Spec me a £500 Gaming rig?

Paul_Canning · 12 Dec 2011 at 10:16

Howdy folks, long time since I've been on here.

Just wondering what kind of rig I can get for £500 (or under!)

I'm an avid gamer, so that's priority.

I don't need hard drives, peripherals or case. (My PSU is pretty good (will check model later at home) so I may not need that?)

Also, out of interest, are dual gfx card rigs any good these days/do they offer anything that a single good card doesn't?

Hope you guys can help

Marine-RX179 · 12 Dec 2011 at 10:31

Paul_Canning said:
Also, out of interest, are dual gfx card rigs any good these days/do they offer anything that a single good card doesn't?

Don't bother considering this, as your budget won't be enough to get you two decent graphic cards, CPU+motherboard, and a powerful enough PSU to run them.

Your £500 budget would only be enough to get your a 2500K CPU+motherboard+ram (£300~£350) and a £150~£200 graphic card.

Incapable · 12 Dec 2011 at 10:37

Do you need the os and monitor?

Paul_Canning · 12 Dec 2011 at 10:47

Incapable - Sorry, I stupidly assumed monitor counted under peripherals,

I don't need one thank you, nor do I need an OS.

Marine - what kind of CPu would I be looking at there? Dual, tri, quad, hex? AMD, Intel? Cheers

Marine-RX179 · 12 Dec 2011 at 11:54

Paul_Canning said:
Marine - what kind of CPu would I be looking at there? Dual, tri, quad, hex? AMD, Intel? Cheers

The i5 2500K CPU- which cost around £170 and is currently the best bang for bucks CPU.

Motherboard you should be looking at a socket 1155 Z68 chipset board, which cost around £80~£150.

Paul_Canning · 12 Dec 2011 at 12:59

Marine - ah, awesome. Out of touch with PC components these days haha!

Any advice on RAM? I'd like a bare minimum of 4gb.

shadow_boxer · 12 Dec 2011 at 13:15

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £179.99
(£149.99) £179.99
(£149.99)
Asus GeForce GTX 560Ti DirectCU II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card Asus GeForce GTX 560Ti DirectCU II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £169.99
(£141.66) £169.99
(£141.66)
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £84.98
(£70.82) £84.98
(£70.82)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
(£21.66) £25.99
(£21.66)
Sub Total : £414.12
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £84.82
Total : £508.94

Or buy the cooler at a later date and get a 2GB 6950.

Marine-RX179 · 12 Dec 2011 at 13:46

When choosing the motherboard, make sure you check if the particular board would do SLI/Crossfire at x8/x8 if you do plan on going dual-graphic cards in the future (which will involved upgrading the PSU to a more powerful one).

The recommended Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 recommended is a very decent board for the price, but its 2nd PCI-E x16 only runs at x4, so if want to future proof for SLI and Crossfire, you will have to look at other boards and pay the extra.

Paul_Canning · 12 Dec 2011 at 13:51

Am I right to think that a dual GFX setup would only be beneficial if you get 2x of the highest rated cards?

For example, rather then get 2x low/mid-end cards, I should just get 1x high-end card?

Paul_Canning · 12 Dec 2011 at 13:52

Shadow-boxer, thank you. That list is looking very nice for the price

Might be a month or two before I delve into this, so hopefully specs improve a bit!

ben90 · 12 Dec 2011 at 13:58

Paul_Canning said:
Shadow-boxer, thank you. That list is looking very nice for the price

Might be a month or two before I delve into this, so hopefully specs improve a bit!

Things will have changed quite a lot by then, what with the new AMD gfx cards coming out in a month followed by the nvidia close after. This should drop the prices of current cards, which may allow you to buy a higher spec motherboard with better dual card abilities. Bare in mind you might have to upgrade your PSU too, so try and save as much as you can till you buy.

Dual setups are controversial, many people don't like them because of driver problems (AMD especially) and find that it only offers a good boost in certain games. Others have no problems. As your waiting a while before you buy I would just wait for the benchmarks of the new cards and make a decision from there.

Marine-RX179 · 12 Dec 2011 at 14:04

Paul_Canning said:
Might be a month or two before I delve into this, so hopefully specs improve a bit!

Best bet would be come back and make a new topic and ask again WHEN you are going to upgrade. That way people would be able to recommend you with the most uptodate parts.

Paul_Canning · 12 Dec 2011 at 15:03

Yea, I was just really curious about what I could get now for that budget. Good to know I can get a pretty good rig, even more so when I actually have the funds to commit!

Cheers for the help guys. I'll be sure to check back when I actually want to go ahead and spend the pennies and annoy the GF