cpu is good, i'd say build around that

only need 4gb ddr3 tbh, any more is overkill unless you're rendering and shit.
gfxwise i have a 450gts and i can run sc2 @ ultra ~25 fps @ 1080p, which is a little low but you really don't need to be running ultra for that game at all idd.

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im using a x3 @ similar clock

How much are i7 2600k's in china?

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wat?

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I had just bought one when I asked, didn't say I wanted one..

That's a good price though :)

if u want cheaper parts just buy in NL, no risk from fakers and proper warrantee.

AMD Phenom II X4 970 BE is € 116,- so about 100 pounds. I'd go for an i5 though

Intel Core i5 2310 Boxed is € 147,- and a hell of a lot faster.
Combine that with a gtx 460 € 130,- or a gtx 560ti € 190,-
4 or 8gb ddr3 and ull run sc2 on max settings without a breeze. dont forget a decent mobo for about € 70/80,-

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the 631 is weird, because I think it's actually a Llano, but either way it's an ok cheap. $89 is the current price on Newegg, which is just a hair above your quoted Chinese price. I don't know about the CPU market in China, but as you're aware those guys like to sell cheap knock-offs, so I'd be wary of that...

anyway, I just upgraded from an Athlon II X2 240 to a Phenom II X6 1090T. both are super cheap. you can almost get an X6 for sub-$100, and I'll give you a tip: AMD is about to release its Bulldozer desktop CPUs in mid-October, and the high end is gonna retail around $250, with midrange about $170. this will push down X4s and X6s, to sub-$100 for the former, and the low $100s for the latter.

I've never played SC2 and haven't looked at the specs for it, but I sincerely doubt it'd require that much horsepower, and anyway most things these days are GPU-bound. that CPU is plenty good for most tasks, as long as you've got the video and memory to feed it.

so as far recommendations, it all comes down to whether you're on a budget or what. I kept my old power supply and video card when I upgraded, but I got an Antec 300, 2x 4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 7-8-7-20, AMD Phenom II X6 1090T, and Asus M4A87TD EVO motherboard all for $395, and that's top of the line AMD, basically. Intel will cost a little more on average, but clock-for-clock and core-for-clock, they are a bit faster / have more IPC than the Phenoms. Bulldozer, imho, is going to push Intel a little bit, but it may not dethrone then completely.

so if you want decent performance and are ok with going the AMD route (because really, the highest level Intel is better than highest level AMD, but in real-world performance it doesn't honestly matter; they're both exceptionally good processors), add another $200-300 for GPU and power supply as necessary, subtract the case if you've already got one, and you could probably built a pretty top of the line system for under $600.

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well you're not gonna build a whole enthusiast system for that. you can put in some effort, too, if you want to know how pounds translates to dollars. I did you the courtesy of that, but I'm not gonna speak in your units for you.

and I have no idea what the first part of your post means, because I also don't speak Chinese.

so we have a hypothetical budget here, but do you need to build the whole system, or can you drop in upgrade parts? and are you looking for the best performance for your dollar, or are you ok with low performance, or.. ?

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AMD Phenom II X4 965/970/980
4GB DDR3 1333/1600MHz
GTX560ti/GTX570/Radeon 6950/Radeon 6870
PSU ~500W/600W(depends on the video card/don't buy noname psu)
Good motherboard for overclock+cpu cooler are recommended.

I suggest the bold parts+overclock, tho it depends on the budget/prices.

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ok, using Newegg I've compiled a cursory list of possible parts:

Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ($69 USD / £44)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129066

ASUS M4A87TD EVO AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard ($94 USD / £59)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131647

CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 V2 600W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply ($69 USD /£44 )
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028

CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 ($49 USD / )
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145315

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ955FBGMBOX ($119 USD / £76)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808

before video, total: $405 USD / £258

you can work around this. video cards are a bit tricky. depends on if you want ATI or nVIDIA and so on...

