Cheap gaming/HTPC build advice.

[apocrypha]

How does this look?

Antec NSK 2480 Desktop Case (380W Earth Watts PSU)     £90
Asus GeForce GTS 250 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card     £80
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.60GHz OEM     £50
Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L Intel G41 Motherboard     £46
Crucial Value 2GB (1x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C6     £40
Western Digital Caviar Blue 160GB SATA-II     £29
Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 1000      £25
Alpenföhn Panorama 'Low Profile' CPU Cooler    £24
Sony Optiarc AD-5240S 24x DVD±RW SATA     £15

Doesn't need to be silent but quietish wouldn't be bad. We never even notice the PS3 noise and this can go in a cupboard anyway.
Doesn't need to be a monster gaming machine, WoW in 1080p is kinda the benchmark I'm after.

Those prices are from OcUK cos the page was handy, but if anyone can think of reasonable ways to reduce the cost at all, including suggestions of where else to get components from they'll be gratefull received. So far it's coming in at £400 with no operating system.

Is this a stupid idea? Will that graphics card even fit in that case? Is the whole thing going to spontaneously combust the first time I turn it on?

[Kageh]

Can't comment about the prices, but nothing should really explode, the build makes sense.

If the main scenario usage is WoW: WoW is very CPU-dependant. You might want to look into a Core 2 Duo processor instead of a Pentium architecture (the E6xxx or E8xxx series), as those come with bigger cache and perform noticeably better in WoW.

The GTS 250 specs list it at 9 inches (228.6mm) PCB length, so that is the room needed inside the case. The 6-pin plugs are on the "top" of the card, so you don't need additional space behind it, just about 23cm  should be enough to fit it in.

[Mosesandstick]

The mobo will defo fit.

Try scan.co.uk, ebuyer.com and dabs.com. I ended up buying from scan and ebuyer I think. Though check out shipping. Scan used citylink which thanks to the fact they don't employ any humans being and only an automated call system meant I ended up travelling to the middle of nowhere to pick up my package from a warehouse.

Look at getting a WD green drive instead. They're supposed to be quiet and low power.

[caladein]

Since noise it a bit of a concern, I'd check your parts out at SPCR.

If you can fit a CPU upgrade in-budget I'd really recommend the Athlon II X4 620.  The four cores will really help on video decoding and most other CPU intensive tasks.  Not sure if a good Socket AM3 mobo, but for your needs the cheap Quad Cores from AMD are where it's at.

[apocrypha]

Cheers for the info folks. I'll check out the Core 2 Duo's and Athlons and see if I can squeeze some more CPU power into the budget.

Moses, I've had lots and lots of very bad experiences with both scan and dabs in the past and have now, for many years, just avoided them completely. Never used ebuyer, will have a butchers :)


Hmm, ok, either a Core 2 Duo or an Athlon X4 are going to up the price by a fair chunk. Anyone have any idea what the gaming performance of the onboard Radeon HD 4200 on something like this is going to be like?

[Sky]

Onboard video? Eh....it's also 128bit. Then again, for WoW, you don't need much. I'd wait a couple paychecks and get the best machine you could afford, though. RAM is also a bit slow, but again, should be ok for WoW (note: I don't play WoW but ran it at low settings on an early generation eMac for a couple sessions).

[Cyrrex]

To be honest, if WoW at 1900 x 1200/1080 is where you've set the goalpost in terms of performance, the machine you originally posted is going to absolutely kill it.  WoW doesn't require anything close to those specs.  You could downgrade both the CPU and the vid card, though I wouldn't go as far as onboard graphics.

But is that really what you want to do?

Also, if memory serves, that 250 card is nothing more than a rebranded 9800 GT or GTX...can't remember, but the difference is marginal.  In fact, I don't believe it is even significantly better than an 8800 GT.  I only mention it because you may well be able to find one of those for much cheaper (and they will destroy WoW).

[Trippy]

Onboard video? Eh....it's also 128bit.

