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Which CPU and Motherboard bundle under £250


sidrick

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About to start building a new (small budget) machine as my current P4 is struggling :pancake:

 

I've decided on the hard drives, a 64gb SSD and two additional 500-1tb drives RAID'd, and I'll cross the GPU bridge when I come to it since I'll need a good dual display card but do not care about gaming.

 

Anyway, what's the recommended Mainboard and CPU package for round about £250 (or cheaper)? Sadly I can't stretch to the Intel i7 or even i5 (I think).

 

Are AMDs a complete no-no nowadays? You seem to get decent deals on the Athlon quad CPUs, but I'm out of touch with things just now.

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Nothing wrong with AMD setups if your not gaming or video editing.

 

People only seem to avoid them these days as there Intel counterparts are better for CPU intensive tasking.

 

For example, take an AMD hexa core and run it beside a top i7 4 core... The i7 will produce faster results, just twice the cost.

 

Overclocking is another example, Intel CPU seems more stable when you clock the balls out of them whereas AMDs just giga-flop when you start pushing them too hard...

 

 

For a budget, future proof system, I'd still recommend AMD even though I've moved completely to Intel (I still build the odd AMD unit).

 

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?...nufacturer_id=0

 

^^ That would be a good starting point for your budget... 2.8Ghz Hexa-Core (clock it to 3.0Ghz for fun), 4GB RAM and a decent future proof board for £230!

6 cores for Intel 2 core (i3) money!

 

And if your interested, I've got a Nvidia Quadro card here... FX3400 256MB Dual DVI (Believe it was based on the 6800GT/GTX series Geforce cards) - Would have set you back £1500 a few years ago, their on eBay now for just shy of £40... Yours for £30 plus a little extra for postage.

 

PS. Nothing wrong with i5s either... Great, powerful CPUs... You might need to make cutbacks on your board to fit one into budget though!

Edited by smithyandco
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Excellent info, thanks, and that seems like quite a decent site.

 

Without the CPU fan that board puts me into the range of i5/4GB/Mobo packages on ebay, abiet ASRock motherboards :-\

 

Looks like a nice card, but there's a couple on ebay posted for less than £30. I think I'll be budgeting about £100 for a card (or cards). I'll need to assess my needs. Although I say I'm not fussed about games, I wouldn't mind testing a few out jsut to see how they compare to my xbox :)

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I'd go for an i5 2500k (£160 on overclockers) and an ASUS P8P67 board (£124 also on OC)

Unlocked multiplier, My mate is running 4ghz, he had it up to 5 no probs as well ;)

 

Pushing the budget a bit there.

 

Although the board is a cheapo, this seems like a good deal and includes (probably unbranded) RAM - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/INTEL-i5-760-2-80Ghz...=item1e6207e8ce

 

Having read a couple of reviews, the motherboard actually seem okay, even though it's cheap.

 

I'll check out the overclockers bundles.

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Im currently running an AMD Phenom ii (2)@ 3.2 Ghz, with 4 BG ram, a gigabyte m57SLI-S4 mobo and a Nvidia Ge force GTX 460 and can play the lastest games @ 1900x1280 and at least medium settings.

 

The CPU cost me £65, £40 2nd hand mobo (wouldn't recommend buying 2nd hand though) and the g/c was £160

 

The only problem i have with this set up is that the next upgrade will have to be CPU, Mobo and RAM, as the RAM is DDR2 and prices are getting quite high now for that type of memory.

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Although the board is a cheapo, this seems like a good deal and includes (probably unbranded) RAM - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/INTEL-i5-760-2-80Ghz...=item1e6207e8ce

 

A PC built with that won't be too slow as a budget PC.

 

It won't be slow as a mid-range gaming PC either....

 

To put it this way, we run a i5 750 at work as a gaming PC... Sure it's got 8GB ram, a gaming (overclocks the CPU when put under load) motherboard and a Geforce 470 (the second best consumer card at the time).

 

Now that CPU sits at 3.3Ghz when auto-clocked by the board.... I'm yet to find anything I can't run on high-max settings.

 

AsRock... might not be renowned for it's gaming capabilities in the motherboard market but they are good solid boards (I remember a PC mag saying AsRock was a budget/reliable desktop brand of ASUS)

 

And the memory, if it is the type picture... it looks like normal OEM make RAM used by the big companies like Dell and HP which is usually solid, reliable stuff.

 

All in all... it won't be bad for a "Budget PC" :roll:

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AsRock... might not be renowned for it's gaming capabilities in the motherboard market but they are good solid boards

 

I can agree with that, I've never had a problem with any of their stuff. Gigabyte on the other hand... sh*te.

 

Another one for consideration: aria amd phenom ii x6 bundle

 

There are quite a few decent PC components shops

Aria.co.uk and microdirect.co.uk are both based not a million miles from me,

ebuyer.com Ive used before and have been fine,

cclonline.com were fine for me when I bought my laptop,

scan.co.uk are supposed to be good.

 

Just a few sites for you to peruse.

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AsRock... might not be renowned for it's gaming capabilities in the motherboard market but they are good solid boards

 

I can agree with that, I've never had a problem with any of their stuff. Gigabyte on the other hand... sh*te.

 

 

Not sure i agree with that. My last 2 mobo's have been Gigabyte and ive had no complaints. The only slight niggle i had with one of them was when i was running a RAID array based server using a software based pci card on said motherboard. I was using WOL (wake on lan) to wake up the server from hibernation, but it was a bit sketchy and 10% of the time wouldnt work.

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AsRock... might not be renowned for it's gaming capabilities in the motherboard market but they are good solid boards

 

I can agree with that, I've never had a problem with any of their stuff. Gigabyte on the other hand... sh*te.

 

Another one for consideration: aria amd phenom ii x6 bundle

 

That looks not too bad at all.

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I can agree with that, I've never had a problem with any of their stuff. Gigabyte on the other hand... sh*te.

 

Another one for consideration: aria amd phenom ii x6 bundle

I can't say I've had huge amount of problems with Gigabyte once running... It's the sketchy CPU support on some (not all) of their boards that usually puts me off.

Although the chipset supports the CPU, Gigabyte sometimes find a way of not allowing the chipset to support that CPU... :rolleyes:

 

That bundle is the same as the CCL one above, only with a better board and a cooler... not bad for £5 extra! :thumb:

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