Cheap gaming rig - VERY CHEAP

[Bevan]

Hey guys, my friend wants a cheap gaming rig for £200-£250, so I put together this list, any reccomendation? He already has a case, PSU and hardrive so all he needs at the moment is the GPU, CPU, Mobo and RAM.

CPU - Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz Socket 775 800FSB.. | Ebuyer.com - £50

MOBO - Asus P5QPL-AM iG41 Socket 775 onboard VGA 6 Channel.. | Ebuyer.com - £40

RAM - Crucial 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory.. | Ebuyer.com - £70

Graphics Card - XFX HD 5670 512MB GDDR5 DVI HDMI Display Port Out.. | Ebuyer.com - £71

Total - £231

Any advice on lower costing parts? Also don't know if I should save the money and only get 2gb's or ram, just let me know what you think. This is definately not anything high end. Just to upgrade from him pentium and AGP graphics card!

Thanks.

 

[Alive.777]

Thats a very small budget for a gaming rig. the system you have made is for general computing and will struggle sevearly with the latest games. It will be very low details all the way. Your friend should save up a bit more, than invest in a gaming rig.

 

[Bevan]

Thats a very small budget for a gaming rig. the system you have made is for general computing and will struggle sevearly with the latest games. It will be very low details all the way. Your friend should save up a bit more, than invest in a gaming rig.

Its not to play any of the latest games, mainly WoW and Modern warfare 2 (i've seen a video and the graphics card handles it just fine).

 

[Mpyra]

You could buy used components that's what i've always done, bargain hunt on ebay, figure out the best price for performance components for your general budget range, than try an find then at obcenely low prices.

I'd als recommend halving your ram to 2 GB, more than 2 GB ram has never been shown to give a performance boost in gaming or general use.

Lots of ram is only realy need for very memory intensive application such as video editing and photoshopping.

graphics cards in particular are always going for cheap on ebay, you could pcik up a 4870 for the price of a 5670 with ease and it would be about twice or more powerful.

Or you could save money by going for something like 4770 which would perform the same as a 5670 and would be about £20 if pruchased off of ebay at the right time, one went for £45 about a week ago, but they tend to go for a little over £50 inc postage.

 

[Dakaggo]

What size monitor and resolution will he be using? If it's a small monitor and a low resolution then the card will obviously perform much better than if he has a huge monitor with a very high resolution. At the same time that is such a small budget. Another 50 pounds would go a long way.