Can you beat the budget gaming rig?

Author: Glen Chivers
Published: 13th June 2006
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Can you beat the budget gaming rig?

Could you squeeze in an X2 instead of the Pentium D?

For any computer enthusiast the balance between power and money is important - whilst we always dream of having a powerful watercooled computer, money is quite often a limiting factor.

Tom's Hardware has devised a new DIY budget rig for just €600(£410/$755), running a cool 4GHz per core on a dual core Pentium D805, and watercooled too!

The system, however, has two components that we think could be significantly improved for not much extra. Currently it consists of a gig of RAM which we would suggest would be best increased to 2GB. The X1300 128MB graphics card could be improved too, maybe getting a X1600 or even a 7300 with Turbocache?

Up the budget to €1000 and you could create a stonking rig, which is also watercooled.

And when Tom's says DIY, they <i>mean</i> DIY - just take a look at some of the modding you need to do to fit everything together!

Even though the Pentium D series chips are good overclockers, it can be luck of the draw whether you will get a good stepping to have a chip that will overclock as far as 4GHz per core. But can anyone create a better rig for the same price? Let us know over in the forums.

We've not created a discussion thread for this story yet. You're welcome to browse our discussion forum in the mean time.



Dragonage