You are way too hung up on looking at memory interface widths which is not even relevant on the 4200 HD as its a shared memory setup (ignoring Side-port memory which only adds a tiny performance increase) .

[Trippy]

Anyone have any idea what the gaming performance of the onboard Radeon HD 4200 on something like this is going to be like?

Gaming in general on an IGP is not going to be good, though as IGPs go the 4200 HD is one of the best ones. If WoW is all you care about, however, it should be fine, as that game will run okay on a GeForce 3-class GPU.

[Kageh]

To be honest, if WoW at 1900 x 1200/1080 is where you've set the goalpost in terms of performance, the machine you originally posted is going to absolutely kill it.  WoW doesn't require anything close to those specs.  You could downgrade both the CPU and the vid card, though I wouldn't go as far as onboard graphics.

But is that really what you want to do?

Also, if memory serves, that 250 card is nothing more than a rebranded 9800 GT or GTX...can't remember, but the difference is marginal.  In fact, I don't believe it is even significantly better than an 8800 GT.  I only mention it because you may well be able to find one of those for much cheaper (and they will destroy WoW).

No, it won't exactly "destroy" WoW at 1080p. Not after WOTLK updated the engine and they added real-time shadows and huge-ass outdoor areas. It might destroy Ashenvale, it's not gonna destroy Dragonblight. Also, anything with 512MB or less is going to have a hard time with the textures if you use any form of multisampling.

This is how the benchmarking with modern cards on an overclocked i7 turns out with Ultra Shadows:



And this is how it looks if you use second-best shadows, still on a beast of a processor:



A GTS 250 with that processor gets close to 40 minimum FPS in the "reduced shadow" benchmark, and 40 in a computer game is close to stuttering for me. Also, WoW is CPU-limited. You won't get those framerates with a weaker processor. Although it doesn't benefit from quad-cores, so you might as well buy the biggest dual core you want.

As a general rule of thumb, unless you're planning to build a system for the next 3 years, games are still not using more than 2 cores efficiently. I know only of a handful of examples that recently made good use of quads (GTA IV and Anno 1404 are the most prominent ones). Almost everything else runs way faster on E8xxx at 3+ GHz. Quads also get hotter than dual-cores, which can be a problem for HTPCs due to cooling setups.

The 250 is a rebranded 9800 GTX, yes (G92b GPU).

[Sky]

Onboard video? Eh....it's also 128bit.

You are way too hung up on looking at memory interface widths which is not even relevant on the 4200 HD as its a shared memory setup (ignoring Side-port memory which only adds a tiny performance increase) .

Well, that's why it's an afterthough, following the fact that it's integrated. Integrated graphics do not a gaming machine make.

The memory width thing is just experience speaking, when I was building multiple gaming pcs a few years back. Those with the better memory controllers were vastly better gaming machines and didn't need upgrades anywhere near as quickly as those who skimped. I only point it out in most of these topics because it seems people don't look at it, and I found it one of the handful of critical factors in buying a gpu. Not the only, or even the single most important, but definitely important enough where I wouldn't touch a card with a 128bit interface (honestly, I probably wouldn't use a 256bit these days, my 8800gtx is 384bit or something), since my 9800pro had a 256bit and that was what, 2003?

Anyway, not a big deal here, as you say. Just wanted to explain why I often bring that up.

[Trippy]

You are still too hung up on the bit width. That's only one part of what goes into determining the graphics memory bandwidth. You are ignoring, for example, the actual RAM-type that's being used (GDDR3, GDDR4, GDDR5, etc.) which has as much if not more effect on the total bandwidth as the memory channel bit width. There's also the memory clock speed to factor in. Complaining that something "only" has a 256-bit memory channel instead of 512-bit or whatever is pointless without taking the other factors into consideration.

[Sky]

Usually people are posing two similar cards, though. If both use the same ram with similar speeds, that's when I'm trying to address the other part of the equation. I'm sorry if I've caused misunderstanding because I made assumptions without listing all the other variables!