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Both have good video cards. Go for the price, because if you want decent computer you will overbudget. I really don't see the point of half-work things, if you want powerhorse - go for the powerhorse. You can always put one 6850 or gtx460/gtx550 and be happy tho(good performance/price ratio).

Athlon II x4 or if you can find it: phenom II x4 955
4GB ddr3(no point at all for 8GB)
GTX460/GTX550 or radeon 6850
PSU ~450-500W

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Ofc 970 then, no brain choice(not only because the frequency, more for the stepping).

what do you mean about the stepping? I mean they're both Deneb cores; did something substantial change about them from one release to the next?

970 is better overclocker than 955. It will go around 4.2GHz, while 955 ~4GHz. Not that much of a big deal, but the latest denebs tends to go a little bit higher in frequency than the older ones.

the point for 8GB is that it's absurdly cheap. there's no real reason not to get it, and it will prove useful in the future. you can switch to 4GB and shave off $20 or so, perhaps, but he'll have to do that anyway if he wants to stay in budget after adding a decent video card.

In the future? When? 2014 when ddr4 will enter the mass market? By then his other components will be shit, and to upgrade them he will need other motherboard---> a)different memory type or b)ddr3 will be actually much cheaper. Otherwise sure... like the prebuild "gaming" pcs: processor that cost 2/3 of the price of the computer and video card that can't render super mario with good fps ;). But having useless leet 8GB is ub3r pwn!1!

P.S. There are actually people that can utilize 8GB, but he is not from them. Atleast from what he tells us :).

yeah I've been building PCs since like 1996 or something so I know how fast these things move. Bulldozer is already out and DDR3 is moving fast, too. I'm saying that there's virtually little separation between 4GB and 8GB as far as price is concerned, depending on the quality/brand of the modules you get, what timings, and what frequencies they're rated for. they're both dirt cheap, so it really just depends. I can certainly use 8GB, but yeah Dird sounds like he's a little more conservative than me. I'm not exactly doing loads of video rendering or photo editing, though. I just like to have 100s of tabs open in Firefox from time to time...

I will go for tight timings+frequency than capacity in that case. Tho he will not feel the difference from both(he isn't exactly benchmarking type of person to see/feel the dif of tight timings or higher freq). He will need to shave a lot to fit in the budget with decent video card, even if he go for 4GB 1333, cheaper processor,etc. If I was him I was going to spend 100-150$ more.

i have almost the same setup, except for 4gb of ram and a less powerful power supply, as a gfx card i got a gtx 460 and it runs sc2 perfectly well.

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Everything is :D.

just some information btw, my 9800gtx+ aka gts250 was able to run SC2 on almost everything on ultra. that combined with a Q6600 and 4gb ddr2.

I run it on ultra@1680x1050 with radeon 4850 (overclocked around stock 4870 level) :).

"I carried an 8kg dell pc to China and its fucking shit"

raped

Tonight. You! - Handbanana

planning to get this kit myself but guess its no use to you

http://www.alternate.nl/html/product/Moederbo...grade+kits

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-sa...,3030.html

Tomshardware - Best gaming CPU's for the money.


SC2- Budgetish chips benchmark:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gami...859-8.html

Best VFM = i3 2100 imo =)

Hows China?

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I only get about 400kbps with 4mbit, so with you sharing that's probably about right.

But I pay about 60 pounds a month.

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SA has the most expensive internet in the world (Well, out of countries that are mildly developed), it's because we have a monopoly. Of course, I have a very expensive option, 4mbit + 50gb of data. (unshaped) You can get much less than that, so something like 1mbit + 10gb data you can get for like 30 pounds a month.

Pics yet?

OK, here you go(prices from newegg):

AMD Phenom II X4 955 - 120$
4GB DDR3(kingston/g.skill/a-data) - 24$
CORSAIR Builder Series CX500(500W) - 60$
GIGABYTE GA-870A-USB3 - 90$
GIGABYTE GV-N560UD-1G GeForce GTX 560 Ti - 220$
Case/hard disk/dvd-rw - from your current computer
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514$

It's little bit over the British pounds conversion(470$, next time when you talk about computer parts use $), but I do believe that gtx560ti will serve you well for a long period of time. Actually that will be pretty solid gaming pc. I hope prices in china are little bit lower than us, so you can fit in the budget.

