Building my first PC (on a budget)

[Aeriath]

The only experience I have is having changed a few components around during an upgrade of the family PC, so for my first build I thought I'd get some advice to check whether I'm doing alright or heading for a painful and expensive mistake.

Spoiler: Why I need a new PC, and why it has a low budget.

I would have had my laptop for 3 years this April if the graphics chip had not burnt out (a known issue with the Dell M1530, but mines is out of warranty). When I contacted Dell, the offered to replace the laptop for £400, which is a horrible deal as the laptop was low-end 3 years ago and is nearly done now. I'm currently saving up to attend university in September, and as I work on a temporary basis I can't be sure I will have a job at all times between now and then so money is a bit tight.

Now, to the budget. I am living in the UK, so I need to order the parts for a new computer from websites that deliver here, and my low budget PC should come to no more than £400. I do plan to use the PC for gaming and the main games I want to be able to play are Guild Wars, Fallout: New Vegas, Team Fortress 2 and Mass Effect 1/2. In the future I plan on buying Mass Effect 3 and Guild Wars 2 so it should be able to play them too. As this is a budget build, I realise that performace isn't going to be great, so being able to run the above games with a half decent framerate at low quality is the goal with anything extra being a bonus.

The parts which I already own are:
The Operating System
Mouse + Keyboard
Monitor
Speakers

Basically, I have £400 to spend on the case and internals. Here is what I have chosen out with my limited experience:

AMD Athlon II 450 3.2 GHz Processor [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/238326]
£58.35

To my knowledge, a suitable motherboard [http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-am3-amd-nforce-520le-ddr3-atx-74Z2.html?refs=432790000-356410000-11]
£42.43

Sapphire HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/189741]
£101.41

4GB of DDR3 RAM [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166995]
£35.69

Segate 500GB Hardrive [http://www.dabs.com/products/seagate-500gb-barracuda-7200-12-7200rpm-sata-300-16mb-5HQ4.html?refs=4294948443-11-4294951586-52100000]
£30.62

Coolermaster Elite 330 Case With Coolermaster Elite 460W PSU [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135101]
£56.99

Generic Sound Card [http://www.dabs.com/products/best-value-5-1-pci-sound-card-via1723-chipset-sc-1723-6LZ8.html]
£5.80

Wireless Network Card [http://www.dabs.com/products/tp-link-wireless-n-pci-adapter-77RL.html?refs=11-50060000]
£16.36

Also included are a DVD Reader and a Card Reader for £17.90

Total: £360

Spoiler: Original Build at £271.36

AMD Athlon II 250 3.0GHz Processor [http://www.dabs.com/products/amd-athlon-ii-x2-250-3-0ghz-2mb-am3-65w-processor-74NH.html?refs=51070000]
£44.98

To my knowledge, a suitable motherboard [http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-am3-amd-nforce-520le-ddr3-atx-74Z2.html?refs=432790000-356410000-11]
£42.43

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 430 [http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-geforce-gts-430-700mhz-1gb-pci-express-hdmi-76FL.html?refs=4294947917-50780000]
£56.16

4GB of DDR3 RAM [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166995]
£35.69

Segate 500GB Hardrive [http://www.dabs.com/products/seagate-500gb-barracuda-7200-12-7200rpm-sata-300-16mb-5HQ4.html?refs=4294948443-11-4294951586-52100000]
£30.62

Generic ATX Case with 450W PSU [http://www.dabs.com/products/best-value-black-silver-midi-case-450w-5CWK.html?refs=11]
£21.42

Generic Sound Card [http://www.dabs.com/products/best-value-5-1-pci-sound-card-via1723-chipset-sc-1723-6LZ8.html]
£5.80

Wireless Network Card [http://www.dabs.com/products/tp-link-wireless-n-pci-adapter-77RL.html?refs=11-50060000]
£16.36

Total: £271.36

The total is quite a bit below the max budget of £400, but I wasn't sure which components would be worth spending a little extra on. Have I missed anything out? Have I gone the wrong route with the processor/motherboard and should switch to Intel? To my limited knowledge everything I listed is compatible but I might have missed something. Any advice you can give would be appreciated, as I'd like to have parts ordered at the end of the week, if only to give myself a goal so that I don't spend forever agonising over the parts.

