Hey, The build: Price:£496 Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R iP35 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard £69.99 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz (1333MHz) Socket 775 6MB L2 Cache OEM Processor £102.10 GPU: Sapphire HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card £101.82 Memory: OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC with LIFETIME WARRANTY £26.37 Heatsink: Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler £10.63 Harddrive: Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM £31.49 Case: Casecom Black Mid Tower Case - Front Blue LED 120mm Fan - With Side Window £17.01 PSU: Corsair 450W VX 450W PSU - ATX12V v2.2 £45.56 Fans: AKASA 80mm Amber series 3 pin Ultra quiet case fan £3.39 Antec TriCool 120mm DBB Case Fan £7.57 Misc: Extra Value 12" Blue Dual Cold Cathode Kit £2.54 OS: Windows XP Drives: Generic burner Generic Reader It must be mentioned i already have both the OS and the Drive's so i haven't added this to the total. I think setting aside £80 for this should do it. Ok, so this is basically a "budget gaming rig" but it will be used unfortunatly mainly to do work M$ Office for college / university. I know it wont struggle with any of theese things, and it will be able to run new games at decent settings. Not extreme settings i know but decent. I've also designed this with overclocking in mind. The ASUS P5k-E is an extremly capable piece of kit including wifi and the Intel P35 Express chip. The Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R will not struggle to get a decent overclock, its known for its overclocking potential (Thanks Sam) . The E8400 is an extremly oc'able proc which should get some decent speeds with the Arctic Freezer pro although this could possibly be upgraded to a Tuniq Tower but i thought i'd save some money. The RAM is a bargain in my eyes and will definatly not hold the proc back from a decent overclock. 2gb is plenty and of course easy to upgrade to 4gb in time. And remember You cant go wrong with OCZ The GPU in my eyes blows everything in the same price bracquet out the water! Its just an awesome bit of kit for £100! Maybe a HD4870 if you were more into the gaming side of this rig may be in order. The PSU is a stable corsair and should'nt provide me with anything but clean power Again thanks sam! The case is awfull agreed, but its basic and has a window, with a few cathodes and some well placed fans should get a good looking case with OK airflow. This has of course a lot of room to upgrade. In an ideal world i would have gone for the stunning Antec Nine hundred. The harddrive is basic, but i dont need anything flash or bigger than 320gb. It'l do the job, and well at that. In an ideal world i'd install a 32gb Raptor to install the OS of choice onto and perhaps a few games. So i think i've built a capable bit of kit, with room for overclocking and improvement! Its flashy but wont break the bank I'm half posting this for criticism's on the build / ideas for improvement and half posting this as i think its a great build and might help someone with the same needs as me. Lecsiy
Use a Corsair VX 450W PSU. I'm not happy with any power supply that costs £20, no matter what reviews you might have read. The P5K-E may be a good overclocker, but I can't remember whether it's one of Asus' unreliable models or not, I'm pretty sure one of the P5K series is, I just forget which. Gigabyte's EP35-DS3R is also a superb overclocker and is certainly reliable.
Hey sam, long time no speak, hope all is well! I personally haven't heard about one of the P5k-E's being unreliable? Have you got a link by any chance? It's just that mobo has got the P35 / ICH9R chip + Wireless built in. This appeals to me as it was a bloody wireless card that shorted my old mobo and rendered the whole pc useles! As for the PSU, its a risk agreed and the corsair does look nice. I think il go for it, consider it protecting my investment aye. Will have to edit the first post
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/244201-12-asus-chipset-boot-problem Seems to sum it up quite well. Mainly seems to concern the P5K, not the P5K-E but I don't know if it will be any different for that board. Swathes of people use the P35-DS3R boards without major incident. I think on the forum we've had one DOA and that's about it.
Ok so i've done my research. The p5k-E does not seem to suffer the same problems as the p5k. So taking this apart the boards are basically identical. However: The p5k has wireless. The P35-DS3R has a max bus speed of 1600Mhz compared to the 1333 Mhz of the P5k-E. Personally im going to go for the slower bus speed with wifi. However for anyone reading this that is intrested in my build the P35-DS3R is a real contender and would work great! Thanks again sammoris. Lecsiy Any other suggestions, comments anyone?
Not so, by the looks of things... http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/246408-12-need-asus-problem-start This all looks very familiar... All p5K boards, deluxe, standard, premium, E, seem to also have complaints about this: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=2069703
Ok, after thinking about it, im gonna change it to the P35-DS3R. This is because: Faster bus speed Better reliabilty. Thanks sam for all your help! Anymore suggestions / comments welcome
Haha, after doing the changes i dont think i can call this my build anymore. If anything its mine / sam's But, hell, its impossible to beat for £500.
P5K-E user here i have got my E2140 from 1.6 to 3.2 stable,and now am pushing it to 3.3, no complaints what so ever, but really, the P35 is old news, IMO get a P5Q PRO. for abotu £85 you cant go wrong, and they are very reliable, have x8/x8 CF support, (better then x16/x4) and the P45s are currently the holding world record holders for highest FBS. to put it simply, they are stunning esp for the prices. and the P5Q PRO is a very good one. this is from http://overclockers.co.uk btw sam the links you gave are very old, all of those probelms have been sorted via BIOS updates.
BIOS updates that worked? Anyhow, good as it may be, what is the P5Q Pro gaining you? A few more mhz on the overclock? With a 45nm chip I wouldn't want that anyway. With split lane bandwidth it's not going to be any good for crossfire, so what are you getting for your extra £15?
all bios updates i have had work fine. more sata ports, a better board, x8/x8 CF is VASTLY better than x16/x4, its not just a few MHz, the P45s are a clockers dream. plus they are newer tech aswell. as a clocker, for me, any extra help in getting a further OC is always good
for gaming, get that E8400 to about 3.8-4GHz, and let it FLY! Qcore is not needed for gaming, unless you play sup com OR FSX plus realistically i doubt the Qcore will reach 3.6GHz givien the low budget. http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-172-IN Q6600 £112, BUT OEM
@Shaf Thats a great build man, might have to pick and mix between mine and yours. @Abuzzar I'm not planning on doing any encoding or anything that would benefit from quad core, besides at present i dont realy see the point in quads compared to the dual cores you can get at the moment. Thanks for all your suggestions though
Why must people be so short sighted? How long do you plan on keeping your computer? If it's more than a year or two than the quad core WILL come in handy.
To be quite frank, I was saying this a year ago, and I'm still waiting. The vast majority of the games I play still don't use dual cores properly, let alone quads. For gaming alone, it is going to be a long wait before quad cores become useful, and by that time, it's probably worth using Nehalem. For all out CPU power and anything solely CPU-intensive, quad core for the win, but for gaming PCs, really, especially on a budget, duals are still better value.
