31 replies to this topic

[foxfan]

Does anyone know a good spec for a gaming computer ? I used to play World of Warcraft and am thinking of getting back into it but want a better computer. Was thinking of having a go at building one but saw one on fleabay with this spec for about £300

AMD Athlon II 250 3.0GHz Processor
4GB 800Mhz DDR2 RAM
500GB Hard drive
High performance Motherboard
DVD RW
Stylish Gaming case
HD4350 1GB Graphics
Is this any good for the money ?

[miniQ]

Not really when you can get much better spec for more $ = future proofing.

I7 920 + GTX460 and then other cheap components = good quality build

GTX460 is a bargian at £150
I7 920 for £200
X58 mobo for £150

£500 + £200 for cheaper other compents = £700 pc that can play almost all games currently.

Anyway you can get better spec for £300 you should be looking for 9600gt or GTS250

Cheap but good: E8400 + 9600gt or GTS250 + cheap compents Sub £400. £300 at cheapest. 4350 sucks to have even though it will play WoW.

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...=item3caea5a5f5

ALSO remember the OS is very expensive and you can think about switching HD's as an alternative to buying one = less cost for the pc

Edited by miniQ, 11 September 2010 - 09:14 PM.

[foxfan]

Thanks for that mate. I've had a look at the ebay page and it does look much better spec. Think i'm gonna go for it. I actually tried for some advice on a techie site called Geeks to go, but no replies. The mini forum has never let me down tho. Cheers

[trafficface09]

in the past i would have said home build one, but at the moment even shops seem to almoust be keeping up.

[davidv]

To help on cost just buy the tower not the system New or Secound hand.You need it to come with operating system Inc.
Have a look at good large stores at there ex-display units for a new bargain.P.C world do often for cash.

[minili]

Building is always better, pre-made PCs from shops come with a load of twaddle installed which will do nothing but slow it down, often places like PC World lock the BIOS on PCs as well which makes changes or upgrades difficult to impossible, so it may be good now but will need replacing in a year or so when the hardware is out of date and can't be improved.

I built my PC nearly two years ago for £600 and it's still better than what you'd get for the same money in shops now. A couple of parts are coming due for upgrade (I want DX11!) but I saved so much money by shopping around for parts and building it at home. And I bought a huuuuuuuge screen with the savings

[davidv]

Above if you buy an Ex Demo of them they have to open it and clean it safe.

[somecrapname]

if it's just for playing WoW you don't need a particularly high spec. I spend most of the time watching health bars so all the fancy gfx are a bit of a waste; the only time I wish I had a better PC is when I'm in the cities and lagging to hell.

[DaveVader]

For decent tech advice, head over to www.bit-tech.net
Hop on the forums and have a ganders.
Also look for their monthly build advice; it tells you which components are best to buy for different price brackets, makes a very good read.

I'd never buy a PC now after building my own.
The fleabay one will come with a cheap motherboard, RAM and a cheap PSU (which you NEVER EVER EVER want to go cheap on)

I'd recommend a good AMD Phenom (one of the new AM3 ones) with 4gig of DDR3 and an ATI GPU.
Go for a Corsair PSU (HX520 or something similar) then all you need is a hard drive and optical drive.

www.scan.co.uk is a great place to get components too.

Once I'm more awake tomorrow, I'll give you more info and other/better links.

Edited by DaveVader, 12 September 2010 - 07:15 PM.

[miniQ]

DDR3 = too expensive for his needs... And yes if he buys the one I recommended he will need to check the psu has atleast 25amps on the +12V rail.
Cheap motherboard doesnt really matter and niether does RAM to be honest...
I have a Really cheap mobo and RAM with Pentium D + 8800gt and have been running cod4 and crysis fine for a number of years
The only problem i had was one RAM stick was dodgy and gave blue screens every time i booted...I think it was a seller scam trying to get me to send it back... There was a clear mark of pen and a chip on the RAM stick which looked done on purpose.

Scan+novatech good places but you cant really beat google shopping search and Low to high price filter.

Anyway i think i might boast about the build im going to be doing in a few months :

Fully watercooled with a 2 loop system and the best blocks on the market. (GPU Loop and CPU,Mosfets,mobo and maybe ram loop)
I7 920 OC'ed to 4 or 4.2ghz depending if it's a goodun.
2 GTX460's in sli
Corsair Dominator-GT 6GB
Enermax Revolution 1250W PSU (Custom sleeving on all wiring)
1 x 60gb SSD drive (to be decided)
1TB storage HD

Edited by miniQ, 12 September 2010 - 08:08 PM.

