A Mediocre Gaming PC

[Ignotus]

I, like many, have those kind of friends who are semi-experts with PC hardware. After a long discussion, we deduced that an awesome, powerful, fast running and efficient Gaming PC could be created for about £400, if all the components were bought and assembled. I know everything I need, we found a decent amount of shit from Overclockers, etc.

But here's the thing. Despite many protests, I don't want an awesome, powerful, fast running, etc machine. At the moment, I have an outdated machine with about 1GB of RAM, Windows 2000 and a GeForce 6200. Since I really only play old Windows 98 compatible adventure games, this hasn't proved that big a problem. I do, however, have a steam account. Now, all games work fine but I don't feel I'm really experiencing Half Life 2 or Team Fortress 2 at the low quality settings. Especially when, on those settings, Team Fortress only runs at 20fps.

So what I'm asking you, dear Escapist user-base, is help creating a mediocre gaming PC. Something that'll run your average modern game at a decent frame-rate on good quality settings. I don't need the kind of machine that can run Crysis. At the most, something that can run BioShock. Or can afford it, for that matter.

I realise I don't sound too technical, I don't have a decent amount of knowledge on the subject. But to build a unit from scratch, I need:
a Motherboard.
an OS.
a Processer.
a PSU.
Memory (RAM).
a Graphics Card.
Hard Drives.
etc.

I've probably missed something there. But yeah.

Ideally, I'd like to spend £200 - £300. Is this a realistic goal? Could I buy a PC that's not completely outdated, but isn't necessarily top of the range, for about £250?

All help appreciated.

 

[neems]

Why not simply buy a more powerful graphics card? I assume that you have an AGP card, as it's an older pc and I don't believe geforce 6 cards come in a flavour as archaic as PCI.

Like for like AGP cards tend to cost a little bit more, but you can easily get a decent agp card for less than £100.

Out of curiosity, what are your current processor (make, model and clock speed preferably) and motherboard (agp bus speed would be most relevant there I imagine)?

EDIT: Hmm, I've got a right bee in my bonnet about this now. I'm nipping to the pub for a bit, but then I'm going to come back and do some 'shopping', I think I have some leads.


What components do you have that you can re-use?

 

[Ignotus]

Why not simply buy a more powerful graphics card? I assume that you have an AGP card, as it's an older pc and I don't believe geforce 6 cards come in a flavour as archaic as PCI.

Like for like AGP cards tend to cost a little bit more, but you can easily get a decent agp card for less than £100.

Out of curiosity, what are your current processor (make, model and clock speed preferably) and motherboard (agp bus speed would be most relevant there I imagine)?

EDIT: Hmm, I've got a right bee in my bonnet about this now. I'm nipping to the pub for a bit, but then I'm going to come back and do some 'shopping', I think I have some leads.


What components do you have that you can re-use?

Probably just the hard drive, PSU and DVD Drive. Processer is an AMD Athlon XP 1900+. Pretty much the equivalent of a 1.9GHz Intel processor.

For the Motherboard, on CPU-Z, it says it's a micro star international, with an NVIDIA chipset and southbridge.

The processer socket's also 462. Apparently that's important.

 

[bobraj]

Sorry, disregard what I just said, I just saw the last post.

In that case, you will need a new motherboard, processor, RAM, graphics card and probably a new PSU.

RAM £30 (most brands have a stick at this price)
Motherboard ASUS PW5-DH Deluxe £50 (if you find a good deal)
GPU Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB £100
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo (However much you can afford, but good ones usually around £70)

Just make your PSU is up to the job, otherwise you will have just bought an expensive heap of nothing.

 

[bobraj]

Unfortunately, US prices for components don't convert too well into good ol' British lbs. Some manufactures only charge at the exchange rate, whereas others charge exorbitant prices just to ship the same stuff across the Atlantic. Message here is, shop around!

 

[Lightbulb]

Euros? Those are less that pounds.

Basically for £200 to 300 i think ebay for a second hand PC might be the best bet...

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Only real "Top of the Line" hardware you should consider getting is 8800GT's, if you have one of those, a dual core, and 2 gigs of ram then your good for a long time.

 

[neems]

Yeah ebay sounds like a good idea actually - wouldn't necessarily have to be 2nd hand even, lots of good deals still floating around.

If you look around, there are quite a few good deals out there. Really your best bet is to do a bit of research - buy some magazines, look around the net; if you see something you think might be decent, google the various components.

Remember you will need a new PSU and case, make sure they're decent, especially the PSU. A new mobo might realistically want a new HDD (probably SATA). You'll most likely need Windows XP, you're not going to get very far with Windows 2000, as it's no longer supported.

Try to find some local pc shops - not PC World, but places that might build systems for you. Try Trade It, local papers etc.

Don't get suckered in by newer technology. The best of the previous generation can often be had for less money, and outperform, the middle ground of the current generation. An awful lot of people own entirely unnecessary geforce 8600s (although I believe they are cheaper than they were).

There are lots of reputable online retailers - komplett, scan, newegg, microdirect - microdirect have some insane deals, they are well worth a look (geforce 8800 gs for £75, 8800 GT for £105).

It's worth putting some time and effort in to it.

 

[Ignotus]

£400 ($800) seems reasonable enough, it'll just take me a while to build up that kind of money.
shopping around is also a good point, placing all my hope on overclockers probably isn't doing my bank account any favours.
eBay is worth a look, I have been scouting around there a fair bit.
thanks for your help.

 

[ReepNeep]

The 8800GT isn't high end, the 9800GTX is.

You can most certainly do it for 300. For that kind of budget an AMD system is a pretty good choice right now because of the low cost motherboards an CPUs. A board with a 790 series chipset will work well and an Athlon X2 around 5000+ will be perfectly adequate for current games and anything for the next year at least, with a cheap drop-in upgrade later. Add 2 gigs of ram and that should cost about 100 Pounds. Another 40 for a 320gb harddrive, another 80 for a Radeon 3870 or GF9600GT (your choice, both are very nice cards). Another 30 for a modest case and PSU will leave you a bit of wiggle room.

Oh crap, you said you would need an OS didn't you? If you want XP (which would be my choice) you better buy a copy before the end of July. I believe thats when they stop selling it. As for Vista, home premium is the version you would want. Home Basic has most of the features cut out and anything above just seems to add things that are superfluous.