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bendy_chip

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Aug 3, 2005
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It seems there quite a few of these posts already, so apolgies to those of you sick of reading about specs for new systems. Anyway, I have a really low budget to build a gaming PC, I think I can build a low-end system for about £450, including monitor (I would like an LCD).

Motherboard:
ECS K8T800-A about £30
My thinking is that the onboard memory controller reduces the dependence on the chipset for performance, ECS is a fairly decent brand name, and it has all the basic features I need. I'd rather stick with AGP for price reasons, so is there any reason to choose an nForce3 board over a K8T800?

CPU:
Sempron 2800+ about £50
I assume the extra cache it has over the 2600+ is worth the £5 or so extra it costs? Should I be worried about trying to get a newer core, with SSE3, or will that not help much?

Graphics Card:
Leadtek 6800LE about £80
It seems it performs in line with the 6600GT from what I've read, and it may be possible to unlock some pipelines on it, boosting its performance more? For the same price, I could get a 9800Pro, but that would be probably slower? Also,does anyone know about this card's cooling? It seems to have quite a large heatsink on it, is it any quieter than the stock cooler? I know I'm on a budget, but I don't mind paying slightly more to keep the noise down.

Thats the key components, I was going to get a 350W PSU (I have an old case it can go in already) a DVD-RW (they are so cheap it doesn't make sense to me to buy anything else) a 160GB hard drive, and about 512MB of RAM (I know thats an absolute minimum now, don't know if my budget will stretch for another 512MB...). I was going to stick with onboard sound for now, but would ideally like one of the Dolby Digital Live! cards to hook up to my A/V receiver.

I was also planning on getting a 17" LCD, for around £140, but not so bothered on advice about that right now, unless you know of any great bargains around.

Sorry for all the questions... One last one, I know its low-budget, but how well will this perform? I've read the Semprons are quite good overclockers, which I may indulge in if the performance is too slow. If the performance is too low, I probably won't bother building it, as my laptop works perfectly well for everything except gaming. I'm looking forward to two PC games right now that are coming out soon, Fahrenheit, and F.E.A.R. I Imagine Fahrenheit will work ok, as I've seen it running perfeclty well on a 1600+/Ti4200 system. F.E.A.R. might be a bit more demanding though.
 
I just read a review of the 6800LE earlier, and it appears to be an awesome buy. It's about the same speed as the 9800, a little slower in some benchmarks, a little faster in others. But a lot of people have succeeded in unlocking the disabled pipelines, making it a lot faster.
 
it might be worth thinking about, its an extra £20 for the A642800+ over the Sempron 2800+, still on socket 754... is the faster clock speed and extra cache worth that?
 
If you're spending ~$140 for a 17", might as well go with a CRT. Most 17" LCDs tend to cost ~$100 more... any cheaper and you run into slow refresh rates, etc. If CRT doessn't bug you, then go with that. If you still want LCD, then you need to allocate more money or bump it down to a 15".

I know you said not to worry too much about the monitor, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up. Didn't want you spending too much money on the other components, only to find that you can't get a display for your new rig. :eek:
 
140 pounds = about 250 us dollars

most 17 lcds seem to start at that sort of price over here, i've recently sold a 19" crt cos i was fed up with the size.

I'd strongly recommend to stay away from ECS.
Click to expand...

for what reason? pcchips have similar priced boards, but i imagine they are worse than ECs,

for a similar price i can get mATX boards from Gigabyte or MSI using K8M800, or ASUS using 760GX. Theres another fullsize Gigabyte for a bit more using ULi 1689 - not even heard of that.
 
Stupid me. I skimmed that too quickly, eh? ;)

I'm not sure where price levels are at for 17" LCDs right now, but 140 pounds sounds good (much better than the $140 I thought it was, anyway :D).
 
Well I agree with the amd approach, and I am an intel guy, yet that doesn't apply here....In this setup I would recommend and back up the others on a cheap Athlon 64...MSI usually has real good boards....The only amd system I've built in a shop I used to work in was MSI, it was an NForce3 chipset....Now I have a biostar setup with an amd that was given to me and it makes a great file/print server....Make sure you get plenty ram....At least 256 mb; 512 mb recommended....Good luck with the build...
 
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