OK, so the time has come where mum has kindly offered to buy me a new PC.

I have a price range of around £550, £600 tops.

I am not looking for a prebuilt pc rather buy the parts and put it together.

My question is, What components would you guys recommend for a budget gaming PC?

Thanks, Ash

EDIT: Attached is a suggested system from hrtburnout (thanks dude), could you guys give your opinions on it?

EDIT2: Mouse, Monitor and Keyboard NOT included please

Quote from Xaid0n :

OK, so the time has come where mum has kindly offered to buy me a new PC.

I have a price range of around £550, £600 tops.

I am not looking for a prebuilt pc rather buy the parts and put it together.

My question is, What components would you guys recommend for a budget gaming PC?

Thanks, Ash

EDIT: Attached is a suggested system from hrtburnout (thanks dude), could you guys give your opinions on it?

EDIT2: Mouse, Monitor and Keyboard NOT included please

Not bad at all.
If you use a 64 bit system I would take 4GB of RAM, but that's all I have to say for now.

Get a better PSU (i.e. a 450w Corsair) and get a cheaper GFX card (like the 8800GT 512 MB eVGA (if you can find it cheap) or Inno3D one)

I'm going to be sticking with XP for now, Vista seems a bit too slow by what I've seen... But I could be completely wrong...

Quote from Xaid0n :

I'm going to be sticking with XP for now, Vista seems a bit too slow by what I've seen... But I could be completely wrong...

Vista isn't that bad at all, once you tweak it a bit. The new GUI does take some getting used to, but it's ok .

Quote from hrtburnout :

Vista isn't that bad at all, once you tweak it a bit. The new GUI does take some getting used to, but it's ok .

Well if i do get vista ill be coming straight to you lol.... cos I wouldn't know what to do.

OK after showing a couple of IT techs the suggested system, they told me to change the mobo and gfx card and they said that system to be no problem whatsoever. Hopefully all goes OK with my games

IT Techs? :X

What did they recommend you to change it to?

Quote from Xaid0n :

I'm going to be sticking with XP for now, Vista seems a bit too slow by what I've seen... But I could be completely wrong...

Everyone has a different opinion on Vista, most of the negatives just haven't given it time or haven't even tried it.

When I swapped over I liked it, then you have a bit of a dip because everything is different to XP and you have to learn where things are and how things work, once you've got past that you'll love it.

If you're getting a new system and DX10 card then there is really only one way to go.

Quote from Jakg :

IT Techs? :X

What did they recommend you to change it to?

Well I said that as these guys apparently build computers for a living.

Graphics card changed to: eVGA 8800GT
PSU changed to: Corsair HX 620W

basically what you said in your post previous.

@garph It's really down to price mate, I'm not gonna spend hundreds on a graphics card alone tbh with you, I'm not all for eye candy, more for frames per seconds

I'm hearing very good things about ATi's new 4850 cards which are only marginally more expensive that the 8800GT and a good deal faster.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I'm hearing very good things about ATi's new 4850 cards which are only marginally more expensive that the 8800GT and a good deal faster.

same here, 4850 turned out to be about as fast as the 9800gtx while consuming less power and being a lot cheaper...

greetz

der butz

Quote from der butz :

same here, 4850 turned out to be about as fast as the 9800gtx while consuming less power and being a lot cheaper...

greetz

der butz

Yet making a crapload more heat. The 4850 is good, but the idiot who designed the cooler for looks over cooling power needs to be shot.

Erm... where do you know THAT from? I've just heard it was quite quiet, no heat problems atm... The cooler doesn't LOOk very nice, yet the card produces less heat than the 3870.

greetz

der butz

EDIT: Facts ,taken from alternate.de:

Asus EN9800GTX/HTDP (250€!!) takes up to 160W
Asus EAH4850/HTDI (160€) only needs 106W and therefore can work without that monster of a cooler! At about the same speed!

Get a better PSU, drop the Sound Card unless you have good speakers, get a Gigabyte P35-DS3R mobo, and get an eVGA card as £140 for a bog-standard 8800GT is a rip-off.

EDIT - ignore the PSU and GFX card bit - I see you didn't update the first post.

Quote from der butz :

Erm... where do you know THAT from? I've just heard it was quite quiet, no heat problems atm... The cooler doesn't LOOk very nice, yet the card produces less heat than the 3870.

greetz

der butz

EDIT: Facts ,taken from alternate.de:

Asus EN9800GTX/HTDP (250€!!) takes up to 160W
Asus EAH4850/HTDI (160€) only needs 106W and therefore can work without that monster of a cooler! At about the same speed!

Look- even with it underclocked heavily, it still IDLES at 76C, and many reports of it getting to over 85C. Like I said, it's a good card, but the person(s) that decided to put such an ineffective stock cooler on it needs to be slapped.

On my computer, XP is as slow as a snail, but Vista is amazingly quick.

Well I got the parts yesterday,

The PSU is an Arctic 700W and the graphics card is an eVGA 8800GT (Crysis game included :razz

Haven't got it built yet, that should be done by the end of tonight, and will install windows sometime tonight as well (no college tomorrow yay)

Oh god why o' why did you buy an Arctic PSU?

Good luck with your PC lasting a reasonable time.

Oh god why o' why did you buy an 8800 GPU?

Good luck with your PC getting reasonable frames.

i bought the 4850, i hope it will run every game (including crysis)

Quote from der butz :

Oh god why o' why did you buy an 8800 GPU?

Good luck with your PC getting reasonable frames.

What the hell are you on about? The 8800GT is still a great card. Just because it's a 2 generations old doesn't mean it's garbage.

Naah, initially I've just tried to be funny...

But buying an overpriced, overhyped card instead of something faster from the new generation seems odd to me.
After all it's always the buyer's descision, and since I still have got a much slower card I should keep my mouth shut .

Oh, and getting back to the heat problem: The coolers don't seem to be the best, but there has to be something wrong when idle temps are almost hitting the 80s...
I'm quite keen on keeping my system cool and quiet, my gfx never goes up to 60 (1 slot, almost the same heatsink, just kept it on because I'm waiting for a decent new card). All I did was opening one of the slots under the card, so it can blow out the hot air instead of onto the board only.
But partially you're right, they shouldn't sell a 106W card with that kind of cooling system...

greetz

der butz