Hardware & Technical PC on a budget advice thread

[Zieman]

Hi, I'm looking at a new PC on a budget for Elite Dangerous. I want the game to be playable and the new PC to be upgradable, so I can enhance the quality of the game play down the line if I wish.

I have spec'd the following at Dino PC for £534.

CPU: 1061 - AMD FX 6300 Black Edition
CPU Cooler: 3024 - Zalman CNPS5X Performa
Operating System: 11001 - No Operating System - I will install my own
Motherboard: 4192 - NEW! Gigabyte 970A-DS3P
RAM: 5051 - 8GB DDR3 1333mhz (1x8GB)
Hard Drive: 6064 - NEW! Transcend 128GB 340 SSD
Secondary Hard Drive: 6028 - 1TB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s
Optical Drive: 7003 - 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA
Graphics card: 9059 - NEW! AMD Radeon R9 270X 2GB
Sound card: 10001 - Onboard 7.1 Audio
Case: 17090 - NEW! Zalman Z3
PSU: 18045 - 450W Corsair VS
Note: I got Windows 7, a decent Monitor, decent speakers, keyboard, mouse and a couple of TB storage on a NAS

Too much, too little? Love to hear your expert views.

I would swap the PSU to a beefier one, so you don't need to buy a new one when you upgrade.

 

[Aleksej]

I would swap the PSU to a beefier one, so you don't need to buy a new one when you upgrade.

Yes it is definitely worth changing the PSU to at least 550W if no dual-GPUs are planned as this would at least allow upgrading GPU to a more powerful one later.

 

[Commander Jake Skyrunner]

Hello, I have recently built my PC. The following is what I went with :

PSU : Corsair CX750 Builder Series CX 750W ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze PSU
Hard Drive : Toshiba DT01ACA100 1TB SATA 6GB/s 7200RPM
Optical Drive : Asus DVD-RW Drive (DRW-24F1ST, S-ATA, DVDR: 24x, CD-R: 48x, E-Green, Disc Encryption II)
Processor : AMD FX6300 Black Edition 6 Core (3.5/4.1GHz, 8MB Level 3 Cache, 6MB Level 2 Cache, Socket AM3+, 95W)
Memory : Corsair CMX16GX3M2A1600C11 XMS3 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 Mhz CL11 Performance
Mother Board : Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Motherboard (Socket AM3+, Up to 16GB DDR3, USB 3.0, uATX)
Graphics Card : EVGA GeForce GTX 650 1GB GDDR5
OS System : Windows 7 Ultimate
Monitor / TV : Blaupunkt 39" LED 1080P Full HD
Freeview HD USB Dongle : August DVB-T210 USB TV Tuner -HD Digital Television Receiver and PVR Style Recorder

The TV cost me £150 special offer from Tescos (of all places), but the rest together cost me just over £500 as seporate parts. I did not get a case, as I did not see the point replacing the one I had, so I took out all the old stuff from my current case, and replaced it with what's listed above. Also a tip if you connect your PC to your main TV, If you look at the cost of HD Freeview decoders, they cost upwards of £150.... however, if you get USB dongle listed above, it only cost £30... could not believe it.. and it works perfectly.

 

[Zieman]

Good one, at not a bad price.

I would have scraped £35 more & got a GTX 750ti 2GB instead of that GTX650 though...

EDIT: Just noticed the poll. Would vote for ".", but the poll seems to be closed.