My Nephew wants to buy a very cheap pc.

[Fenon]

Ok he only has £300, I don't think it's possible to buy a gaming PC for that much. He wants to be able to play Crysis 2, I know thats unrealistic but he doesn't know anything about PC's.

He has a monitor but I don't think it's very good, and keyboard/mouse. I suppose he can save money by transferring his OS and internet security from the old PC to the new one. He has a PC at the moment but it's really bad so other than the things I listed I doubt there's anything that can be saved.

I think I'll end up giving him £100 or more but I don't really have a lot of disposable cash at the moment so if it is possible to get an ok PC for around £300, that would be awesome.

[Tia]

Does he already have a computer?
If so, have you thought about upgrading it?

[Fenon]

Does he already have a computer?
If so, have you thought about upgrading it?

His PC takes a really long time to start up and can barely play videos on Youtube, I would think it's atleast 10 years old, and I would have doubts about his monitor even being able to do 1280 by 720 res.

I'm not good at keeping stuff cheap, I did a load of research at the end of last year but that was for more top end stuff, so I really don't know what I should be looking for in the low end area.

A friend of mine bought a PC for about £500 which keeps up with my £1300 closer than I would like. I tried buying parts earlier and got to £300 after picking 3 parts... granted they were the most expensive parts.

[Devilmaypoop]

You can easily get one that can "play" Crysis 2 for that price.

[Devilmaypoop]

Look for Athlon II 3 core for around 60, a cheap AM3 Asus board for 50-70, Nvidia 460 or 6850 if can find same price for around 120, 2x2gb DDR3 ram preferably g-skill or corsair and low timings as possible.

That should be a good foundation, tho it lacks a lot of parts.

[Fenon]

Look for Athlon II 3 core for around 60, a cheap AM3 Asus board for 50-70, Nvidia 460 or 6850 if can find same price for around 120, 2x2gb DDR3 ram preferably g-skill or corsair and low timings as possible.

That should be a good foundation, tho it lacks a lot of parts.

I took a look at Athlon and AMD's stuff I don't know much about them though, I have Intel and Nvidia stuff in my PC, I have no idea how good or bad the stuff is.

Here's what I came up with could you guys tell me what you think, I went over by £100



Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6670 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11192-01-20G) [11192-01-20G] - £74.99

AMD Athlon II X3 Tri Core 450 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail - £59.99

Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3 MA770 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard - £59.99

G.Skill RipJawsX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C9 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-17000CL9D-4GBXL) - £54.98

XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - £45.98

Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black - £44.99

Samsung SpinPoint F4 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD322GJ) - £29.99

Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM - £16.99

Total with delivery = £402.90

[Crazyeyesreaper]

get different ram

1333mhz 1.5v up to 1.65v

2133mhz ram will just default to 1333 on an AMD PC and you wont be able to overclock far enough to take the ram to its rated speeds basically meaning you paid alot more case for faster ram you can ever take advantage of

as for the graphics card

look around at the AMD / ATi 5770 1gb as its the exact same gpu as the 6770 and should be cheaper for the same performance, take which ever series offers the best price

[Fenon]

Ok well I changed the ram, I sellected the

G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit - £39.98

Brings the total price down to £387.90

The 5770 was about the same price as the 6670 and there was no 5670 on the Overclockers website. I might look on another site to see if they are cheaper.


If he tried to play Crysis 2 on this PC what sort of settings do you expect he could get?

[The Black Reaper]

Ok well I changed the ram, I sellected the

G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit - £39.98

Brings the total price down to £387.90

The 5770 was about the same price as the 6670 and there was no 5670 on the Overclockers website. I might look on another site to see if they are cheaper.


If he tried to play Crysis 2 on this PC what sort of settings do you expect he could get?

The 5770 was rebranded as the 6770 so it is faster then the 6670 and is the same price. Get the 5770.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

i dont know about Crysis 2 its far easier to run then Crysis or Warhead, so it should run find at medium settings

but essentially a 4870 = 5770 = 6770 so same performance across 3 gpu generations a 6770 will be about as fast a 4870 was when it came out

just read reviews on the 5770 its performance is the same as the 6770

this review is for a different gpu but actually read the damn review
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...assive/12.html

it has a 5770 benchmarked there in comparison,

if you can find one, try getting a Sapphire 5850 xtreme, there cheap usually and offer extreme bang for buck.

if your in the UK take a look at scan.co.uk and ebuyer to make sure your getting the cheapest prices possible

[Crazyeyesreaper]

xfx makes good REFERENCE cards, there aftermarket special versions tend to suck but if the cooler and setup look similar to other models your fine

but again try looking for the Sapphire 5850 xtreme, from what i remember its $30 quid more then the typical 5770 but offers double the performance

Bam $127 quid for double the performance
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-259-SP

$144 for the xfx
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-x...i-dp-plus-game

so yea 5770 / 6770 is $75-95 quid
5850 extreme is $127 quid essentially just as i figured about $30 more for double the performance

[wupwup]

id just like to add into the mix that i have used overclockers a few times and they where always great for me

[Fenon]

id just like to add into the mix that i have used overclockers a few times and they where always great for me

Yeah I bought my entire PC from Overclockers and had pretty good service, the only thing was that they didn't give me the right CPU fans but I just put that down to them not having the ones I ordered in stock. Wasn't a big deal there. they also over charged me by a penny.

My friend bought a graphics card from Overclockers and had very bad service, the card didn't work and he was treated like he was a criminal (Sorry I may not be using the right words here, but basically he didn't like the way they treated him at all). They refunded the card eventually but they didn't refund the postage (Or maybe it was the cost of sending it back to them to be tested?) or something so it ended up costing him money and a lot of hassle, and he got nothing from it. In the end he bought the card from ebuyer and treated himself to a slightly better card.

So I'm in two minds about them, I'm a bit nervous about buying things from them now.

[wupwup]

Yeah I bought my entire PC from Overclockers and had pretty good service, the only thing was that they didn't give me the right CPU fans but I just put that down to them not having the ones I ordered in stock. Wasn't a big deal there. they also over charged me by a penny.

My friend bought a graphics card from Overclockers and had very bad service, the card didn't work and he was treated like he was a criminal (Sorry I may not be using the right words here, but basically he didn't like the way they treated him at all). They refunded the card eventually but they didn't refund the postage (Or maybe it was the cost of sending it back to them to be tested?) or something so it ended up costing him money and a lot of hassle, and he got nothing from it. In the end he bought the card from ebuyer and treated himself to a slightly better card.

So I'm in two minds about them, I'm a bit nervous about buying things from them now.

first time i built a pc the PSU overclockers gave me was faulty. the whole thing went up in a ball of smoke. they replaced the cpu, mobo, psu and probably more that i cant remeber free and nearly no questions asked. i did take it to the shop personaly though

[Tia]

Overclockers is a great website, I've used it before with great results.
But all I can tell you is, make sure the graphics card is dx11 compatible. Especially with the new Crysis 2 patch coming out soon.

[The Black Reaper]

Overclockers is a great website, I've used it before with great results.
But all I can tell you is, make sure the graphics card is dx11 compatible. Especially with the new Crysis 2 patch coming out soon.

Not really the biggest issue. Like the old crysis games and metro 2033 you can choose which version of directx you can use. On the 5xxx series directx 11 performance isnt that great. If you want improved directx 11 performance go with the 6xxx series but since hes on a budget it really doesn't matter. I don't see directx 10 going away so easily due to directx 9 being around because of the console market.

[wupwup]

its a cheap choice.... and it will probably do the job