial mutt's nuts, but then I'm into sourcing an appropriate separate PSU...

Where on earth do I trim money off this spec? I could save maybe £20 on the graphics card by getting a 9600GT instead. The most obvious point seems to be the case, but sub-£100 for a really decent case and PSU doesn't look like too bad a deal to me... particularly as I'll be the one putting it all together, and I seriously dislike the sight of my own blood.

(Note that other people's blood doesn't bother me: don't think I haven't considered ordering a cheap case and getting the boy to put it together himself as a budget option )

All prices at this stage are from Ebuyer, as they seem to be generally good value for money and I wanted to be doing my comparisons all in one place for now. If anyone can recommend a better source/cheaper price for any components though, please feel free. I'm also prepared to be persuaded that going down to an AM2+ processor/board/memory combo might be a good idea, although I worry about future upgradeability by going with those options.

Thanks for reading, folks!

DatabaseError

I'm more of an intel fan nowadays (after many years with AMD) but I do like to overclock to get a little more out of everything..E5200 will easily hit 3ghz + for £54 ..couple that with a p35 motherboard and a decent cooler, 4gb of ddr2 and you should be able to bring it below your budget while retaining the similar performance.
Nice to see x64 OS on the list
I'd be happier spending another tenner on an ati 4850 than the 9800gt (and I have 3 nvidia systems )
£22 for a dvdrw seems a lot nowadays...the sony will probably just be a rebadged liteon...with firmware less likely to be updated...save a fiver

£100 for a case and PSU is pretty good value..glad to see you're not one of the idiots who thing £30 is the right price...then complain when the magic smoke kills the PC..the antec 300 is universally accepted as a great case, the sonata is gonna be another good one.

Psychofly

For the gaming side of things it might be a better option to cut the 4GB to 2GB, cut back on the case a bit and get a cheaper one and put the extra cash towards a better graphics card. The 9800GT is a bit weak for the cash to be honest. I would get a 4850 or a 4870 from ATI as (even though I'm usually an Nvidia guy) these cards are some of the best around for the cash at the minute. Look here.
The AM2+ idea makes sense in a way although it will limit future upgrades to a degree. What you could do is get an AM2+ motherboard and DDR2 RAM but keep the 550 Black Edition processor. It won't hit your performance that much but you'll save a decent amount of cash on the motherboard and RAM.
Sourcing a case and PSU separately might be a good idea to be honest because getting a decent brand PSU is far more important than getting a high power one.
The coolor that comes with retail boxed processors should do the job for you mate but it's always worth getting some cooling gunk like Arctic Silver. Wouldn't bother with extra case fans though.
At the end of the day the biggest thing to look at is the graphics card and it's worth cutting down a bit on things like RAM, maybe a cheaper optical drive or a smaller hard drive to free up cash for a better graphics card. RAM is an easy and cheap future upgrade. A second hard drive is another relatively cheap and very easy future upgrade. If you get the graphics card wrong and need to upgrade in future it's gonna cost a fair bit so I'd put the extra cash into that now if gaming is going to be an issue soon.

DevilGoesDown2Bristol

Thanks very much for the tips guys. On the graphics front, I've been pointed at this little beauty; an Asus Nvidia GTS 250 for £86 from Overclockers. The Earthwatts power supply bundled with the case is an Antec model and looks pretty good, at least as far as I can tell. So... I save not quite as much as you'd think by dropping back to an AM2+ motherboard and DDR2 memory - around £30 in total, which was a surprise! I'll go to the LiteOn drive to save another £6. Any other pointers?

Psychofly

Yeah I would say that's a better bet than the 9800.
If you're desparate to get closer to the £500 mark then AM2+ and DDR2 is the way to go to be honest however if you're happy with the £540 then stick with AM3 for future compatibility, alternatively go for 2GB of RAM instead of 4GB and you can easily add another 2GB later on for Christmas or something like that ?

-TangleFoot-

DevilGoesDown2Bristol wrote: »

He will doubtless want to rip his DVD collection to the hard drive as well

Depending on the size of this collection, a 1TB HDD might be a wise investment.

Psychofly

I'm confused why he'd want to rip his collection to disk when he's got a DVD drive on his PC and can just watch it from disk. Most people have video files on their hard drives that they want to burn to disk and keep rather than clogging up the disk space. Even my media machine only has about 300GB of video files, the rest of my movies and series being kept on DVD. Ripping is a waste of time and disk space to be honest.
To save cash just now you could get away with a 500GB or 750GB drive and then add another disk later when it becomes necessary and use that purely as a data drive.

DevilGoesDown2Bristol

@Tanglefoot: I hear ya on the 1TB drive front, but the way I see it at the moment, external storage is not only dirt cheap but getting cheaper by the day. Blistering fast speeds are only really useful during the ripping process; after that you can stick it on a USB2.0 hard drive or even a flash device and never really care. Same with photos and music; no point chewing up space on the SATA2 main drive unless you're actually manipulating the files in some way. I'm going to at least have a stab at encouraging good data management practices, but - as I say - 13-year-old boy!

@Psychofly: Storage space in his room, and generally poor looking-after of loose DVD's... ripping them is the only way they survive more than a month. Did I mention: 13-year-old boy?

He's as careful and methodical about looking after his stuff (DVD's, CD's, clothes, musical instruments, his sister) as you'd expect for that demographic

-TangleFoot-

DevilGoesDown2Bristol wrote: »

external storage is not only dirt cheap but getting cheaper by the day.

Internal storage is cheaper still, and less prone to accidental damage.

Psychofly

External is good though if he wants to take some of his films to a mates house. Internal IS cheaper though and as TangleFoot points out, less easily damaged.

Jakg

That, but with a better mobo and perhaps 8GB of RAM.

Don't forget an operating system, or perhaps some new fans to keep it cool...