Author Archive: Gareth

Building a computer for £300 – Part 8 – The Test

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can.

In part eight we take a look at how well things run. A little stress test and install of Skyrim Enhanced Edition.

Inter-Tech K-11 midi-tower including SL-500 – £34.17

Desktop hard drive, 1 TB, WD Blue – £44.66

AMD FM2+ A6-7400K, 2x 3.50GHz, boxed – £51.33

ASUS GF GT730 – 2 GB – passive – £55.19

GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3HP (FM2+) – £60.10

8 GB DDR3L 1333 CL9 Kingston Fury, black, twin pack – £63.61

Added to the computer for testing purposes, however not included in the £300 budget, is a Benq GW2270H 21.5 inch LED Monitor available from Amazon for £79.99

And a Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 costing £12.99

Hit the subscribe button as tomorrow we will be looking at the main board into which this processor slots.

Check out reichelt.co.uk, an online electronics retailer…many products up to 20% cheaper than elsewhere in the UK!

Building a computer for £300 – Part 7 – The Build

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can with the help from experts from Managed IT Services in Belleville IL.

The Custom PC Builder tool automatically tries to filter out parts that would be incompatible with any you’ve already selected. We always recommend you do a little research and double check just to be safe.

Inter-Tech K-11 midi-tower including SL-500 – £34.17

Desktop hard drive, 1 TB, WD Blue – £44.66

AMD FM2+ A6-7400K, 2x 3.50GHz, boxed – £51.33

ASUS GF GT730 – 2 GB – passive – £55.19

GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3HP (FM2+) – £60.10

8 GB DDR3L 1333 CL9 Kingston Fury, black, twin pack – £63.61

Added to the computer for testing purposes, however not included in the £300 budget, is a Benq GW2270H 21.5 inch LED Monitor available from Amazon for £79.99

And a Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 costing £12.99

Hit the subscribe button as tomorrow we will be looking at the main board into which this processor slots.

Check out reichelt.co.uk, an online electronics retailer…many products up to 20% cheaper than elsewhere in the UK!

Building a computer for £300 – Part 6 – Storage

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can.

In part six, we grab some storage. A Western Digital Blue 1000GB, 64MB Cache, SATA3 and costing only £44.65 incl. VAT will do the job cheaply and reliably.

Cool, quiet and fast. WD Blue drives offer superior performance and reliability. This makes them ideal for business or private desktop computers.

WD Blue WD10EZEX – hard drive – 1 TB – SATA-600
• Type: hard drive – internal
• Capacity: One TB
• Form factor: 8.9 cm x 1/3H (3.5″ x 1/3H)
• Interface: Serial ATA-600
• Data transfer rate: 600 MBps
• Buffer size: 64 MB
• Spindle speed: 7200 rpm
• Features: IntelliSeek, NoTouch ramp load technology
• Dimensions (width x depth x height): 10.16 cm x 14.7 cm x 2.54 cm
• Weight: 440 g

Hit the subscribe button as tomorrow we will be looking at the main board into which this processor slots.

Check out reichelt.co.uk, an online electronics retailer…many products up to 20% cheaper than elsewhere in the UK!

Building a computer for £300 – Part 5 – Graphics Card

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can.

In part five, we pick a graphics card. The Asus GT730 is a low-end passive card designed for silence and costing only £55.17 incl. VAT.

GT 730 is the fantastic new graphics card from ASUS. Engineered with a highly-efficient 0 dB thermal design, it dissipates heat in complete silence — making ASUS GT 730 the perfect choice for your slimline home-theatre PC (HTPC) build. Advanced EMI shielding reduces electromagnetic interference by up to 66% for a stable signal, pin-sharp images and safer and healthier computing. Users who love to customise can enjoy the integrated GPU Tweak software, enabling them to control video memory, voltages and cooling fans and even stream live gameplay in real time!

Details:
• Chip: GK208-301-A1 “Kepler”
• Chip clock: 902 MHz, boost: N/A
• Memory: 2GB DDR3, 900 MHz, 64 bit, 14.4 GB/s
• Shader units/TMUs/ROPs: 384/16/8
• Processing power: 693GFLOPS (single), 58GFLOPS (double)
• Process technology: 28 nm
• Power consumption: 23 W (TDP), not specified (idle)
• DirectX: 11.0
• OpenGL: 4.4
• OpenCL: 1.1
• Shader model: 5.0
• Interface: PCIe 2.0
• Design: Dual-slot
• Cooling: passive
• Connections: VGA, DVI, HDMI
• External power supply: N/A
• Dimensions: 137 x 69 x 30 mm
• Special features: low profile

Hit the subscribe button as tomorrow we will be looking at the main board into which this processor slots.

Check out reichelt.co.uk, an online electronics retailer…many products up to 20% cheaper than elsewhere in the UK!

Building a computer for £300 – Part 4 – Memory

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can.

In part four, we look at the Memory. The Kingston HyperX FURY schwarz Kit 8GB, DDR3-1333 costing £54.41 incl. VAT. Great memory, that takes the pain out of picking the correct clock speed for your motherboard. This stuff overclocks itself to match up with the frequency of the board.

