This is how I built my budget PC. So, let's start.
On October 20. 2009 I realised my PC is soo old, celeron 1.7, 1.5gb ram, 120gb hdd and radeon 9250... I decided to buy a motherboard, processor, memory and graphics, but i did not want to spend too much on it as I save money to buy a motorcycle ;) So, I went to my favorite computer store, where I could get good parts for a good price and really cheaper than in High Street stores and even ebay. I bought the cheapest possible motherboard, ASRock G31M-s, an Intel Celeron Dual-Core e3300, ASUS Radeon HD4550, and 1GB ram - not much but frankly, couldn't afford any more at the moment I was at store as I took only 140 gbp. So the MoBo costed me like 35 pounds, processor costed me about 50, graphics was another 40 and 1gb ddr2 13 pounds. All the rest was from my old computer.
Let's start reviewing the MoBo. So, G31M-s is probably the best low cost motherboard produced. It features LGA775 socket, two DDR2 ports, a PCI-E port and 2 PCI, built in GMA x3100 accelerator (which is shit anyway) and Realtek HD sound card. The motherboard is in the miniATX format, so it's smaller than normal motherboards but still compatible with ATX computer cases.
Now, the processor. An intel celeron e3300 is one of the cheapest intel processors available on the market, and it's almost the same as Core2duo e5800, the only difference between the two is that e5800 has 2mb cache whereas e3300 has 1mb. So what was the point of making the same but a little downgraded processor and selling it for about £10 cheaper? Anyway, the processor is completely different than the older celerons. We remember the times when Celerons were slow and cheap, and now this changed. Almost core2duo... OK, leave core2duo alone, and let's talk about my celeron e3300. So, it was boxed with a fan and thermal paste on it, so it was ready to place it into the motherboard. When I installed it, I was surprised with the fan's work... it was very silent compared to my old mPGA478 Celeron 1.7, but that's probably because that 478 was old. Nevermind. Ok, when I installed everything, system and that stuff, there was time to test it. The maximum temperature it had was 45 celsius degrees loaded. Not bad, it's even great. But I am the type of a person that is not satisfied by factory settings, and, as you've probably guessed, I overclocked it to 3.3 ghz (2.5ghz was in factory settings) by increasing the main frequency from 200mhz to 266 without changing the voltages. Now, the temperature never exceeded 46C loaded, and on idle it gets 33C.
Memory. Not much to talk about, 'Crucial' 1gb ddr2 667mhz, the cheapest available. I won't make any improvements to it, I will just buy additional 2GB memory of the same producer and with the same frequency.
Graphics. Also, the cheapest I could buy, I mean the cheapest on stock. Asus EAH4550 which is ATI HD4550 but produced by Asus. 512mb ddr2 on-board, shader 4.1, directX 10.1 and can easily compete with GeForce 9400GT. Has a great performance compared to my old graphics, that's obvious. Unfortunately, it's fanless, so overheats. But silent. But I don't care ;) To prevent it from overheating, I have found a case fan, and hooked it up to the card. But anyway, even though it is fanless, it still has a great performance and I like it. Again, as I don't like factory settings, I have overclocked it to 700mhz core and 600mhz memory.
Conclusion
You CAN get a gaming computer for less than £200, and even cheaper if you upgrade your old computer, just as I did. £140 and I have a computer that plays the newest games with no problems at all. It is not the highest performance, but I think I won't have to upgrade my computer in next three years :)
Mike
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