Fastdude's budget gamer

fastdude

fastdude

Active Member
I have around £400 saved up in the bank and I will be getting more at Christmas (lovely, kind relatives:D) and so I have decided to build a low-budget PC for moderate gaming, media library storage, photo/video editing (non-HD), general web surfing, school, and everyday use. I am planning on Overclocking - heavily.
So here goes -

Case
SilverStone PS02B Precision
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H
CPU
Intel pentium G6950
RAM
Novatech XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800
GPU
Powercolor HD 5770 1GB
HSF
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2
PSU
Corsair CX500W
HDD
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB
Optical Drive
Lite-on iHAS 524-98
OS
Windows 7 Home Premium

Total cost: About £550.
I have a separate budget for peripherals (VDU, keyboard, mouse, printer etc.)
What do you think? Well Balanced? Any alternate component suggestions will be welcome, but please don't try to change my whole build. I have an AM3 build as backup (similar to this, only with an AM3 Mobo and an Phenom II X3-720) in case one of you finds some reason why these particular components don't work well together/explode when in use), though I think thta scenario is unlikely. Bring it:)
 
jevery

jevery

Active Member
Curious - Why the Duo Core Clarkdale with the integrated graphics, (that you're not going to use), and the micro ATX MB. I know you said not to change the whole build, but for the same money, the Athlon II X4 620 is a significantly faster processor. PassMark CPU Mark - 3123 versus 1944 for the G6950. With a GIGABYTE GA-890XA-UD3 you'd get a full sized ATX MB, 6 Gb/s SATA support, USB 3.0, more PCI slots, and CrossFire support, (should you want it in the future).
 
fastdude

fastdude

Active Member
jevery said:
Curious - Why the Duo Core Clarkdale with the integrated graphics, (that you're not going to use), and the micro ATX MB. I know you said not to change the whole build, but for the same money, the Athlon II X4 620 is a significantly faster processor. PassMark CPU Mark - 3123 versus 1944 for the G6950. With a GIGABYTE GA-890XA-UD3 you'd get a full sized ATX MB, 6 Gb/s SATA support, USB 3.0, more PCI slots, and CrossFire support, (should you want it in the future).
Click to expand...

I'm looking for something compact, easy to fit in a relatively small space. I realise that the Athlon II X4 620 is quite a bit more powerful @ stock, but the "Pentium" is allegedly an insane overclocker, reaching 4.4 GHz on air, with the STOCK FAN.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2972/...-pentium-g6950-core-i5-650-660-670-reviewed/9
Also, I don't really need USB 3.0 at the moment, and it will be backwards compatible with USB 2.0 anyway, so I won't have any problems, that motherboard is also more expensive. I also don't like the lack of an L3 cache.

BillOhio said:
Are you really 12?
Click to expand...

Yes:D

daisymtc said:
Looks OK to me if you planned to overclock heavily.

Are you buying from Novatech?
G6950 is just £70 in some shop...
http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...W3hrn2AQ&sa=title&ved=0CAcQ8wIwADgA#scoring=p

Core i3 530 @ £80. It definately worth the extra £10
http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...Xfn5XGCQ&sa=title&ved=0CAcQ8wIwADgA#scoring=p
Click to expand...

The only thing I'm buying from Novatech is the RAM, due to it's value/price.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between the G6950 and the i3-530 is the clock speed (i3 being 133MHz more) the faster integrated GPU in the i3 (Which I won't use anyway), and having one more Megabyte of L3 cache. The G6950 is also cheaper. I'm not worrying about the clockspeed because I'm planning to OC anyway, not going to use the integrated GPU, and 1MB of L3 cache more will not make too much difference. Thanks everyone for your input, but I think I'm going with the G6950 simply because of the OCability/ slightly cheaper price :)

EDIT

Just found this
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/p...890-1GB-GDDR5-PCI-E-2-0--x16-?source=googleps
4890>5770, right? It's cheaper than the 5770 aswell:eek:
Only problem is no DX11
 
Last edited:
D

daisymtc

Active Member
fastdude said:
I'm looking for something compact, easy to fit in a relatively small space. I realise that the Athlon II X4 620 is quite a bit more powerful @ stock, but the "Pentium" is allegedly an insane overclocker, reaching 4.4 GHz on air, with the STOCK FAN.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2972/...-pentium-g6950-core-i5-650-660-670-reviewed/9
Also, I don't really need USB 3.0 at the moment, and it will be backwards compatible with USB 2.0 anyway, so I won't have any problems, that motherboard is also more expensive. I also don't like the lack of an L3 cache.



Yes:D



The only thing I'm buying from Novatech is the RAM, due to it's value/price.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between the G6950 and the i3-530 is the clock speed (i3 being 133MHz more) the faster integrated GPU in the i3 (Which I won't use anyway), and having one more Megabyte of L3 cache. The G6950 is also cheaper. I'm not worrying about the clockspeed because I'm planning to OC anyway, not going to use the integrated GPU, and 1MB of L3 cache more will not make too much difference. Thanks everyone for your input, but I think I'm going with the G6950 simply because of the OCability/ slightly cheaper price :)

EDIT

Just found this
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/p...890-1GB-GDDR5-PCI-E-2-0--x16-?source=googleps
4890>5770, right? It's cheaper than the 5770 aswell:eek:
Only problem is no DX11
Click to expand...

Out of Stock....
 
fastdude

fastdude

Active Member
Bump, sorry didn't want to start a whole new thread - how about I go AM3, but not with a quad, with a very cheap Athlon X2/X3, then spend the money saved on GTX460, or a mid-range card from the 6000 series when it comes out, then I can upgrade later to Phenom II? That would actually be marginally cheaper according to my calculations, and I'd have at least as good performance in games.
 
J

JorgeHGPR

New Member
Your first build was great except for the processor. Like some poster said, get the Core i3 530. If you are looking at the Athlon II X2 Regor, they aren't that bad but the Core i3 530 is IDEAL for gaming. It has Hyper Threading which you can use for older apps designed for single cores.
 
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