With the left over bits from my server PC build, I've put together a new budget game PC for the kids to use. First, here's the bits I had left over:
- Lian Li 60 PC Case
- Seasonic 300 PSU
- Seagate Baraccuda 80Gb hard disk
- old DVD-ROM drive
So that's a basic shell for a PC; I just needed to select a processor, motherboard, memory and graphics card. My goal was to keep the cost down, keep it relatively quiet and be able to run most games. It doesn't need to be anywhere near the bleeding edge of performance.
The processor was pretty easy to select. The Athlon 64 has been top dog the last couple of years. Recent Intel chips have caught up but they run way too hot. The hard choice was which Athlon 64? I knew from previous research that the "Venice" chips were much cooler running than the "San Diego" chips (69 watts vs 89 watts I think) so clearly it had to be from the Venice range. I eventually went with a 3200+ since it was £40 cheaper than the 3500+ and good enough for what the kids play.
My only relunctance with the Athlon 64 is that the S939 socket will soon be replaced by the AM2 socket. I hate buying technical obsolescence.
The motherboard took much longer to pick. Clearly, it had to be based on Nvidia's NForce4 chipset but which one? I tend to pay a bit more and get a full-featured motherboards. After reading many reviews, I narrowed it down to the rather pricey DFI Lanparty range but it still took a while to settle on which one. The final winner was the NF4 SLI-D. Ok, this was a bit of a splurge. I didn't need an SLI mother board but it was only £18 more than the ULTRA-D.
I figure in a few years, I have the option of upgrading the CPU, plunking in two graphics cards and I'll still have a decent game machine. And I can start overclocking.
Choosing the graphics card can be an ordeal but I didn't spend a lot of time on it. For the balance of power consumption, performance, price and quiet operation, I went with a GeForce 6600GT from Gigabyte which uses a passive heatsink. I love passive heatsinks on graphics cards - most small fans on graphics cards are nasty noisy affairs. The exact model I got is the GV-NX66T256DE.
I was sure I wanted a 256Mb card. Graphs from Tomshardware clearly showed that 256Mb helped performance over just 128Mb. The following article from X-bit labs was particularly enlightening: Power Consumption of Modern Graphics Cards. The 6600GT uses around 48 watts max. The 6800GT would be a better choice in terms of performance per watt. It puts out about 55 watts max. However, I didn't find one with a passive heatsink. Meanwhile, Gigabyte's Silent-Pipe II technology looks pretty impressive and has the thumbs up at SilentPCReview.
Although the motherboard was designed for overclocking, I just bought a gigabyte of value Corsair RAM to finish off my component list. It's half the price of RAM you can seriously overclock.
The build was easy. In fact, my 10 year-old daughter helped put it together. I only had two concerns:
1) The graphics card is big due to the heatsink and the Lanparty motherboard has a small southbridge fan just below where the card sits. It did fit but it's tight.
2) Would a 300 watt power supply be enough? There's plenty of talk around about SLI boards refusing to boot because of not enough power from the power supply but I figured I should be ok:
- dvd rom 20w
- hard disk 15w
- graphics card 50w
- processor 70w
- motherboard ???
I was very impressed with how quiet the machine ran with just a stock CPU fan. In fact, the noisiest part seems to be my 80mm case fan. I'll be replacing it in the future.
Installed Windows XP Pro and all the drivers without a hitch. Overall, it a nice machine. It runs Far Cry just fine with all the graphics options cranked up.
Needless to say, the kids are more than happy with it.
UPDATE: 22 February 2007
Moved the machine into a new case - the Antec SLK3000B Black Super Mid Tower
UPDATE: 20 June 2008
The machine is getting a bit long in the tooth so I bought an Athlon X2 4400+ off of ebay for £60. It's a bit pricey but the fast socket 939 processors seem to be selling for a premium. Need to replace the graphics board with something more modern. The 6600GT has only 8 pipelines while the 8800GT has 112!
UPDATE: 9 April 2009
Trying to squeeze a bit more life from this PC. Kids don't run many 3D games but "Company of Heroes" is a bit slow so I upgraded the graphics card to a Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate for £70. Nice passive cooling solution and best budget card according to Tom's Hardware has long as you're not trying to run games in 1920x1080. The machine is now using a 17" LCD monitor running in 1280x1024. Gave away my old Hansol CRT monitor.