Best Gaming PC's for a given budget

Doesn't work like that in the least. trust me, a shitty PSU is a shitty PSU, no matter the wattage or how much power the components in the PC actually draw.
 
Fair enough, sounds like the best bet would be to remove the SDD and spend an extra £20 on the PSU. Should bring the overall cost down by another £150.

So how about a more light weight system. Can anyone come up with a decent spec for a sub £800/$1100 PC?

I'm thinking all AMD is probably the way to go there. A nice Phenom II coupled with a 4770 should make for one sweet system at a pretty amazing price.
 
Sounds good. If the person building their PC is doing anything remotely odd with Open GL(such as N64 emulation), though, an nVidia card would be a good substitute, preferably a GTS250/9800GTX+.
 
homerdog said:
Intel fixed that issue for their MLC drives:
Intel Responds to Fragmentation with New X25-M Firmware

I don't know if it's a problem for the Vertexes (Vertices ? :p). OCZ is releasing a TRIM utility at some point which could be interesting:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54373
Click to expand...

They lessened the impact it had but did not remove it. I guess if that's what you consider fixing it, then sure. :)

Either way it's still by far the best MLC implementation on the market, but also the most costly per MB.

Regards,
SB
 
pjbliverpool said:
I'm thinking all AMD is probably the way to go there. A nice Phenom II coupled with a 4770 should make for one sweet system at a pretty amazing price.
Click to expand...

For that price range anything using DDR2 should do fine. And in most cases a dual core will do just fine. There are exceptions of course, and you should always take the games you play into account...

That said, it basically comes down to whether a Core 2 Duo takes care of most or all of your gaming needs.

If however the only thing you play is GTA 4 and/or expect most future games to work significantly better on greater than 2 cores...

A 3 core Phenom/2 would be the next step up.

After that I believe Core 2 Quad and Phenom II are pretty equivalently priced including MB and performance. So it comes down to basically the best deal you can find at the time you put your system together.

I still haven't pulled the trigger on a Quad core system myself as there aren't any games I play regularly that would justify the cost of a Quad and the lower performance I would get with one versus a faster Core 2 Duo in the vast majority of games I play.

The i7 series is tempting but the cost is still prohibitive for me to pull the trigger on that for a handful of games that would benefit enough to justify the cost (for me).

Regards,
SB
 
While it may be true that the benefits of the i7 aren't worth the added cost to most, I also consider the fact that a new build is going to have to be (at least in my case) a platform for future builds. To me it was worth it (Core i7 system is ordered and on its way) because I want to use the CPU/MB core for as long as possible gradually swapping out the other components for upgrades as value and performance increases warrant. I'm seldom one to buy the latest and greatest (since I know that you always pay a ridiculous premium for this), but I will spend more for a component that I believe will have a longer shelf life since, in the long run, fewer/costlier upgrades can end up being cheaper than more/cheaper ones.

Of course I'd be even more secure in this if Intel didn't change their sockets on a whim. :mad:
 
Heres my attempt using www.overclockers.co.uk

CPU : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 - £140
Motherboard : ASUS P5N-T Deluxe 780i - £158
Graphics : 2x 260GTX Core 216 - £140 each
Memory : OCZ Gold Edition 4GB DDR2 - £34
HDD : 2x Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB - £72
Optical : Sony BDU-X10S Blu-Ray Drive - £50
Case : Antec 900-2 Nine Hundred Two - £91
CPU Cooler : Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler - £49
Power Supply : Akasa 1000W PowerMax - £130
Monitor : Samsung SM2333SW 23" Widescreen 1080p - £165
K/B and Mouse : Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 - £56

£1297

With the CPU overclocked to 3.8Ghz+ it offers more performance then I7
Tri-SLI capable motherboard and an awesome Intel overclocker ( I have the same board and it easily manages a 500FSB )
SLI 260GTX's are one of the best bang for buck grpahics solution you can get atm
You get a good set of solid performing 1066RAM
1tb of storage in RAID 0 for faster loading times
Blu-Ray playback
An awesome cooling case :)
1kw power supply, all the power you will ever need and then some ;)
Nice monitor that has great coulour and picture quality, 1080p to boot aswel :D

Manged to beat you PJB, offering better performance and without using cheapy crappy parts like some of yours are ( PSU for example )

Try and top that someone ;)
 
almighty said:
Heres my attempt using www.overclockers.co.uk

CPU : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 - £140
Motherboard : ASUS P5N-T Deluxe 780i - £158
Graphics : 2x 260GTX Core 216 - £140 each
Memory : OCZ Gold Edition 4GB DDR2 - £34
HDD : 2x Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB - £72
Optical : Sony BDU-X10S Blu-Ray Drive - £50
Case : Antec 900-2 Nine Hundred Two - £91
CPU Cooler : Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler - £49
Power Supply : Akasa 1000W PowerMax - £130
Monitor : Samsung SM2333SW 23" Widescreen 1080p - £165
K/B and Mouse : Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 - £56

£1297

With the CPU overclocked to 3.8Ghz+ it offers more performance then I7
Tri-SLI capable motherboard and an awesome Intel overclocker ( I have the same board and it easily manages a 500FSB )
SLI 260GTX's are one of the best bang for buck grpahics solution you can get atm
You get a good set of solid performing 1066RAM
1tb of storage in RAID 0 for faster loading times
Blu-Ray playback
An awesome cooling case :)
1kw power supply, all the power you will ever need and then some ;)
Nice monitor that has great coulour and picture quality, 1080p to boot aswel :D

Manged to beat you PJB, offering better performance and without using cheapy crappy parts like some of yours are ( PSU for example )

