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V. Cheap gaming PC - 16000 3d mark sscore

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  • 13-02-2011 3:22pm
    #1
    brasher
    Registered Users Posts: 208 ✭✭


    I see lots of threads here about a cheap gaming pc. Usually first timers who don't want to go down an overclocking road. I just built my first gamer. Overclocking was ridiculously easy with the right motherboard. I ended up with a sub 500 euro PC that has a 3d mark vantage score of 16000 :) Read on for details...
    • CPU - Phenom X2 555 BE: with the right motherboard this cheapo processor can be unlocked and (in most cases) oc'd without any real effort.
    • Mobo - MSI 870A-G54: cheap crossfire capable motherboard with great review for overclockability. It also has USB 3 and 6gb/s sata. Not that I need it but nice to have. The only downside I could see was that it had one x16 PCI-E port and 1 x4 port. But I was getting conflicting info so I went ahead with it anyway.
    • RAM - 3 X 2GB DDR3 10600
    • Graphics - 2 x Sapphire Radeon HD5770 1GB
    • HD - 1TB 7200RPM SATA
    • PS & case - 500w and boring beige case I had laying about
    Got the bits and put it together, straight into the bios and opened up the other 2 cores and overclocked (multiplier only) to 4Ghz. Didn't seem stable although temps were fine, so I dropped back down to 3.8Ghz. I'm sure with some voltage tweaks I could go higher, but that's for another day (and forum).
    Booted up and installed fresh Win7 X64 and the latest catalyst drivers.
    I also ran the catalyst auto tune for overclocking the graphics cards.

    Overclocking consisted of a few clicks in the bios and a button press in the catalyst control centre. I already had the HD, case and powersupply making this build a bit cheaper. I bought everything from Pixmania. The x16x4 PCI-e setup hasn't seem to affect the scores as they are not far off an i7 system reviewed here


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