[Carlzilla]

Build one to your own spec, much more rewarding

i wouldnt be able to go back to buying a ready to go pc, just isnt worth doing for me

[DaveVader]

DDR3 = too expensive for his needs... And yes if he buys the one I recommended he will need to check the psu has atleast 25amps on the +12V rail.
Cheap motherboard doesnt really matter and niether does RAM to be honest...
I have a Really cheap mobo and RAM with Pentium D + 8800gt and have been running cod4 and crysis fine for a number of years
The only problem i had was one RAM stick was dodgy and gave blue screens every time i booted...I think it was a seller scam trying to get me to send it back... There was a clear mark of pen and a chip on the RAM stick which looked done on purpose.

Scan+novatech good places but you cant really beat google shopping search and Low to high price filter.

Anyway i think i might boast about the build im going to be doing in a few months :

Fully watercooled with a 2 loop system and the best blocks on the market. (GPU Loop and CPU,Mosfets,mobo and maybe ram loop)
I7 920 OC'ed to 4 or 4.2ghz depending if it's a goodun.
2 GTX460's in sli
Corsair Dominator-GT 6GB
Enermax Revolution 1250W PSU (Custom sleeving on all wiring)
1 x 60gb SSD drive (to be decided)
1TB storage HD

Don't agree to be honest.
DDR3 may be a little expensive but there is no point putting DDR2 in a new build. It's last gen and the price is just increasing due to it being undesirable as it's pointless to buy new.

As for cheap motherboard and RAM, yeah, OK, you don't need bells and whistles, but a middle of the range Gigabyte board with a few extras would be nice.
Low speed and lowish clocked Corsair RAM would be alright too, and not too expensive.

[Deathrow]

The primary mistake people make when building computers is they spend alot of money on all the components people talk about most (CPU, Graphics Card) and then skimp on the other components in the system.

I've seen plenty of people buy the latest CPU and graphics card and then moan because my 12 month old rig still seems faster despite the fact on paper it should lose without even putting up a fight.

In Mini terms, the motherboard is your bodywork and the CPU is your engine. You wouldn't buy a rusty shell and whack a 1380 in it would you? You'd be waiting for the weakest part to fail and your whole experience to come crashing down around you. What DaveVader is saying is right, cheapo motherboards are not the way forwards, get yourself a good branded board, it doesn't have to be the latest thing with all the latest tech, but get a good quality board from a reputable manufacturer; ASUS, GigaByte, etc.

Now I have to answer the OP's question with another question:

What are you going to do with this computer? Because if you just want to play World of Warcraft, don't waste your money upgrading your computer, WoW is an old game now and the graphics were never anything ground breaking to begin with so they don't place a lot of stress on the system. You can build a Quad SLi monster of a system to play WoW if you want, but it won't look any better.

If you tell me your budget and what you want to do with the PC on a daily basis, I'll put together a system for you which I would buy if I was going to spend that money for that purpose.

Anyway i think i might boast about the build im going to be doing in a few months :

Fully watercooled with a 2 loop system and the best blocks on the market. (GPU Loop and CPU,Mosfets,mobo and maybe ram loop)
I7 920 OC'ed to 4 or 4.2ghz depending if it's a goodun.
2 GTX460's in sli
Corsair Dominator-GT 6GB
Enermax Revolution 1250W PSU (Custom sleeving on all wiring)
1 x 60gb SSD drive (to be decided)
1TB storage HD

That's a nice spec, but haven't the 920's been replaced now?

Have you watercooled before?

[foxfan]

[quote name='Deathrow' date='Sep 12 2010, 11:09 PM' post='1929472']
The primary mistake people make when building computers is they spend alot of money on all the components people talk about most (CPU, Graphics Card) and then skimp on the other components in the system.

I've seen plenty of people buy the latest CPU and graphics card and then moan because my 12 month old rig still seems faster despite the fact on paper it should lose without even putting up a fight.

In Mini terms, the motherboard is your bodywork and the CPU is your engine. You wouldn't buy a rusty shell and whack a 1380 in it would you? You'd be waiting for the weakest part to fail and your whole experience to come crashing down around you. What DaveVader is saying is right, cheapo motherboards are not the way forwards, get yourself a good branded board, it doesn't have to be the latest thing with all the latest tech, but get a good quality board from a reputable manufacturer; ASUS, GigaByte, etc.

