Entry-level Gaming System

hi Raydon, here we are spending Rs.10000/- on MoBo & GPU, instead can we use the latest 890GX chipset boards which has onboard ati radeon HD 4290 graphics with 512 Mb sharing memory, these boards sells around Rs.9500/- by ASUS & Gigabyte.

hi , nice article indeed. Thanks. Also i want to upgrade my system but am on a very tight budget . Currently i am having intel c2d 2.93GHz , palit n73v mobo , 2Gb ram, 17' samsung crt monitor , 80 gb hdd , and a 300w smps . I am uprading my hdd to 1tb western digital . Can you recommend what g/c i should buy and i am upgrading my smps to 450w from zebronics.

is "L.G. GH22NS50 OEM SATA DVD-Writer" capable of litescribe?

Hi Roydon, Thats just the kind of article I was looking for. By the way I got a bit greedy and tried to upgrade the config that you had given. am not too much of a techie on that, so listing you down what i have thought as of now, would you be able to tell if this is okay? Motherboard - ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 - 890GX CPU - AMD Athlon II X3 445 Rana 3.1GHz RAM - OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Power - OCZ Fatal1ty OCZ550FTY 550W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V SLI Ready Graphics Card - BFG - GeForce 8800 GTS OC Graphics Card BFGR88320GTSOCE (Existing Old Card) Cabinet - Will use one of the old large cabinets. Have not decided on monitor - the option you had suggested seems good. so will go with that. One consideration that i want to take up is that I need it to be 3D ready. I know that the Graphics card is probably a douche, but then I think i'll live with it, until I get into total serious gaming. Am trying to get these bought from the US, so am not sure if they are available here. Need your inputs buddy.

I got a new system today and I feel that it offers great value for money:- An AMD Anthlon II 425 processor, COrsair 2Gb * 2 Ram and Gigabyte MA74GMT-S2 motherboard which has 1 Gb inbuilt graphics. In Rs. 11,800 I found it a great deal

Awesome config. I was just looking for this BUT... I need help! Can someone please recommend a great UPS to go along with this machine. What good is a gaming rig if in the middle of a run/attack the light fluctuates leaving you super flustered! Oh and it should be generator/invertor capable.

very good selection of components... nice work there roydon

CPU AMD Phenom II X2 550@ 5100 Asus M/B M4A68LT-MLE @ 4850 Ram DDR3 Kingston 2GB @ 2450 Graphic Card Corsa 1GB DDR3 @ 3450 Circle Cabinet @ 2150 my old Sata Hdd and DVD was fine

hey great article Roydon really helpful & between can you do an article on how to unlock athlon ll X3 435 's extra core

Roydon, On Hp site we get a s5550z series desktop customized to Athlon X4 635, 4GB DDR3-1333MHz, 640GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s, Wn7 home premium, Microsoft Office Starter 2010. 512MB ATI Radeon HD 5450 [DVI, HDMI, VGA adapter], No speakers, LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive, 6-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, audio ports, HP USB keyboard and optical mouse, HP 2210 21.5-inch Digaonal Full HD Widescreen Monitor And above config from HP is just $700. I wonder why your config costs that much...

AMD Athlon II X3 435 is a great choice.. It gets unlocked 99% of the time.. I just unlocked its 4th core on Biostar TA 790 GX BE board and it is giving more performance than my Phenom II 720 BE :(.. But when I tried to overclock the processor (with 4 cores) the idle temperature shot up from 38 to 45 with just 100 MHz increase in the clock speed (@ 3.0 GHz).. But you could've gone with ATI's 5750 as it is DX 11 enabled and eats less power than GTS 250.. Still, NVIDIA rules when it comes to installing Linux distros.. I've had very bad experience with ATI cards on Linux... For just Rs. 500 more, one can upgrade to NZXT Gamma which is a superb cabinet. Still, this is an awesome configuration. Hats off to you, Roydon!!

Great article Roydon. I am also one of the guys who want to upgrade the pc "soon" this article is very useful, a big thanks to you. It will be great if you can do some writeup on mobo/graphic card pair up. After lot of searching around i have finalized ATI Radeon 5750 (7K) but it seems i need a new power supply as well (another 2.2K). It will be great if you can do some research in this area and let us know. Thanks and great work.

The Elite 310 is a snazzy looking cabinet and a well built one. The internal layout of the cabinet makes it very easy to build a system and the front swappable hard drive bays make it easy to install more. "If you need to save some green then there's always Circle cabinets but for a couple hundred bucks more. " ------------? what does this mean. is this sentence not complete?

i want to build a download rig. will this CPU be good? or should i go for some INTEL low frequency CPU to reduce the heat? also is the PSU good enough to supply power to the rig 24x7? i currently have a Corsair 450(which does a very good job to say the least.).

Thnx a lot Roydon. It would be great if you can write an article on how to go about choosing the mobo/ gfx cards for AMD Phenom II (both budget and performance centric). giving more details on the Model numbers and after market coolers you are referring too. I know very little about hardware... and trying to make my new PC... :-(

Thanks Roydon I am planning to upgrade my PC soon (very hard to define "Soon") :-). I would like to go for AMD Phenom II X4 945. However I am a bit lost on the motherboard and graphics card. What would be my options if i want to remain under 6K for mobo and 10k for grafix card? Thanks