budget gaming machine

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novatim

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Hey all, this is my first post since joining and I was really just after some advice

My last PC went bang, and I've had enough of fixing it over and over again, so thought it was time for a new.

The downside - i'm skint. My initial thoughts were to find a machine for about £300 - attempts at this failed miserably, so the new combination I have found is as follows, costing about £450

It's been a while since I bought any computer hardware, and have found plenty of conflicting info on the net, so basically, what i'm after, is a review of the machine i've chosen, whether it's up to scratch, whether it's reasonable for it's money and if i should be choosing something else instead!

My main gaming will be done on World of Warcraft.

Here is the spec:

Motherboard: ASUS SKT-939 A8V-VM S/V/L M-ATX 2000MT/s

CPU: AMD Athlon 64X2 4400+ 2MB SKT939

Memory: 1GB PC3200 DDR 400 RAM

Power Unit: 350W

Hard Drive: 160 GB

Graphics Card: ASUS 256MB Geforce 7600GT Silent PVI-E SLI
( I would rather the overclocked leadtek version or the Xpertvision, but the site i'm buying from only offers the ASUS)

And a DVD RW drive


....This comes to £423 with £34 assembly and delivery charge

Thoughts would be greatly appreciated, and I really cant afford to spend any more cash than this, i'm already way over budget =oP


Thanks guys and gals

Tim
 
sounds like you've really planned it out well. I would really try to get a more powerful power supply than 350 though, maybe a 400 or 450 just to be safe.
 
I'll give you a bit of advice that isn't very popular hereabouts, but it fits into what you want/need.

Look for a prebuilt comp that's using the nVidia 6100 or 6150 chipset. both will have a PCI-E slot in them, and will be a 939. Then buy a graphics card and possibly a PSU for it.

The reason I say this is that WoW doesn't require a beast of a computer to run, and you can nab a decent pre-built fairly cheap since the 939's are being phased out.

You can always add more to it later, like RAM and storage. True, you won't be able to overclock, but you shouldn't need to.

If you have a full version of XP laying around, you can format the hard drive and install it using the serial that came with the pre-built. That way you have the full version and have gotten rid of all the crapware. You can then reinstall what you actually want on the computer.
 
you say the socket 939s are being phased out.... on the site i'm buying from, there is the AM2 option, would I be better going down this route in terms of accounting for the future?

The Am2 version would be:

Motherboard: Foxconn K8M890M2MA-RS2H SKT-AM2
RAM:1GB DDR2 533 PC4300
CPU: Athlon 64X2 4600+ !MB SKT-AM2

with everything else the same.
Would be dearer though, pushing things to pretty much £500

As for the prebuitl option, i'll have a look, but i'd also be keen on running games such as BF2 and the new Dawn of War expansion
 
Not really. If you're going pre-built (i.e. HP, eMachine, et al), you're basically buying a static piece of equipment, even though you can add on.

939's are still great CPUs. And DDR is still plentiful. Later on, down the road, you may want to build when the funds are more available. But, for now, this can be a budget saver.
 
Switch to the other case (460W PSU) and bump your RAM to 2GB. the cost becomes £347.92w/VAT. Then you only need a graphics card.

The bigger PSU is to power a graphics card.
 
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