Now I have to answer the OP's question with another question:

What are you going to do with this computer? Because if you just want to play World of Warcraft, don't waste your money upgrading your computer, WoW is an old game now and the graphics were never anything ground breaking to begin with so they don't place a lot of stress on the system. You can build a Quad SLi monster of a system to play WoW if you want, but it won't look any better.

If you tell me your budget and what you want to do with the PC on a daily basis, I'll put together a system for you which I would buy if I was going to spend that money for that purpose.

Ok, I just want to play WOW but I would like a higher spec so that if I find a game which is better and needs higher spec then I dont need to worry. My son wants to play the latest football Manager game which takes loads of memory and is almost unplayable on our current pc. My wife is into photography and has a high resolution SLR camera. And I want to future proof this self build pc obviously. The budget is only really limited to the point that the less I spend on my self build pc, the more I can spend on my Mini.

[danrock101]

The primary mistake people make when building computers is they spend alot of money on all the components people talk about most (CPU, Graphics Card) and then skimp on the other components in the system.

I've seen plenty of people buy the latest CPU and graphics card and then moan because my 12 month old rig still seems faster despite the fact on paper it should lose without even putting up a fight.

In Mini terms, the motherboard is your bodywork and the CPU is your engine. You wouldn't buy a rusty shell and whack a 1380 in it would you? You'd be waiting for the weakest part to fail and your whole experience to come crashing down around you. What DaveVader is saying is right, cheapo motherboards are not the way forwards, get yourself a good branded board, it doesn't have to be the latest thing with all the latest tech, but get a good quality board from a reputable manufacturer; ASUS, GigaByte, etc.

Now I have to answer the OP's question with another question:

What are you going to do with this computer? Because if you just want to play World of Warcraft, don't waste your money upgrading your computer, WoW is an old game now and the graphics were never anything ground breaking to begin with so they don't place a lot of stress on the system. You can build a Quad SLi monster of a system to play WoW if you want, but it won't look any better.

If you tell me your budget and what you want to do with the PC on a daily basis, I'll put together a system for you which I would buy if I was going to spend that money for that purpose.

Anyway i think i might boast about the build im going to be doing in a few months :

Fully watercooled with a 2 loop system and the best blocks on the market. (GPU Loop and CPU,Mosfets,mobo and maybe ram loop)
I7 920 OC'ed to 4 or 4.2ghz depending if it's a goodun.
2 GTX460's in sli
Corsair Dominator-GT 6GB
Enermax Revolution 1250W PSU (Custom sleeving on all wiring)
1 x 60gb SSD drive (to be decided)
1TB storage HD

That's a nice spec, but haven't the 920's been replaced now?

Have you watercooled before?

hmm, if the motherboard is compatible with the CPU, it shouldn't have any problems, I've had loads of differnt boards and the most unreliable one was the one that cost me £200 (alot of money for a LGA775), the most stable one cost me about £60, I managed to get a stable 3.8ghz out of a Q6600 on Air with this board, I will never pay big money for a motherboard again. With my 790i I had to underclock my ram and everything. Definatly stick to Asus motherboards, currently got a gigabyte board that has a problem with the PCI-E slot and has shorted 2 different graphics cards now, I thought the first was just a faulty card but it's actually the board.
The main reason your mates new PC is slower than your year old PC is down to maintinance of the partition most likely, you obviously keep your parition clean and defragmented where his will be full with porn and viruses, a motherboard wont affect the speed of your PC if it's working as it should. But it usually pays to buy a future proof motherboard for upgrades down the line.
With WoW the hardware requirements have changed since it was first released, due to exspansions and patches. My old 8800 GTX would lag in 25 man ICC, had to turn the settings way down and yet the 8800GTX was considered a overkill for WoW when the card came out.
If the 920s have been replaced then you should be able to get one nice and cheap now but if I remember right the new cpu that came out to replace it uses a differnt chipset so be carefull you don't end up with a outdated motherboard.
I would stick to one GTX460 rather than 2, WoW bugged sometimes when I had SLi enabled anyway. I wouldn't bother with watercooling, it's not worth all the hassle or money, my £30 HS&F out performed my £100 loop, it looks cool but it's a pain to fit the case especially with huge cards like the 460s, I couldn't get over 3.6ghz with water cooling but I think that's down to using a "cheap" loop. Not that I've researched it but I bet you can get close to 4ghz on air with the 920 if you spend the money you would of spent of watercooling, on a good case and then get a dogs air cooler for £30 ish, mine wasn't even that good. But it's up to you, if you havn't had it before, it's hard to resist, but once I had my fussy out I removed mine after 3 weeks.