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Help me build a budget sff/shuttle

M

matt00926

Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
840
I'm moving across the country to New York and want to build a sff gaming machine since my laptop has onboard graphics.

I'm only looking to spend about $500 total so I wouldn't be opposed to buying used. First of all, what is a good budget case? Do I want to get shuttle barebones which includes case, psu, and board, or should I get each component separately? I'm looking for it to be Intel C2D based, have 4 gigs ram, 1 hd, 1 optical, and a graphic card powerful enough to play games like TF2 very smoothly. I wouldn't be opposed to an AM2 machine if the price was right.
 
- Do you also need new OS license as well? Or do you already have a retail Windows OS key that you can reuse?
- What size monitor do you have?
- Will you be overclocking?
 
As far as low end Shuttles go this is the LOWEST I recommend.

I had that particular one for a short time and it was nice... ran a little warm though and booted right up with my E7200 and 2GB's of Wintec RAM. Sadly I had to send it back after one of the memory banks and the IDE channel died.
 
Danny Bui said:
- Do you also need new OS license as well? Or do you already have a retail Windows OS key that you can reuse?
- What size monitor do you have?
- Will you be overclocking?
Click to expand...

I have both Windows XP and Vista unused, and I won't be overclocking. My monitor is an LG 19" WS
 
A couple more questions:
- So you need a case, PSU, motherboard, hard drive, DVD drive, RAM, CPU, PSU and GPU all for $500?
- Does that $500 include tax and shipping?
 
Danny Bui said:
A couple more questions:
- So you need a case, PSU, motherboard, hard drive, DVD drive, RAM, CPU, PSU and GPU all for $500?
- Does that $500 include tax and shipping?
Click to expand...

Yep everything but monitor and any other peripherals. I need the case and all the guts that go inside it :p. $500 doesn't need to include tax & shipping, just is a rough baseline at where I'd like to end up around.
 
AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+ CPU - $66
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 AMD 740G mATX AMD Motherboard - $60
G.Skill F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM - $45
ASUS EN9600GSO GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB PCI-E Video Card - $100
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $48
Samsung SH-203N 20X DVD±R SATA DVD Burner - $27
Silverstone SUGO SG02W-F White mATX Case - $75
Corsair 450VX 450W PSU - $70
----
Total: $491 plus tax and shipping.

Below $100, AMD CPUs can outperform Intel CPUs at stock speeds. Though overclock the Intel CPUs and the Intel CPUs will whip the shit out of the AMD CPUs. But since you're not overclocking, I recommend getting an AMD CPU so that you can get the most performance for your dollar.

Though if you really want Intel or are willing to OC, here's an alternative suggestion:
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 CPU - $70
Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L Intel G31 mATX Motherboard - $60
--
Total: $130 plus tax and shipping

The 9600GSO is more than capable of handling TF2 on a 19" WS monitor. The Corsair PSU is an excellent quality PSU that will allow for bigger/more upgrades down the line. Unforunately, your budget does not allow for 4GB of RAM. Though 2GB of RAM is still plenty for most people these days.
 
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