Try and top that someone ;)
Click to expand...
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 LGA775 "Kentsfield" 2.66GHz (1066FSB) - OEM + FarCry 2 Bundle £139.99
Motherboard: DFI Blood Iron P45-T2RS Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £98.89
Graphics: 2x XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £144.98 (£289.96 total)
Memory: OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 Dual Channel (OCZ2G10664GK) £33.99
HDD: 2x Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) £71.99 (£143.98 total)
Optical: Sony BDU-X10S Blu-Ray Reader Serial-ATA Drive - Retail £49.99
Case: Antec 900-2 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) £90.99
CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775) £48.29
PSU: Corsair TX 750W ATX SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-750TXUK) £109.99
Monitor: Samsung SM2433BW 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor £217.34
Mouse and keyboard: Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 - OEM (69M-00008) £42.99


Total: £1,266.39 (without shipping, but including VAT)

Both our prices are slightly misleading because of the time-limited deals that are included.
 
Good systems boys but don't forget you could o/c the i7 as well. Also, I deliberately avoided dual GPU's because of the associated issues.

We could always dropp the SDD from mine and go with a second 1TB drive in Raid 0. That would give equivilent speed and bring the price down by about £90
 
Yeah, remember I recommended the i7 920 overclocked to at least 965 levels with a good HSF earlier. I just wanted to rise to the challenge almighty laid down.
 
pjbliverpool said:
Good systems boys but don't forget you could o/c the i7 as well. Also, I deliberately avoided dual GPU's because of the associated issues.

We could always dropp the SDD from mine and go with a second 1TB drive in Raid 0. That would give equivilent speed and bring the price down by about £90
Click to expand...

You can OC the i7 but theres no point, only time you see the benefit of i7 is when running more then 2 graphics cards :)

And ive never had a problem runing dual GPUs, or 3 for that matter :)
 
almighty said:
You can OC the i7 but theres no point, only time you see the benefit of i7 is when running more then 2 graphics cards :)
Click to expand...

Thats just a symptom of it being a much more powerful CPU though thats being restricted by GPU bottlenecks. You may not see benefits in most of todays games but the power is there for when you need it. e.g. GTA4.
 
pjbliverpool said:
Thats just a symptom of it being a much more powerful CPU though thats being restricted by GPU bottlenecks. You may not see benefits in most of todays games but the power is there for when you need it. e.g. GTA4.
Click to expand...

Yea in some cases the extra grunt does kick in but 99% of the time i7 is pointless :)

My core 2 is at 4Ghz so it can more then hold its own against i7 :p
 
almighty said:
Yea in some cases the extra grunt does kick in but 99% of the time i7 is pointless :)

My core 2 is at 4Ghz so it can more then hold its own against i7 :p
Click to expand...
Nobody is saying you should upgrade (unless you happen to do rendering or video encoding).
 
almighty said:
Yea in some cases the extra grunt does kick in but 99% of the time i7 is pointless :)

My core 2 is at 4Ghz so it can more then hold its own against i7 :p
Click to expand...

True, unless the game is heavily multi threaded then a 4Ghz C2D is going to be faster than a 2.66Ghz i7 pretty much all of the time. Its when a game can take good advantage of more than 2 threads though that the i7 can overcome even that clock speed deficit. And of course, the difference in CPU power will only be evident if your not GPU limited.

The problem with dual cores for me now is that they just can't handle GTA 4 very well and thats what i'm playing right now. Hence even if I was to skip the i7, I would still be looking for a quad. Probably something like the C2Q 9550.

Although I imagine at 4Ghz the duo can handle GTA4 just fine. But I would still rather a quad overclocked to 3.6 Ghz than a duo at 4Ghz because in any instance were the duo is faster, the quad is already more than fast enough. But were the CPU pain really kicks in, the quad has much longer legs.
 
pjbliverpool said:
True, unless the game is heavily multi threaded then a 4Ghz C2D is going to be faster than a 2.66Ghz i7 pretty much all of the time. Its when a game can take good advantage of more than 2 threads though that the i7 can overcome even that clock speed deficit. And of course, the difference in CPU power will only be evident if your not GPU limited.

The problem with dual cores for me now is that they just can't handle GTA 4 very well and thats what i'm playing right now. Hence even if I was to skip the i7, I would still be looking for a quad. Probably something like the C2Q 9550.

Although I imagine at 4Ghz the duo can handle GTA4 just fine. But I would still rather a quad overclocked to 3.6 Ghz than a duo at 4Ghz because in any instance were the duo is faster, the quad is already more than fast enough. But were the CPU pain really kicks in, the quad has much longer legs.
Click to expand...

Ive had quads before and got them to 4Ghz and i loved it, had to sell it though for personal reasons.

Been thinking of getting another one just lately, maybe a Q6600 or somthing and overclock the tits off it :D
 
suryad said:
I would recommend never to skimp out on a PSU. My 2 cents.
Click to expand...

I agree completely.

Power supplies are without question the most overlooked and under appreciated component in a PC. I cannot tell you guys how many times I've seen customers of mine fry components in a system they built all due to a faulty PSU.

If you're serious about spending £1,200+ (roughly $2,000 usd), please spend a few extra pounds and get a well built, reliable, stable, and efficient PSU.


I only use PC Power & Cooling power supplies in my systems, and when I build a high end machine for a client.... I flat out tell them that I won't build their PC without a PSU of similar quality.


Edit: Ha!!! I just noticed I'm a "Junior Member" even though I registered in 2002 and have been visiting this site even longer.
 
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