Building a computer with a budget

[AndyRock]

To cut it short, my friend's ancient computer finally blew up and he wants me to build him a new one for between £400-£450. It will be used mainly for gaming, and my question is, can you recommend some parts that are good performance, but low(ish) price. I have built my own computer, but it was more of a complete upgrade over a few years (I actually have rebuilt my old computer from the parts left over), but now I just don't know where to start, so any suggestions are welcome.

 

[Lord Doomhammer]

ibuypower.com

I've had good results so far with them, cheep powerful. I got no idea about their shipping abroad but I would suspect they support Brittan.

 

[Guffe]

I don't build computers nor do I have too much interest in how good different parts are but with the little experience I have I don't know if you can get a too good gaming computer for that price?!! I don't know how it works there but here in Finland an average good gaming comp is around 700? which is closer to £600... I am not 100% sure but I'd advice your friend to put a bit more money on this computer and then it will last longer too.
Sorry I couldn't come with any good information other than my non-professional point of view.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

Phenom II X2 555 Dual Core are pretty good processors and come in at about £80, with the right notherboard you can take a shot at unlocking them and see if you strike it lucky and get a quad core. For the GPU, try a Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB, again it's about another £80. You can get a decent 1TB hard drive for about £40, mine's a Samsung Spinpoint. Not got much to say about the rest of the rig, I had a friend help me pickt he rest of the parts.

 

[AndyRock]

sorry, but i'm only really interested in building it, as it is much cheaper, and I have an idea that you could build a good computer for that much, it's just i don't know where to start with the parts, and what I should specifically to go for, as in the huge amount of processors available is a bit overwhelming, and when I bought mine, I had a very specific amount of money to buy just the processor with (a Q8300 for £90 off ebay, which was a very lucky buy). (talking to the first two)

 

[hyperhammy]

I got an awesome medion quad core 4 gb ram pc for under 600 bucks.
All I had to do was replace the crappy msi gs 240 and punch in a new hd 5770 for about 150.

 

[AndyRock]

I got an awesome medion quad core 4 gb ram pc for under 600 bucks.
All I had to do was replace the crappy msi gs 240 and punch in a new hd 5770 for about 150.

That's pretty good, but that's a little over budget, I was thinking maybe a HD 5750, and try and get a good dual core or average quad

 

[hyperhammy]

I got an awesome medion quad core 4 gb ram pc for under 600 bucks.
All I had to do was replace the crappy msi gs 240 and punch in a new hd 5770 for about 150.

That's pretty good, but that's a little over budget, I was thinking maybe a HD 5750, and try and get a good dual core or average quad

I only got the hd 5770 for eyefinity (pure awesome, but beware, you need a pretty expensive adapter for it to work.)

I'm thinking a good 4000 model would be just fine.

 

[migo]

Phenom II X3 (the performance pay off for the third core over the second is pretty significant, and they're still pretty cheap).
Radeon HD 4600 or 5600 or higher (5500 doesn't cut it, 64 bit memory bus, you want at least 128).
Plan for upgrading memory in the future, so fill up 2 memory slots now, and then another two later when RAM prices come down.

 

[Danpascooch]

To cut it short, my friend's ancient computer finally blew up and he wants me to build him a new one for between £400-£450. It will be used mainly for gaming, and my question is, can you recommend some parts that are good performance, but low(ish) price. I have built my own computer, but it was more of a complete upgrade over a few years (I actually have rebuilt my old computer from the parts left over), but now I just don't know where to start, so any suggestions are welcome.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

If you're not sure what if CPU A is better than CPU B, or the same with video-cards, check this site, I don't have any specific recommendations, but I find this a very useful tool when choosing parts.

 

[Skorpyo]

So that's $800-900 US right?

Check this out -

Asrock 775DualVSTA - $70

Intel Pentium E6700 Wolfdale 3.2GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor - $100

CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory - $50

HIS H485FM512H Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - $110

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W - $110

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $110

Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -$130

Altogether, $680 - roughly 340 pounds (can't make the symbol).

It's all off of newegg.com.

 

[AndyRock]

So that's $800-900 US right?

Check this out -

Asrock 775DualVSTA - $70

Intel Pentium E6700 Wolfdale 3.2GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor - $100

CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory - $50

HIS H485FM512H Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - $110

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W - $110

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $110

Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -$130

Altogether, $680 - roughly 340 pounds (can't make the symbol).

It's all off of newegg.com.

it actually works out at £440, which is perfect, although I may cut back a little on the case and get a better motherboard (my case cost £10 lol)

 

[crotalidian]

try http://overclockers.co.uk/ for components they are meant to be pretty good value components