 

[mew1234321]

Wow.

Speaking purely as a layman, good job.

This is the kind of build I'd lust over.

I can't see any weak spots. This setup is basically a much more powerful version of mine.

However, I'm sure someone more tech-savvy will give you some actual advice later down the line.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

The total is quite a bit below the max budget of £400, but I wasn't sure which components would be worth spending a little extra on. Have I missed anything out? Have I gone the wrong route with the processor/motherboard and should switch to Intel? To my limited knowledge everything I listed is compatible but I might have missed something. Any advice you can give would be appreciated, as I'd like to have parts ordered at the end of the week, if only to give myself a goal so that I don't spend forever agonising over the parts.

Not too shabby for a budget build. I'd switch out the CPU you selected for a Athlon II X4 645 and then use what's left of your budget getting an ATI/AMD 5770 GPU... unless your budget can stretch to including a nVidia GTX 460. Those changes will leave you with a solid little unit.

Oops... forgot to add - DON'T FORGET TO PICK UP A DVD DRIVE.

 

[Aeriath]

SNIP

Not too shabby for a budget build. I'd switch out the CPU you selected for a Athlon II X4 645 and then use what's left of your budget getting an ATI/AMD 5770 GPU... unless your budget can stretch to including a nVidia GTX 460. Those changes will leave you with a solid little unit.

Oops... forgot to add - DON'T FORGET TO PICK UP A DVD DRIVE.

Hehe, I got similar advice on another forum I posted this on too. I went for these:

AMD Athlon II X3 450 3.2GHz [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/238326]
£58.35

Sapphire HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/189741]
£101.41

And I was also advised to go for a better PSU, with the below being what they recommended:

Coolermaster Elite 330 Case With Coolermaster Elite 460W PSU [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135101]
£56.99

Which totals £360. The AMD Athlon X4 645 is £28 more than the X3 the other forum recommended, do you think the upgarde would be worthwhile? I am relucatant to actually spend up to the £400 incase I need to buy a few little extras (another case fan or something along those lines) but I can if the upgrade would be worth it. Also, don't worry, I forgot to write it down in the original post but a DVD drive + card reader are included in the original £271 price. I'll update the OP with the new recommendations.

EDIT: Assuming that I did spend up to the budget, I face a choice. I have been advised that a Nvidia GTX 460 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/249221] would be another option for spending that last bit of money. This benchmark [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-gf104-fermi,2684-7.html] shows that the 460 would increase performance, although I'm not sure whether to go for the processor or the graphics card in this final upgrade. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

EDIT: Assuming that I did spend up to the budget, I face a choice. I have been advised that a Nvidia GTX 460 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/249221] would be another option for spending that last bit of money. This benchmark [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-gf104-fermi,2684-7.html] shows that the 460 would increase performance, although I'm not sure whether to go for the processor or the graphics card in this final upgrade. Any advice would be appreciated.

At the moment, with what you're aiming for, a better GPU is going to do you more good than a better CPU (in your price range, anyway). Until games devs do a lot more with multicore CPU optimisation the difference between 3 and 4 cores won't be noticable to most gamers, especially with a GPU like the GTX 460. If I were you though I'd pony up the extra 10 quid for the MSI Cyclone GTX 460 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/230557] instead. Very reliable brand, easily the equal in quality to ASUS or Gigabyte hardware.

 

[pezwitch]

Everything looks good, but I have a couple of thoughts:

On board sound is very good these days so you don't really need a sound card unless you want to split game sounds with VENT or Teamspeak. Although a set of USB headphones works just as well as a second sound card so I'd personally put the price of the second sound card towards a USB headset if you are starting from scratch.

Also, I don't see an Operating System on your build and that will raise the price to close to your original budget.

I have the 5770 video card because I run an Eyefinity setup and I love my video card, however one of my friends got the Grey Screen of Death using the Catalyst Control Center (which I have never had) so he moved from a 5770 to 460 and loves it, although he didn't see a large difference in his real world performance (less than 2%). The thing with Benchmarks is that they often don't translate to real world performance, so I don't put a lot of faith in them.