I'm a student with an unfortunate gaming habit; I have an Xbox 360 but really miss decent RTS games, and I've always had a soft spot for PCs anyway. I've been agonising over a build with decent price/performance ratio for months, and given I'm moving in and out of college ever couple of months it needs to be relatively portable. Not looking to spend more than £600, so I'm wondering if you could advise me on my current choice: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB @ £166.74 DFI Lan Party JR P45-T2RS Intel P45 @ £109.24 OCZ StealthXStream 600w Power Supply @ £60.94 Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 @ £57.49 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB @ £50.59 Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX @ £42.54 Coolermaster Elite 340 Micro-ATX Case @ £28.74 Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler @ £20.69 LG GH22NS40 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter @ £16.09 Scythe Kaze Jyuni 1900RPM Slip Stream 120mm Fan x2 @ £13.78 All up, £578.31. Any major problems you can see? Thanks in advance
I know someone with an HD4870 and the DFI T2-RS, and things haven't gone that well. I have no idea why, but consequently I would recommend switching to a Gigabyte EP45-UD3R as I know that works with the card with no issues. I'm guessing the graphics card is OverclockersUK's This week only deal, I have never seen that card that cheap anywhere else. Presumably you are awae of OcUK's rather lacklustre customer service. The power supply isn't my personal recommendation, but will do for cheap I suppose. The case is the only real problematic part, it isn't up to the job of cooling those components. Get an Antec Three Hundred and buy a couple of extra 120mm fans for it - not Scythe Kaze Jyuni 1900's though, they make a lot of noise at full speed. Use the lower speed versions or S-Flex SFF21F.
