What's the best PC I could build for £300

[ReepNeep]

Here you go, just to give you an idea.

GPU : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500019
CPU : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103289
Ram : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161183
Mobo : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131280
HD : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148140

Most of those parts are decent choices but that motherboard is WAY out of the price range of this project. He has a 550USD budget and you're recommending an overpriced Asus SLI board with a buggy Nvidia chipset? Lunacy.

Poleboy: I believe the cutoff date was in June. You haven't been able to buy XP in retail for at least a couple of months.

 

[UnrealCanine]

Why can't you self build?

Part Laziness, part I'm bound to fuck up

 

[BardSeed]

Is Linux a bad choice of OS for a gaming PC?

 

[ReepNeep]

Why can't you self build?

Part Laziness, part I'm bound to fuck up

Then buy that machine you listed without a video card and order a good one off of the internet. Upgrade the ram to ddr2-800 and call it good.

 

[ReepNeep]

Is Linux a bad choice of OS for a gaming PC?

You nearly can't game on linux at all. Almost all game software is written for Windows and Windows only. You can try messing around with Wine but I hear thats hit and miss.

 

[Aerach]

Is Linux a bad choice of OS for a gaming PC?

Lol, good one.

(Off-topic: Poleboy's avatar is awesome!)

 

[Aerach]

Most of those parts are decent choices but that motherboard is WAY out of the price range of this project. He has a 550USD budget and you're recommending an overpriced Asus SLI board with a buggy Nvidia chipset? Lunacy.

Was in a semi-rush and was trying to find an SLI board. Either way, I was just giving him a rough idea of what he should be looking for, not saying he should purchase everything on the list. ^_^

 

[jake557]

try this;
http://www.powerc.com/uk/ps/search/1//code/cs-home-ela/act/gpage
you could still get a much better deal by building yourself

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

DVD Drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151173 - 27$
Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811226019 - 30$
CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103210 - 77$
HDD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136080 -90$ ( This will work right? It gives a lot of bang(GB) for buck. Take this with a grain of salt as advice.)
RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145034 - 57$
Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131095 - 109$
Power Supply - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153052 - 55$
Video Card - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500019 - 104$

This comes out as a 549USD computer.(Could someone with more experience look this over?)

Now this is done at a U.S site if you give me a site that ships to the U.K and deals in pounds I could do that also.

Hmm, After looking at some others I see some places where I could optimize by using AMD instead of intel. Editing now.

 

[khululy]

Self Building is like lego's. Only you get one shot. And if you fuck up, you lose a HUGE chunk of money

you mean it's easy if you pay attention to your manual...

but indeed self building is the key or get a friend to do it for ya or something
I have a cheap system as well.
amd 64 6000+
2x 1 gb ddr 2 800
ATI HD3870 512 MB
and i'm clueless about my motherboard
(not saying you should get this setup)
hardware like DVD player should not be on your main focus just get your CPU, RAM, MB and GPU well done and you're good, oh and make sure you have a good power supply.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

Self Building is like lego's. Only you get one shot. And if you fuck up, you lose a HUGE chunk of money

you mean it's easy if you pay attention to your manual...

but indeed self building is the key or get a friend to do it for ya or something
I have a cheap system as well.
amd 64 6000+
2x 1 gb ddr 2 800
ATI HD3870 512 MB
and i'm clueless about my motherboard
(not saying you should get this setup)
hardware like DVD player should not be on your main focus just get your CPU, RAM, MB and GPU well done and you're good, oh and make sure you have a good power supply.

DVD players are around 26USD and are needed to play games.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Is Linux a bad choice of OS for a gaming PC?

You nearly can't game on linux at all. Almost all game software is written for Windows and Windows only. You can try messing around with Wine but I hear thats hit and miss.

I think "wing and miss" would be more appropriate.

 

[khululy]

I know DVD players are needed but they are cheap and you don't need the latest model with special features or what not to play games. just one that spins around and reads the dvd. Or even buy an original game and then download it as "backup". Just like you don't need a mouse to navigate in windows you don't need a DVD player to make a system run.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

A DVD Rom is like £10, its nothing.

Yep and if I didn't include it I could have maybe bumped up the graphics cards power.

 

[citizend13]

Self building is fun. Just look at reviews. there are tons of them floating around. Read all of them as some could be horribly biased. You just have to figure out what exactly you want it to do. What games are you going to play with this system. If you are an mmorpg person, a high-end video card isn't extremely necessary. If you want to play crysis, well you need to rob a bank.

Anyway, if you plan on sticking to xp, 2-4 gig of ram will suffice and wont exceed 100$. (assume about 60-70$ for good quality)

next would be a cpu, you could get a decent core 2 duo (Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz) 100$) if your budget is tighter go for Intel Pentium E2220 Allendale 2.4GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core.... the latter goes for around 80$ --

for the motherboard you could get an older p965 like this (Foxconn P965) for 60-70 $

the for the video card an hd4850 has bang for the buck potential there's an ASUS HD4850 for about 160$

so far thats about 200 pounds...

for the power supply, a 400-500 watt could be had for 60-80$ (go for corsair or seasonic-same stuffing)

for the hd a seagate 160 gb goes for around 60$

a liteon combo dvd+-R you can get for around 20%

that just about adds up to roughly 580$ that comes up to about +/- 315 pounds. You could throw in a decent case and you could be hitting around 340 pounds. This combo can run almost any game out there at a decent clip. It's may not be the best but it's not bad. you can forget about crysis though. even the newer cards cant bring the game to it's knees, besides, youre just running around the jungle with a big gun and giant squidy aliens and some lame korean supersoldiers- not worth it..

 

[glasses]

You might not want vista it is still kinda buggy but unless you are going to splurge on memory and a cooling system you might not be able to make one for 300

 

[UnrealCanine]

A problem I see here, is tings generally cost more in The UK