The £400 Beige Monster

[theonetruewill]

The £400 <Beige> Silver Monster

Project Completed​

To anyone who's interested I am going to attempt my first build as I finally have just enough funds to support it.

Although from the title of this thread you can see that the funds are not that much
However I am determined to prevail and I will try and document it and update this as much as possible and hopefully get some answers to some ineveitable problems that WILL arise

How can you make it for £400? I hear you say. How could you make it any good?

Well the answer is simple....I can't. No but seriously I'm considering this a constant work in progress and I will slowly upgrade it past its original form. (That case is going to have to go!) Remeber that I am also currently and have gamed on my laptop (see sys specs) so I'm used to not necessarily cutting edge performance.

The specs (atm) are:

some incredibly rubbish Jetway mobo
An AMD 1600XP
256mb DDR
Riva TNT
160watt PSU
CD rom drive(not R/RW)
20Gb 4100rpm HDD

It is going to be (hopefully)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Socket AM2 (And yes I am going to oc the hell out of it) EDIT: now X2 4600
Arctic Cooling (AC-FRZ-64P) Freezer64 Pro (because this case has crappy fans and the cpu would probably blow up without it)
Corsair (CM2X1024-5400C4) 1024MB, 4-4-4-12 (upgrade to 2Gb this when next cash injection arrives)
Gigabyte GA M57SLI-S4
Western Digital WD2000JS Caviar SE 200GB 7200RPM SATAII/300 8MB Cache£35.10
Linksys Wireless 54mbps PCI Adapter Card
Coolermaster eXtreme Power 500W PSU
ATI X850XT PE (upgrade to DX10 when they are cheaper and I have more cash - will probably give this to a mate who is running on SIS unichrome gfx ) EDIT: Inno3D 7600GT EDIT: upgraded to X1900GT

Have a good laugh at my expense at the case and current internals. I got it off my Gran - how humiliating

EDIT: Final Pricing after ordered
Price up so far
Cpu: £71.77
Mobo: £67
Gfx: £65
Case+PSU: £38 (made a deal for the two together)
HDD: £45
DVD: £23
RAM: £47

Total: £356.77

What a pwnage of a price! And proof that a gaming PC does not have to cost the Earth

3DMark06: 4309(with 7600GT)
3DMark06: 5793(with X1900GT Rev.1)
3DMark06: ~6700(with X1950XTX)

 

[theonetruewill]

Woah, Ok I'm going to get an AMDX2 4600 - Found a bargain!

 

[Completely Bonkers]

Check prices against http://geizhals.at/deutschland/

 

[rhythmeister]

I'd say go with an X1650xt instead of the x850xt-I've had the x850xt pe but you can't play Rainbow 6 Vegas with it! I'd also go for DDR not DDR 2, I reckon the tighter timings are what to go for. Check my sig for a bargain gaming rig

 

[mullered07]

id say go with a x1950gt, only £90 and will be better than thyat x850 and x1650, how much did you pay for that x2 4600+ btw ?

 

[tkpenalty]

Beige box? Are you insulting me? Wait.. my case is white, not beige >_>.

WTF? You have the same case interior chassis as mine. Except different front panel, you got an older revision though, ugly lol. look at my rig pics (find them yourself) everything is the same except the front panel! Apart from that I got a newer one that is much better designed though.

That hole next to the CPU is the cable management hole, cables that arent used go there, drag them down to the drive bays. If possible, order a newer front panel as they can be unclipped. That one looks ugly seriously.

 

[theonetruewill]

OK, I have bought a new budget case, not the bees knees by any stretch of the imgination but I hated my old one (lol-tkpenalty) The reason I'm getting the X850XT PE is because I can get it for about £50 and I can't find any similarly ranked card (in sheer performance) at this price range. For the 4600 X2 I can get it for £77. Which I'll get instead of a core 2 because I simply can't afford one.

Please don't tell me to get really expensive stuff as I have said that I am on a REALLY tight budget. But any real bargains would be great. rythemeister, I wanna make my owbn but thanks for the offer lol.

Will post pics soon.

Built my mates rig yesterday so this will be my second build. PS the build went perfectly

 

[theonetruewill]

OK here's the new case, don't criticize, I like it. And its got a 600watt psu I put in. I negotiated a better deal for it by exchanging the generic 400watt one it came with. I have migrated usable parts from the old one (floppy, small 20Gb HDD backup etc)

My mate got the same deal, here's what I put in his (he wanted a reasonable gaming machine)
E6300 (I will oc' it when I next go round there)
2Gb Corsair XMS2
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
300Gb Seagate 7200rpm
NEC DVD /Ram/RW+-
Asus 7600GT
600 watt psu
19" Asus Widescreen (beautiful screen btw)
XP Pro
I want to put in some more fans at some point.

When I get the time I'll also cut out some side panels on mine and my mates machines.

 

[theonetruewill]

id say go with a x1950gt, only £90 and will be better than thyat x850 and x1650, how much did you pay for that x2 4600+ btw ?

1950GT for £90???? where????

 

[kwchang007]

nice man, you're building a comp at least you have something to start with. i bet if i had to build like that....it'd be a p3 but im lucky, if i ever really need a gaming machine, i can buy a pci-e card and plug it into our p4 dell, and maybe a power supply.

