Build a games system on the cheap

A WHILE AGO we ran a guide to the top products available to the average consumer. That kind of guide is all very well but what happens if you decide to follow it? Using the standard INQUIRER low cost model, we put someone else's money where our mouth is.

One valiant reader, Greg Percival - a professional Graphic Artist, needed a new system. The system was mostly for use in his business but it needed to play a mean game of Battlefield 1942 without breaking into a sweat. It needed to be good enough for a bit of 3D rendering. It also needed to be cheap. Less than £500 ex. VAT including an operating system but without a monitor and a few other bits.

Specifying the System
The biggest strain the new PC was going to face was the graphics. It had to be something that could play games and handle 3D modelling without costing too much. Going over the guide, a GeForce 4 Ti4200 was the obvious choice. After reading a few reviews and looking at prices, Greg went for a 128MB MSI card.

The next most important thing was the processor. The budget was tight which meant AMD was instantly the front runner. Sticking with the guide and its advice, an Athlon XP2000+ was chosen - this system was put together two months ago, the 2100+ probably gives better value at the time of writing.

Pairing up the Athlon with a decent motherboard to get good performance whilst still sticking to the guide gave us the Asus A7V8X. A fine choice as it saved having to buy a sound or network card, two of the less obvious requirements. 512MB of DDR2700 was bought to go with it despite the fact that the board supports DDR3200. The price difference of going up to DDR3200 was just not worth it considering the small performance difference.

The only thing left to get was a floppy drive and a case -- Greg was going to salvage a hard drive and DVD drive from an older machine.

Putting it Together
Plaudits go to Asus straight away for an excellent manual and tons of extras. There's even a big sticker showing the layout of the motherboard to stick inside the case to save you having to hunt for the manual if you decide to tweak your system. The motherboard came with loads of cables and far more software than was necessary. The board was labelled as the luxury choice in the Inq Top Products Guide and lived up to that.

With the motherboard in the case, Greg hit his first problem. The Athlon dropped into place with ease but the heatsink was another thing altogether. There was a phone call, "I think I've just killed the motherboard." It turned out that the instructions for fitting the heatsink were more than a little precarious. Doing it as the instructions suggested meant using a single screwdriver to hook the heatsink's springclip into place. Using a single screwdriver turned out to be a big mistake. The inevitable happened; the screwdriver slipped and went crashing into the motherboard.

Thankfully, motherboards are tough beasts. After some reassurances, Greg tried again. Another slip. Throwing the instructions away and using some good initiative, Greg used two screwdrivers, one to hold the springclip down and another to hook it into place. Success! But would the board still work?

The rest of the system was put together with no real problems, though there was an immediate wish that motherboard companies would join forces to design a simple connector for case switches, lights and speaker. Why, oh why are there six or seven little connectors? It would be simple enough to set a standard for a single plug that connected them all at once, preferably the right way.

The Second Problem
With the machine fully built it was time to risk switching it on. Had the motherboard survived the assaults with a screwdriver? The answer was yes. A phone call came through with an ecstatic Greg letting me know that the machine was up and going. All it needed was Windows.

The second problem hit part way through the install of Windows. The old hard drive that had been salvaged from another machine developed bad sectors. Was the new machine pushing it too hard or had that problem always been there? There was no easy way to tell. Putting it back into the old machine, the bad sectors were still there and Scandisk carefully marked them as unsafe allowing the drive to function properly again. Not wanting to risk a possibly dodgy drive in the new machine, another hard drive was purchased and the old one relegated to something less important than day-to-day business.

An End to Problems
The machine was together. The new hard drive was working perfectly. All the right drivers were installed. It was time to play some games. The machine performed very well indeed. Greg started using the machine in earnest and, apart from both of them turning up at my door occasionally to thrash me at networked Battlefield 1942, all was quiet on the western front.

After two months of use, there have been no problems at all. No driver issues, no unexplained crashes (or even explained ones). We had settled that the machine was reliable so we decided to settle just how fast it was. One download later and we had the free version of 3DMark 2001 SE ( here). The machine managed a very reasonable score of 9223.

End Game
Greg wasn't satisfied. He wanted it to go faster. Installing the latest nVidia drivers pushed the score up to 9846. Greg wanted to break past 10,000. A quick look at the MSI GeForce software turned up an overclocking utility built in. A few tweaks later and Greg had over 10,600 3D Marks and a big grin on his face.

That's how we left it. Greg has a decent PC that didn't cost the earth (the current prices are listed below). Apart from the problem hard drive, it came in under budget. It has proven itself reliable over two months of use. It's not the fastest games machine out there but it's certainly no slouch. The world has at least one happy user of the Inquirer Top Products Guide.

Specification and Prices (£ ex. VAT)
MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200 128MB 99.00
AMD Athlon XP2000+ with heatsink and fan 64.00
Asus A7V8X 78.00
Case (Dabs - ATX MidiTower 300W with front USB) 26.00
512MB DDR2700 (2x256MB sticks) 78.00
Floppy Drive 8.00
Windows 2000 Pro (OEM) 95.00
Total price £448 Ex. VAT (£526.40 inc. VAT)

Greg already had everything else he needed, if you were to build the same system you'd need a CD or DVD drive, a hard drive, a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. All of the necessary cables came with the various components. The only other things you'd need would be a static strap and those two screwdrivers. µ