PC equivalent of Bugatti Veyron for £500?

I've been out of the loop for some time with current PC technology. Since I got rid of my old PC I'm looking into getting a new all singing & dancing, national grid burning, Bugatti Veyron of a PC.

Bugdet though is ~£500(!)

My starting point is PC Specialist since they have a wonderful system builder page.

So far I have picked the following which, although being quoted at under £500 (with delivery), it does not include the O/S, monitor, or sound speakers ..

Processor (CPU)	
AMD ATHLON™ 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz) 2 x 512K L2 Cache (Socket AM2)

Memory (RAM)	
2GB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)

Motherboard	
ASUS® M2N: DUAL DDR II, S-ATA, x16 VGA, 3 PCI

Operating System	
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

USB Options	
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT) AS STANDARD

Hard Disk	
160GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7200rpm)

CD/DVD Drive	
16x DVD-ROM WITH 48x CD-ROM

Graphics Card	
512MB GEFORCE 8800GT PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Sound Card	
6 Channel Realtek ALC660 High Definition Audio (Onboard)

Modem	
NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND

Network Facilities	
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

Case	
Stylish Silver/Black Sigma case + 2 front USB

Power Supply & Case Cooling	
500W (Peak) Quiet Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£25)

Processor Cooling	
SUPER QUIET 22 dBA AMD CPU COOLER (£14)

Monitor	
NONE

Keyboard & Mouse	
Logitech® Internet Keyboard + Hotkeys (Black) (£6)

Mouse	
Black Logitech® Premium Optical Mouse (£4)

Speakers	
NONE

Any weak spots or gotchas in there?

Or, alternative sources for buying good-spec PC's on the cheap?

no obvious weak spots there, looks like a good setup except for the AMD processor. I just don't trust them to be as good as the Intel Core2Duo ones right now.

I always get PC parts from http://www.cclonline.com - rarely found anywhere cheaper.

The most obvious weak link: "16x DVD-ROM WITH 48x CD-ROM". which means it's a reader only, not a burner. Given how cheap a DVD-RW drive is these days, I'd pay the extra $5 and get a burner instead of a DVD-ROM.

Intel Core 2 Duo does beat the AMD at equivalent clock speeds at the moment, but I have no idea how the prices compare these days. Just make sure to stay away from the Pentium-D, that one was just a stop-gap measure.

Other suggestion: if you do end up getting a monitor seperately at a later point, make sure you pick one that supports DVI, it really does make things look crisper than VGA.

DVI is the future.

I bought a 1.8 Core2, motherboard, ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, 2gb ram and 250gb HD from Dabs, and it came to just over £300, and that was about 4 or 5 months ago.

I reused an old case, but my monitor was new about a year ago, a HannsG 19" flat that was about £120 I think. If you can find a case for about £50 then that's within your budget.

It runs Crysis well on about medium to high settings, other stuff like Dirt and TD Unlimited are all silky smooth on high settings. B3D of course really flies.

I have a quad core Opteron with a Geforce 8800 GT at work and it's no where near as good at games as the Core2 duo.

Great help folks. So, to nail things down, what are the key components required for my Bugatti. I need to make the PC relatively future proof too. That is, it needs to be able to play stuff like Crysis, COD4, in cruise mode

Must have bits so far then
==============================

MOBO: Asus to suit Intel or AMD
CPU: Intel Core2 (2x2.2Ghz) or AMD 64 X2 2.6GH
GFX: Geforce 8800GT - DVI connection
RAM: 2GB DDR 2
HD: 7200RPM ATA II

The Intel route means I can't go for 8800GT. For some reason the build options at PC Specialist only go up to 8600GT (or GTS) under the Intel path

I'll grab the LCD from http://www.cclonline.com since the price looks good for LG makes

If you're comparing the Intel and AMD on a price basis, then either will give fairly similar results. Having said that though, I'd go for the Intel if you can also get the 8800GT with it. The Core2Duo's run cooler than the X2's allowing for some pretty savage overclocking. I've got my e6700 2.66Ghz clocked and stable at 3.3Ghz with the stock fan. This raised 3DMark2007 results by around 15%, but the core temp only raised by around 7 degrees. With an aftermarket heatsink and fan I've read that some e6700's go as high as 3.8Ghz. With a decent Asus board and the Corsair memory you should get your Core2Duo e4500 2.2Ghz up to 2.7Ghz easily enough, and close to the 3Ghz mark with a little more effort.

If you can afford it, the Intel Core 2 2x2.4GHz is a noticable step up from the 2x2.2, since it has twice the cache size (4MB shared vs. 2MB shared). It also increases the price, of course.

RAM: 2GB is plenty at the moment, but if you can get a motherboard that has 4 RAM slots on it, so you can go with 2x1GB and still have two empty slots for a future expansion.

You probably want to look for a motherboard that is also compatible with a Core 2 Quad CPU (many are), so you have another option for a future upgrade without having to re-buy everything.



You mean SATA 2, I assume? old ATA (now relabled PATA) is definitely on its way out.




Just a FYI: ASUS also produces a budget line of motherboards with are much less expensive, under the ASRock brand name.

Great help. You guys sure know your onions.
You're not sleeping with your PC's by any chance ?!? *wink*

Lots of things to consider when buying a new PC hey!
Looks like I'll drift into the £600+ zone to get a decent system. My general setup will be:

MOBO: ASUS P5K SE, DDR2, SATAII
CPU: Intel Core2 (2x2.4Ghz)
GFX: Geforce 8800GT 512MB, DVI
RAM: 2GB DDR 2, 667Mhz
HD: 7200RPM SATA 2

Thanks all

Just went through all the research for getting myself a new PC a while back. :-?



2:00am > Sleep? What's that?

Just thought I'd point out that DVI has already reached bandwidth limits. HDMI, I believe, is the future. For the needs of PC though, DVI is fine.

HDMI = DVI, except it has a different shape / pin layout...

Nice. Never realised that. Adapters available too ..

http://www.maplin.co.uk/searchtemplate.asp?criteria=DVI-D%20HDMI%20ADAPTER