It's not like I'm saying my 256bit 9800pro would in any way stack up to the 256bit gts 250 mentioned earlier.

[apocrypha]

Ahh you see I'm all confused now. WoW isn't the only thing I want to play on it, it's just the main thing. At this kind of price it's roughly equivalent to 15 full price new PS3 games which, I would guess, I'd buy over 2 years, so that's the competition here :)

Going by what you've all said and some reading I did yesterday it looks like I can do a half-arsed job that will play WoW kind of okish and not much else for about £400 or I can do it properly and make me a system that'll last a few years and have some proper flex for more like £6-700.

So, how's a GTX260, Core 2 Duo E8400, 4Gb Kingston DDR2-1066, Corsair 650W PSU and a WD Green 500Gb HDD sound?

[schild]

So, how's a GTX260, Core 2 Duo E8400, 4Gb Kingston DDR2-1066, Corsair 650W PSU and a WD Green 500Gb HDD sound?

You'll play other stuff. Always assume you'll play other stuff. Instead of a $260, I'd eat the hundred and get a 5850 for DX 11 if it ever matters and because it's an amazing card. Also, don't you deal with photos a lot? Why wouldn't you get a WD Black instead of a Green? I'd want a faster harddrive at least for the OS. That powersupply should be fine. I think the HX models are the ones made by Seasonic but you'll be playing a premium on it (it'll be a much better drive than a flat Corsair). Processor and RAM look fine - well, the RAM does. I'd get a quadcore just because. Frankly, computer parts are so cheap I can't imagine not getting something just under cutting edge on any given day. ;_; Even when I'm broke.

My advice? Sell your least favorite camera lens (to Ookii, charge him 20% under retail). ;)

[Mosesandstick]

Apoc, you might want to look at what I got in here:

Without a monitor, I got a Intel i5, 4 GB of DDR3 ram, same PSU, a Hitach HDD, an ATI 4870 and some other stuff for around £600. The main problem is that it's definitely NOT quiet. So you'd have to look at a more expensive case or other forms of cooling. I'm not sure whether I'd agree with Schild's recommendation for the 5850, I think it depends on how much you think you're going to play new games (I'm poor and buy things when they go cheap).

My advice? Sell me your 70-200 

I can't tell you how good it is at handling photo processing, benchmark wise it's supposed to be pretty good I think, but I'm still waiting for my CS4 to arrive 

[Kageh]

Power supply at 650W is good, but a bit oversized for the setup. 500-520W will do fine with most single GPU setups. 650W is already i7/low-end SLI domain.

About quad vs. dual-core: If you game, a quad with 4x2,83/2,9 or 4x3,00 GHz will not perform better than a dual core with 2x3,33 GHz on most games as long as they don't make good use of the four cores. At the same time, a dual core CPU will get noticeably less hot and draw less power in a HTPC case, which is an advantage with small(er) HTPC cases and their airflow. If you want to bother with overclocking, you can easily OC most E8400/E8500 to 4GHz and above and still stay within very safe thermal operating limits, which will destroy any quad for gaming.

On the other hand, quads are well supported by most video and image processing software, and get you a noticeable boost there. And the quad is, of course, more future-proof.

Technically, you are only limited by the budget and the power draw you want to achieve. You can build a very high-end gaming rig and stuff it into a HTPC gaming case too. There are decent X58 mini-ATX boards available too (ASUS Rampage Gene), if you want to spend that much.

[apocrypha]

Schild, yeah you're right, I will play other stuff and there's no point me building something for £600+ that feels crippled in a year's time. Components are more expensive here than in the US though so the prices get considerably higher as you edge closer to the bleeding edge. As I always find when I'm putting a new build together in my head, I'm feeling my way towards the right price/performance point for my needs, and threads like this help immensely :)

Also I'm not planning for this to be a serious photo editing machine. My primary desktop machine is, frankly, bloody awesome at that already and I know I'll find it harder to do that kind of thing from a prone position than gaming.

