Building a £400 Gaming PC

nice guide. I built my current rig for around $400~ not top of the line but it's still quite powerful.

Awesome article, I really related to it, because the system I'm building at the moment is very close to this one (Just kicked up a step in a few areas - E2220, 8800GT, GA-P35-DS3L) so I loved reading this. Awesome work!

Great article, even better if you have an existing case and psu that can be used.

Well done for putting it together and of course there is flexibility on all prices with specials offered on many different websites with free/cheap delivery.

Made a computer similar to this one for a friend, worked out great. Shows it can be done, and done well for most gamers who just want to play.

Now i wanna see it against a 400$ amd machine!! :P

Just so you know, CoD just upgraded to patch 1.6

Looking at Import prices in South Africa this Budget PC is still 2 to 3 times more than X-Box 360 and 50% more than a Playstation 3 in South Africa.

Remember this is at distribution prices so add 15% for retail pricing.

So in South Africa console gaming is the way to go. I included a 8800GT because the price difference between a 8800 and 9600 in SA is only 2$.

CP-iE2180 555
ME-C2GD2X8 474
MB-AP5KPLVM 633
SC-X88GT256 1699
PS-C450VXE 599
CH-CE340N 175
HD-W250S8 567
DW-S20Lo 206
SF-MDVHP32 866


Excl VAT R 5 774.00
Incl. VAT R 6 582.36

in Pounds £417.93
In Dollars $814.14

Great article...very useful.

I'm thinking of, (finally), building a new rig to replace my Asus A7N8X NForce 2, Socket A 2500+, 2Gb DDR & 7800GS AGP.

It's old and has served me well but it's time to upgrade and the article has given me some useful pointers.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by Mante
Now i wanna see it against a 400$ amd machine!! :P

shouldn't be too much difference at all. price-performance ratio on amd is about the same as intel. they just have more selection in the low end and nothing to match intel's high end, so it seems like their procs are cheaper.

Sorry to be pedantic, but there's a lickle typo here: "We’re not going to break any memory speed records with the DDR2-800 CAS4"

Was looking through the benchies seeing '5-5-5-15' and wondering, 'hey, isn't this the 4-4-4-12 stuff?' :p

Nice system, and happily proves one of my points that the high-end is way over-priced for some things since the budget end can often come within a stones throw. You OCed a CPU to 2.9G on a £44 mobo. Compare that to say, the Asus Striker II Extreme, which is £270 odd...

Do wish the budget was £20-£30 more for an 8800GT tho :(

I think they let the timing out to get the overclock.

you can get a 8800GT oat ebuyer for £99.99

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145605

Great article!

I debated quite a bit on whether or not I wanted to build my current PC from parts or to buy an off the shelf one. My last three desktops were all built via purchasing individual parts and assembling the pc. This time, however, I opted to by an off the shelf PC. Yet, I knew full well before buying it that I would be replacing both the stock power supply and graphics card (replaced both after about 3 months). Unfortunately, the average off the shelf PC purchaser doesn't realize the limitation of the stock PSU and GPX cards. In the long run I probably could've built a comparable system for equal or less the cost of the machine plus the upgrades, but it was nice to fire it up right out of the box without any extra configuring. Had I built the rig myself I wouldn't have purchased the HD capable TV tuner or media card reader, both of which I find I use a lot now. Nothing like recording episodes of "Lost" in HD to re-watch at a later date. I like using the card reader for my camera memory card... its a bit more convenient then having to find the camera USB cord.

Think I'll purchase a new GPU in a month or so, 8800GT should be around £80 by then.

Great guide.

Now I feel the need to build a new PC to replace my current one running on P4, bought in 2003.
God knows what I've been missing out on.
FEAR, WiC, Crysis, CoD4, GoW,Bioshock, CnC3, the list goes on and on.

Great guide and project for an article. Was curious to see not only vista being recommended (chosen) but the 64 bit version as well . . . very interesting. And amazing for the price, especially with so many quality branded components being used. Very sweet.

If you go 2nd hand I reckon you could bring that down to £250-300 even £200. I have given up with the upgrade merry-go-round and am still on a AMD64 3700+ AGP system and can run COD4 pretty well, my other box running an Athlon 2500 6800GT 1GB RAM can run cod4 reasonably well at 800x600.

Originally Posted by Nictron
1) A common encryption chip for all PC motherboards, this will help prevent piracy (CD validates with the chip before installation or during gameplay).
...
3) Standardised factors for GPU and CPU performance to optimise default setting detection.

Selling someone something that has a lock on it (the game) when they've already got the key (the motherboard) is pointless, since once it's open (cracked), it's open for everyone.

Very nice article, the E2160 is still one hell of a chip for the price. Easily overclockable too, just got my friends to 3.2ghz on a TRUE.

Seeing as you managed to whip together a stable little gamer's rig.

I bid you a challenge.
A HTPC on a budget.
For a chassis anything goes.. Just chuck it in the closet if need be..
As long as it's small and does the job right..

Originally Posted by Spaceraver
Seeing as you managed to whip together a stable little gamer's rig.

I bid you a challenge.
A HTPC on a budget.
For a chassis anything goes.. Just chuck it in the closet if need be..
As long as it's small and does the job right..

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, AMD 780g board ~£55
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e, AM2, Dual Core, 2.5GHz, 1MB Cache, 45W, ~£50
2gb of random ram ~£25

lg bluray/hd-dvd combo drive ~ £80
random case, psu and hdd, and tv cards

Job Done!