Edit: If you really want to shave some money:
ASUS ENGTX460 DirectCU/2DI/1GD5 GeForce GTX 460 - 165$(459$)
HIS H685FN1GD Radeon HD 6850 - 145$ (439$)

Keep in mind that gtx560ti(there is normal 560 version that is little bit cheaper than titanium) is much better choice over gtx460/6870 or ofc the 6850.

no the gtx 560 is not a better choice then a gtx 460, in fact theyre equal in speed. the gtx 560 is just more expensive. the Ti however is a shitload faster, ive upgraded to that this week and theres a big performance boost from my 9800gtx+. if ur going nvidia u either get a gtx460 or a gtx560ti, not a 560.

Where I wrote about 560? If you refer to the only place that I mention it, it's in the bracket and I wrote it to make sure he will not fuck himself getting gtx560 instead of gtx560ti. So, I ask you again: WHERE I TELL HIM TO BUY GTX560?!

that looks pretty good. I only have a few qualms with it. in my list I went with some random Corsair 600W, because pretty much anything from Seasonic/Corsair/Enermax/Antec is decent, and yeah he doesn't really need 600W, but again it was like $9 more or so. :P

I'm personally using a 550W Corsair in my Phenom X6 system, so yeah. my old 465W Enermax would probably run it just fine, too.. but anyway I've no complaints there, just noting that you went down for all of $10.

for the memory, 4GB is still fine, but I prefer to always buy quality memory as well as quality PSU. it's really important. I've owned G.Skill memory and it's not half bad. I've also owned A-DATA memory that basically died in short order. I wouldn't go with A-DATA personally, but that's all anecdotal, you know. for me, Corsair/Crucial/Mushkin can't be beat. Kingston's HyperX isn't that bad and some of the OCZ stuff is pretty good, too.. but I don't see a huge reason to skimp on memory quality when the prices are so low right now. that's just my personal opinion.

finally I think he said he'd like a new case, and the Antec 300 I just bought and which I've already recommended is pretty solid, but there're plenty of other good options there too.

I cut the prices. As you can see my advice is almost like yours, just cheaper, because with yours he will go like 700$ even little bit higher :). Otherwise if I tell you what I powered with 400W fortron, you won't believe.

I would go with kingston hyper-x(good price/quality/performance ratio). Corsair/mushkin are really good, but much higher price. Don't see any reason to try to build cheap gaming pc and overkill with components that are in the expensive pcs.

I just gave him some tips for the money he wants to spend, without going overbudget. I am sure he will ask before going to buy it :).

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:( it's high end tho. If you got the money it is good investment, oterwise pick 460(you can go for second hand custom cooled 470 too) or 6870. You can seriously think about second hand video card, there are so many enthusiast that change their fast and perfectly working vga, just to get the new one...

Oh man, I'm on business trip in Poland now and trying to play QL on a computer in company guest apartments which has the same specs as yours. It's SOOOOO painful, comparing to what I have at home. How did you manage to last for so long?

Edit: and yeah, its fuckin DELL. :)))

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Came across this and thought of you:

http://www.redflava.com/2010/interesting/before-and-after/

hf in china lol

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pics? :)

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where in china are u exactly? when i went there all i could think of was, this is such a dump maybe except for shanghai.

hot damn, almost scared me away from my asian fetish.


almost.

I keep expecting them to crawl out of my monitor.

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my thoughts? that sure is quite a lot of funny characters.

if that is really what you are getting, it's ok, I guess? I can't speak to the monitor or speakers off the top of my head, but they're probably not the best. I have no idea what brand power supply that is and I wouldn't trust it. the core components are alright, though you'd obviously want better video.

are you implying that we all know chinese?

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ah k