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Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Printable Version

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Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Matt - 2014-09-04 03:21

Hey guys,

Can somebody be an absolute babe and put together a budget gaming tower for me? Preferably UK sources priced in GBP (sorry EU/US/Intl. peeps)...no real clue what I'm doing.

£350 budget, minimal eBay parts.

Must have: 1TB HDD, i5 @3.0ghz, 8gb DDR3, 1gb Graphics Card (These are baselines, if you can get higher specs for the money please do! Biggrin)

Ta,
~Matt


RE: Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Mufflord - 2014-09-04 09:46

If i may ask, why does it have to be in england? Dont you want to buy from a diffrent country? Atleast for us in sweden it is usually cheaper. Smile i will try to find some prices though


RE: Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - kas - 2014-09-04 10:57

You get a 1TB Western Digital (Green) HDD, 8GB Corsair DDR3 RAM, a good microatx board (aim for AMD FM2+ socket at that budget, low cost Intel let's you down in my experience), microtower and a half decent graphics card for that, just gotta keep an eye out for the power supply but a Corsair 430 should do the job. That's a sensible, good, upgradable and most importantly cost-effective machine which shouldn't let you down.

Try this setup here: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/kBtxxr

AMD A6-6400K 3.9GHz Dual-Core Processor
MSI A55M-E35 Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard
Corsair Dominator 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

Just add a nice mini tower (http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/nanoxia-case-nxds4b) and perhaps some fans and you'll be bang on the money.

I have the same processor running safely at 4.2Ghz and it has a built in GPU which will last you another few months until you have the bucks to buy a decent graphics card (see http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/sapphire-video-card-1003622sr for example).

EDIT: Oh yeah and make sure you buy boxed CPU's, it's safer and they come with a cooler as well (in this CPU's case anyway), don't buy the very cheapest parts and shop around for the best prices. It may take youi another few weeks to find your suitable configuration at your desired price, but if you pay attention you shouldn't have much of a problem. But you're Matt soooo.... Tongue


RE: Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Cola - 2014-09-04 16:30

What is your current specs? I highly doubt you can even get a complete upgrade for a mere 350£.


RE: Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Matt - 2014-09-04 16:54

(2014-09-04 16:30)Cola Wrote:  What is your current specs? I highly doubt you can even get a complete upgrade for a mere 350£.

Overheating i5-460m (soon to be replaced by i5-580m)
ATI HD5650 (1gb, soon to be replaced by a new one)
8gb DDR3 (generic)
17.3 laptop monitor (1600x900)

It's shit.


RE: Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Bez - 2014-09-04 20:04

Good little site here; http://www.logicalincrements.com


RE: Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Marty - 2014-09-04 20:16

What are you going to use the desktop for?
For almost 5 years already, I have a Acer Aspire with
AMD Athlon II X4 620
8 GB Ram (bit overkill)
nVidia GeForce GT120 1GB Videocard
and 1,5 TB HDD (2 harddisks).

It's been running for 5 years with 3 OSes installed (Vista, 7 &8 not all at the same time) and still runs like a dream.
Lightroom and LFS run like a dream here.
5 years ago I bought it for 600€, 475 pounds.
Must be able to get such performance I think?


RE: Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Malibu - 2014-09-04 20:37

Start saving money because 350 pounds is gonna get you nowhere.


RE: Moving on from my toaster of a laptop... - Pete - 2014-09-04 23:44

(2014-09-04 20:37)Malibu Wrote:  Start saving money because 350 pounds is gonna get you nowhere.

My PC cost me £401 in total and that's including my upgraded GPU which I only got at Christmas. It was ~£300 before the GPU upgrade.