Score with the HyperX FURY. Fury recognises its host platform automatically and overclocked and automatically overclocks to the highest specified frequency of up to 1866 MHz1. This gives you power for your next punch and lets even beginners get up to speed.
The FURY’s asymmetric heat sink makes it stand out from standard designs. It is available in the colours black, blue, red and, for the first time in HyperX history, white with a black PCB. Now, you can show off your stylish equipment at a really reasonable price. Fury is 100% tested, LAN-capable and comes with a lifetime warranty and free technical support.

Details:
• Modules: 2x 4GB
• DDR3 DIMM 240-pin
• 1333 MHz
• JEDEC: PC3-10667U
• Non-ECC
• CL9
• Voltage: 1.50V
• Unbuffered

Hit the subscribe button as tomorrow we will be looking at the main board into which this processor slots.

Check out reichelt.co.uk, an online electronics retailer…many products up to 20% cheaper than elsewhere in the UK!

Building a computer for £300 – Part 3 – Motherboard

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can. There’s also some sort of rf material for PCB that may be able to help improve the networking capability of the motherboard, so that might be a good addition.

Part three, we look at the Motherboard. A Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3HP costing £54.15 incl. VAT. A fine motherboard with some of the newest tech, specifically a USB 3.1 type-C connector! The AMD features the following:

The GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3HP is based on the AMD-A88X chipset and supports AMD APUs with integrated graphics. It has four DIMM slots and supports up to 64 GB of DDR3 RAM in dual-channel operation. Depending on the APU, the µATX mainboard GA-F2A88XM-D3HP provides high-performance graphics with DVI, HDMI and VGA connections. Other features of the GA-F2A88XM-D3HP include a Gigabit LAN connection with Realtek chipset, an 8-channel sound chip (Realtek ALC887), eight SATA3 connectors, two USB 3.0 type-A ports plus a USB 3.1 type-C port and a USB-3.1 type-A port.

Details:

• • Chipset: AMD A88X
  • Memory: 4x DDR3 DIMM, dual PC3-19200U/DDR3-2400 (OC), max. 64 GB (UDIMM)
  • Expansion slots: 1x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4), 1x PCIe 2.0 x1, 1x PCI
  • External ports: 1x VGA, 1x DVI-D, 1x HDMI, 2x USB 3.1 (type A + type C, ASM1142), 2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 1x Gb LAN (Realtek), 3x jacks, 1x PS/2 combo
  • Internal ports: 2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 8x SATA 6 Gb/s (A88X), 1x CPU 4-pin fan, 2x 4-pin fan, 1x serial, 1x parallel, TPM header
  • Audio: 7.1 (Realtek ALC887)
  • RAID level: 0/1/5/10 (A88X)
  • Multi-GPU: AMD 2-Way CrossFireX (x16/x4)
  • Power connections: 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin EPS12V
  • CPU phases: 6
  • Graphics: IGP (via CPU/APU)
  • Special features: µATX, all solid capacitors

Hit the subscribe button as tomorrow we will be looking at the main board into which this processor slots.

Check out reichelt.co.uk, an online electronics retailer…many products up to 20% cheaper than elsewhere in the UK!

Building a computer for £300 – Part 2 – Processor

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can.

Part two, we look at the processor. An AMD A6-7400K Black Edition, 2x 3.50GHz costing £50.53 incl. VAT. Certainly, there are better processors on the market, however not at this price for a budget build. The AMD features the following:

• Dual core: “Kaveri”
• Clock speed: 3.50 GHz, Turbo: 3.90 GHz
• TDP: 65 W
• Production: 28 nm
• Interface: UMI, 5 GT/s
• L2 cache: 1 MB shared
• L3 cache: N/A
• Stepping: KV-A1
• Graphics: AMD Radeon R5, 756 MHz, 256 shaders, 387GFLOPS
• Memory controller: Dual-channel PC3-14900U (DDR3-1866)
• Features: SSE4a, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AES, AVX, CLMUL, XOP, FMA3, FMA4, CVT16, NX bit, AMD64, AMD-V, Cool’n’Quiet, Turbo Core 3.0, Eyefinity, unlocked multiplier

Hit the subscribe button as tomorrow we will be looking at the main board into which this processor slots.

Check out reichelt.co.uk, an online electronics retailer…many products up to 20% cheaper than elsewhere in the UK!

Building a computer for £300 – Part 1 – Case

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can.

In part one, I select the case. An Inter-Tech K-11 midi-tower including SL-500 for £33.71 inc VAT. This case includes:

External: 1 x 5.25″, 1x 3.5″
Internal: 4 x 2.5″, 3x 2.5″
Front I/O: 2x USB 2.0, 1x headphones, 1x microphone
PCI slots: 6
Fan (front): N/A
Mainboard: up to ATX
Power supply unit: ATX, 500 W
Power supply location: top
Colour: black, inside black
Dimensions (WxHxD): 190 x 410 x 405 mm
Weight: 4.02 kg

Hit the subscribe button as tomorrow we will be looking at the processor to provide the heart of the system.

Check out reichelt.co.uk, an online electronics retailer…many products up to 20% cheaper than elsewhere in the UK!