Would this be a good value for money gaming rig?

JmcG

I hope to make a PC soon that will offer good value for money but still capable of playing games like Bioshock, Crysis, etc comfortably. Ideally going to get all the parts from an Irish-based company. I was thinking of a setup like the following:

Upgrade Kit Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L, A-DATA DDR2 PC5300 2048MB CL5 Kit RAM
Antec Sonata III Miditower, Black w/500W PSU
XFX GeForce 8800GT 640M 512MB XT GDDR3, PCI-Express 2.0, 2xDVI/HDCP, 640/1900Mhz
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
Samsung DVD±RW burner, SH-S203B, 20x, Dual, Black, OEM, SATA

The above would cost approx €840.90 before shipping.
Any comments appreciated.

dazftw

That would play games all the games you wanted bar crysis fairly well for the next year or so! Crysis is a massive hog I was managing 50 -60 fps on my rig in my sig everything on high but then again you probably have a small monitor so it should be better if not the same on lower settings..

sdanseo

That looks like a good rig - I don't like the sonata personally though and would buy case/PSU seperately.

Couple of points I'd make:-

-Komplett is very overpriced tbh especially on GFX, go for hardwareversand.de (can't fault them after buying contents of my sig).
-Go for a samsung HDD too, from what I hear theyre outperforming even Raptors for the same money as a caviar.
-If budget allows, upgrade proc to Q6600 (+ ~€60) and add in a DVD-ROM drive (+ ~€20), having two opticals is always handy.

If you want to stay Irish Dabs seem to have slightly cheaper prices to Komplett - but realistically, continental EU is the best value.

PogMoThoin

sdonn_1 wrote: »

and add in a DVD-ROM drive (+ ~€20), having two opticals is always handy.

:rolleyes: Yep, great idea, I set rom on region 1 (USA) & leave the burner on region Europe. Very handy as my sis (in NY) sends my mam dvd's she cant watch. Also you can copy from disk 2 disk with 2 drives Worth the extra 20e IMHO.

Rig looks good m8, good value. Antec is usually a good quality psu, will be fine.

About hardwareversand.de, they ok if you dont mind wating for few weeks for your parts, dont accept cc tho, bank transfer only. I'd go with komplett as if you have a problem & need to rma something you'll be guaranteed it asap.

JmcG

Thanks very much for the fast replies, they have been really helpful :-)

I have used komplett for years but didn't realize (until now) they had got so expensive.
Dabs seems like a much better alternative so I reckon I'll get most of the components from them:

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L, P35, Socket-775, ATX, GbLAN, DDR2, ICH9, PCI-Ex16
OCZ Technology 2x1GB 240DIMM PC2-6400 DDR2 Platinum
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz S775
Samsung DVD±RW burner, SH-S203B, 20x, Dual, Black, SATA
Samsung DVDROM 16x Internal SATA Black - Drive Only
Samsung 500GB S300 16MB 7200RPM
XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB DDR3 PCIE Dual DVI TV 600/1.8
OCZ Technology StealthXStream 600W Active PFC

I spent a good while researching cases and decided to stick with Antec as I've never had any trouble with them.
The Antec Solo stuck out as being a great all round case with good out of the box cooling and minimum noise levels so thinking of getting that from elara:

Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower Case No PSU

All of the above works out in the 900-1000 price range which is perfect.

I hope to upgrade my monitor at some point but will initially be using a Samsung SyncMaster 940BW so no complaints.

sdanseo

JmcG wrote: »

XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB DDR3 PCIE Dual DVI TV 600/1.8

Not worth the extra few quid for the 640? There seems to be relatively little in between them pricewise (the 670 is way more) but a big difference in speed?

JmcG

sdonn_1 wrote: »

Not worth the extra few quid for the 640? There seems to be relatively little in between them pricewise (the 670 is way more) but a big difference in speed?

Good point, thanks, the 640 xfx card definitely seems like better value so I'm probably get that (just hope it's in stock when I finally order all the components)