Moses, that from eBuyer or spread around from diff places?

I am leaning away from worrying about quiet. Going through prices etc I feel that the amount of performance I'll have to lose (unless I spend way too much) isn't justified by the noise issue, so it may end up being fairly noisy and shut in a cupboard 

I'll put another prospective spec together next time I'm sat down here :)

[AutomaticZen]

I went with a 4890, as I figure in a couple months when Nvidia's 300 series hits, ATI will probably lower the prices on the 5800 series, which are horribly high right now.  Then I'll just sell the 4890.

[apocrypha]

OK, so currently the build looks like:

Core i5 750,
Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 mobo,
4Gb Geil 2133MHz RAM,
500Gb WD Caviar Black HDD,
650W Corsair PSU,
GTX260 (216 core).

Sticking with the 650W PSU because it's £1 more expensive than the 550W, so why not? Also I am averse to ATI graphics cards because every time I've had an ATI in the past they've been nothing but trouble (particularly the drivers, god they've sucked hard in the past) and it's put me off in a big way. The GTX260 looks to me like a really good price/performance point at the moment.

Also not decided on a case but there's a few options at about the £70 point that look good.

Comes in at about £700 (depending on the case and how many fans I decide to replace) including an OS. Seem reasonable? Any major problems anyone can spot?

[Kageh]

Sounds solid.

I think the RAM is very cutting edge at 2133. How much more than DDR3-1600 does it cost? If the price difference is significant, you can just as well get DD3-1600 without a noticeable impact on gaming.

If you can get a GTX 275 for a small upgrade fee, go for that, it is quite a bit faster than the 260. The GTX 275 is very close to the 285 in terms of speed.

[apocrypha]

Only £10 more for 4Gb of 2133 RAM compared to the 1600 so I figured why not.

Also, looking at them now, only £20 more for a 275, so OK cool, I'll go for that, thanks :)


ps. I love you guys but none of you are getting my 70-200 

[Kageh]

Nikon or Canon mount? 

[Mosesandstick]

I split my package up between scan and ebuyer. No complaints with anything I received from ebuyer. Quick and easy.

[Sky]

Only £10 more for 4Gb of 2133 RAM compared to the 1600 so I figured why not.

I'd caution against using cheap RAM. You went from Kingston to Geil, not just upping the speed.

[Sheepherder]

Check latency.

[apocrypha]

Ah well, this little project is on hold now since we've just found out we're going to have to shell out over £500 to get our gas supply reconnected so we can install central heating 

[Cyrrex]

Warmth is vastly over-rated, you should definitely buy the PC instead.  Just remove a few of the fans, and it will double as an efficient heat source!

[Mosesandstick]

My room probably reaches around 30 degrees with the com running. I haven't turned my heating on yet. But I do live in a newish place so it's well insulated. (Side note: insulation >>>>>>>>>>>>> heating)

[Sky]

(Side note: insulation >>>>>>>>>>>>> heating)

Pheh. Tightly closed houses are turning out to be an expensive unhealthy place to be.

Wood stove > all. All those leaks I was thinking about last winter while facing my big heating bills (forced air/gas, so not even oil $$$), I now love them. They supply a nice draft for the stove and cool off the living room for the torrid temps it's been hitting.

[Yegolev]

Balance of air quality with cost savings is hard.  Of course, if you can harvest your own wood then the wood stove is ideal.

[Sky]

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8258.msg733360#msg733360

:)

[Sheepherder]

Splitting wood is a pain in the ass.  I'm a lousy Canadian.

[Lantyssa]

I did it as a kid.  It's fun for three or four logs.  Then I let dad take over again.

[Mosesandstick]

Pheh. Tightly closed houses are turning out to be an expensive unhealthy place to be.

Didn't really want to continue the derail, but why expensive? I was making a flippant comment about insulation, especially because the UK  has a proud history of having really shittily insulated houses.