 

[theonetruewill]

nice man, you're building a comp at least you have something to start with. i bet if i had to build like that....it'd be a p3 but im lucky, if i ever really need a gaming machine, i can buy a pci-e card and plug it into our p4 dell, and maybe a power supply.

Oh hey dude, yeah I'm making sure I get the case so I force myself to keep it coming along. I'm spending all I own basically Oh well, It'll be so cool!

 

[theonetruewill]

The motherboard and cpu arrived today! w00t!
Have tonnes of cwk for this week:shadedshu so cannot put it in until the weekend....Then again maybe cwk deadlines can wait

 

[rhythmeister]

I'm not trying to sell my rig to you dude, I don't know ya that well! What I'm saying is look at the specs and see if you'd go for anything I'm using, I'm quite chuffed and it was all cheap as I'm a dole bum at the mo

That X1950GT would certainly poop all over the X1650XT so do that, but if you're on a budget I'll sell you my brand new RMA HIS X1650 Pro Turbo with silent 2 slot cooler for £60 posted as I've gone XT!

 

[theonetruewill]

I'm not trying to sell my rig to you dude, I don't know ya that well! What I'm saying is look at the specs and see if you'd go for anything I'm using, I'm quite chuffed and it was all cheap as I'm a dole bum at the mo

That X1950GT would certainly poop all over the X1650XT so do that, but if you're on a budget I'll sell you my brand new RMA HIS X1650 Pro Turbo with silent 2 slot cooler for £60 posted as I've gone XT!

I'm not that keen on the X1650 pro, its just a bit too weak for my tastes, but yeah, wouldn't a 1950gt be great..

 

[theonetruewill]

OK I put in the motherboard, cpu and and the old HDD I'll use as a backup for essential data.

Ordering more parts as the when the £££ arrives

 

[kwchang007]

OK I put in the motherboard, cpu and and the old HDD I'll use as a backup for essential data.

Oredering more parts as the when the £££ arrives

nice, id like to see how well this compares compared to your laptop

 

[theonetruewill]

nice, id like to see how well this compares compared to your laptop

Oh me too! I can't wait tobenchmark this baby! However I doubt I'll break my record on CPU Mark 2.1, it seems to be intel biased (probs cause of L2 cache) but the 3Dmark scores will be great.

EDIT: Oh crap I'm being tempted to a get an X1800GTO.... extra £20 but has SM3 and is more powerful.... My poor cash reserves - lol

 

[kwchang007]

Oh me too! I can't wait tobenchmark this baby! However I doubt I'll break my record on CPU Mark 2.1, it seems to be intel biased (probs cause of L2 cache) but the 3Dmark scores will be great.

EDIT: Oh crap I'm being tempted to a get an X1800GTO.... extra £20 but has SM3 and is more powerful.... My poor cash reserves - lol

sounds way sweet. im tempted to buy a gfx for our dell desktop...except i don't think it has a pci-e power connector (need to check that) and anyways....the power supply is 330 watts, if i did buy a nice gfx card i'll end up blowing the psu, maybe that'll give me a reason to build a desktop for our fam

 

[theonetruewill]

sounds way sweet. im tempted to buy a gfx for our dell desktop...except i don't think it has a pci-e power connector (need to check that) and anyways....the power supply is 330 watts, if i did buy a nice gfx card i'll end up blowing the psu, maybe that'll give me a reason to build a desktop for our fam

Nicely done, "you have no choice but to upgrade" hehe

 

[kwchang007]

Nicely done, "you have no choice but to upgrade" hehe

lol. i still feel sorry for my fam that uses that thing....integrated graphics, it can't even run css at lowest settings at playable speeds. I tried once, it was bad, my friend said i was literally leaping across the screen. wait, i said i wanted to uprade the desktop?!?!?! that is defianlty not me in my normal mindset....i meant to say im tempted to get the asus xg station, but that's expensive. oh well, like you said the x1400 gets me by for now

 

[theonetruewill]

The place I was getting the X850XT PE from kept going out of stock so for £50 I got a Inno3D 7600GST and yes I am going to oc the hell out of it

But in the long run its better, firstly I have an sli mobo, not a Xfire one. Secondly I mean to upgrade later so spending less now is a better option, but if I need to stay cheap I'll get another 7600GST.

I think I made the right decision. although I am definately not an Nvidia fan

http://www.inno3d.com/products/graphic_card/ichill/i7600gst_vf700.htm

 

[theonetruewill]

Scrap that idea, didn't see my model only had 128mb memory, getting a Inno3D 7600GT 256...phew

 

[rhythmeister]

The x1650xt's a better card, check the trusted reviews err, review if you don't believe my biased view but I got one!

 

[theonetruewill]

The x1650xt's a better card, check the trusted reviews err, review if you don't believe my biased view but I got one!

I know, but I can't get a X1650Xt for £60 plus p+p and I can get a 7600GT for that. Otherwise I would, I prefer ATi

 

[kwchang007]

I know, but I can't get a X1650Xt for £60 plus p+p and I can get a 7600GT for that. Otherwise I would, I prefer ATi

yeah, im pretty sure the x1650 preforms better, but in the end it really does come down to money. i can't wait to see my friends comp when we build it. only problem is he's getting a 7100 until the end of school, then he'll have the money for a 8800 gts