Computer System Reviews

This article contains the components for September’s £500 gaming PC. Again not much happening in terms of changing components, just price this month.

Full Computer Specification:

Component Specification:

Processor - Intel Quad Core Q6600 2.4GHz S775:

The oldie but a goody. Intel’s old Quad Core the Q6600 still has a lot to give. Although stock clocked at 2.4Ghz, this will easily overclock near to 3.0Ghz without any problems. From last month’s PC we get the two added cores over the E8400. We loose some cache per core, however with a little overclock we can easily overcome the performance hit. This is now a great value processor.

Motherboard - Gigabyte S775 Intel P35 ATX:

Middle of the range Intel motherboard, comes with support for Intel’s new 45nm Processors and has a 1333Mhz FSB. Also supports up to 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM. Only has one PCI-e Card slot, so if you were thinking of having a crossfire system, you would be better off looking at another board. However in this price range, having a dual card setup would prove to be too expensive.

Graphics Card - Gigabyte Radeon 4850 512MB:

This month the prices on the new ATI Radeon cards have stabilized a bit more, allowing us to jump from the 3850 to the 4850. A ridiculous jump in processing power.

RAM - OCZ Technology 2×1GB PC2-6400 DDR2 (x2):

This memory is rated at CAS latency of 4-4-4-15, and at a speed of 800Mhz. This is from OCZ’s platinum range, their highest rated memory range. As such it comes with very low timing, good reliability and very good potential overclocking ability. With this build 4Gb of total system memory is included.

HDD - Seagate Barracuda 7200.1 500GB:

500GB is a fairly standard amount of space nowadays, however it is still a lot of space, that is many thousands of songs and documents as well as some movies and games. Comes with 32MB of cache.

Power Supply - OCZ Technology 500W STEALTHXSTREAM:

OCZ’s philosophy with this PSU is silence and efficiency. So with 500W we have enough power in order to deal with this system’s configuration. It can deliver 36A on the 12v rail, so plenty of power for continuous usage. All the cables are fully sleeved also.

Case - Antec BLACK THREE HUNDRED:

Antec’s entry gaming case, however still provides ample space for cooling. Two fans are installed on this case, the top mounted 140mm fan and the rear mounted 120mm fan. There are three extra fans mountings, one on the side and two at the front of the case.

DVD Drive - Optiarc (Sony/NEC) 20X DVD+/RW/12X:

Fairly cheap DVD drive, though will write DVD’s at a 20x speed.

Cpu Cooler - Stock Cooler

In order to keep this build under budget with the increase of other components prices, the CPU cooler has had to be cut. The stock cooler will definately do the job, it even will cope with alittle overclocking, however if you want to try anything serious, it would be best to lay off until a proper cooler can be bought.

Conclusion:

Increase in prices has caused the cpu cooler to be dropped, however apart from that it is the same computer as last month’s and so it is a very capable machine!