Right so I really want to build a mini ITX machine. Problem is I haven't touched computer hardware for 3 years now.
I am a student forgive me but I fell for buying a "gaming laptop" not too bad but only so much it can offer(this is the reason why I have fallen behind with the specs game).
Anyway, long story short I love watching the builds and everything that you guys show BUT theres only 1 thing that really gets it to me, Can any1 build a budget gaming PC in the UK? Prices in the UK are much higher than the US.
Price cutter would be using AMD rather than Intel but in a mini itx build would that be safe?
Which mini itx motherboard is Good and not over the top on pricing?
Let me know if any1 had similar idea and please if you do suggest stuff its not like I am grumpy or anything but can u mark in mind the UK currency?
I've been getting tired of these same old bland budget rigs I've been making, I'm fired up now, I'll post here in a hour or three depends on how hungry I am
have a particular online store you like to use, here in the states I use newegg but you don't have that across the pond, what is your budget?
I live in the uk Gigabuster my advice is use scan.co.uk by far the cheapest when all thrown together including shipping anywhere else in the uk will rip you off.
Pixmania.co.uk is alright for certain things but will rip your wallet in others then sticking the p&p on top you aint saved anything.
Depends the budget. You could get away with a low end Intel build or an APU, though Gigabuster will probably pull something crazy out so I'll wait for him.
What kind of budget are you looking at? 300? 500? I can work on a second option. If gigabuster wants to do an intel build, i can do an AMD or vice versa. its always fun to work cooperatively like this XD
Earlier this year I built a mini-ITX system as a LAN box / Guest box and it turned out pretty well. Most of the games we play are Tribes Ascend, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Battlefield 3 etc. I cannot really help you much with prices because I am in Canada but I will list off the specs on my machine and maybe that can give you an idea of what works.
Lan Box / Guest Box
Lian Li PC-Q08B mini-ITX Computer Case
Sparkle Power SPI 400W Power Supplie
ASUS F1A75-I Deluxe Motherbard
AMD A8-3870K Black Edition Processor
Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR3 Memory
ASUS HD6770 DirectCU Videocard
Seagate Momentus XT 500GB SSD Hybrid Hard Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium X64 Operating System
Source engine games run no problem at 60FPS with V-Sync turned on. Battlefield 3 tends to bounce anywhere from 30-60fps on a mixed configuration of Medium and High settings, I haven't played Tribes Ascend myself on this machine yet but a friend of mine who uses it quite often says he plays it on High settings and doesn't notice any lag. We were also able to run Diablo 3 on high settings and average 30-40FPS without too much varation in the frame rate. I haven't actually updated the drivers or software on this machine in over 2-3months so I cannot say if newer drivers make a significant difference or not, as I personally never use the machine, we recorded our results the first week the machine was built and I have basically left it alone since than.
I think based on your selection of hardware the i3 processor and the GTX 550 should get you very similar or higher results than my LAN box configuration, looks good!