The BBBB (Bargain Bucket Basement Blaster) has returned.

To try and help anybody interested in a possible first build or a cheap gaming system for themselves or a friend. I have pulled together the main components to make a complete tower system so all you have to do is put it together.

To make life easier I have linked all the components from the same website which gives you the advantage of free P&P and less hassle delivery.

The system can be easily clocked both CPU and GPU wise giving a possible 30% increase in grunt.

Case and PSU

Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case With CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU £54.99

Motherboard

MSI P43 Neo-F iP43 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX £51.28

CPU

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz Socket 775 800FSB 2MB L2 Cache Retail (HSF included) £49.55

Memory

Crucial 2GB kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Ballistix Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4 £37.30

GPU

Zotac 9800GT ECO Edition 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI HDTV Out PhysX and Cuda ready PCI-E £71.99

HDD

Maxtor STM3320614AS 320GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM £31.60

Optical
LG GH22NS50 22X SATA DVD±RW/DL/RAM Black Bare Drive - OEM £16.99

Total Price = £313.70

all prices are from ebuyer and correct as of 10:55 27/10/09

Additional products -

After Market HSF (needed if you really fancy pushing the overclock of the CPU)

Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro £14.56

Front Case Fan (this will finish off the front of the case giving a nice blue glow)
120mm Blue LED Fan - 4pin Molex Connection £2.49

OS - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit - English £76.66

Any feedbacks welcome but please remember that the BBBB list is purely my suggestion so feel free to make alternatives when compiling your component list.

If you feel I've missed a trick or would like something added please let me know.

Cheers
Richie

it returns... w00t!!... nice one Geiseric... and about bloody time

Yes! It lives! Thanks for this, Geiseric.

Great stuff Geiseric.
This needs a sticky, as will the BBB when you "release" it!
Regards,
Mike

nice one geiseric!

personally , i wouldnt bother with the P43, its barely any better than different to P31, and defo not worth the extra 10-20 quid

still, well done!!

Well, maybe not. The P31 struggles with more than 2 modules of memory, isn't pci-e 2.0 and wasn't really designed for the wolfdale cpu's. As I have built using both I must admit to preferring the P43 and I really wanted to make the new BBBB a better upgradable system.

Worth a mention though.

Nice to see you back Mike, thank you for your support.

Richie

W00T!

Nice job!
keep up the good work
This is something I loved doing when a bit younger (and not married as then my cash was ALL my own )

ah, all i knew about was the lack of PCI-E 2.0 and weaker SB, didnt know it had wolfdale issues

on those grounds P43 is the better choice

Geiseric a heads up... that case/psu is discontinued according to ebuyer...

and *bump*

Roger!

Just registered to thank you for posting this here.

Just on a side note: do you really recommend buying a Maxtor HDD, honestly? I had a chat with a few friends of mine, most of them involved into corporate IT support, and it appears that Maxtor has a very poor reputation compared to Seagate.

Could you post an AMD based configuration as well and/or your thoughts about such a configuration compared to the Intel based you have been putting up, as far as I recall?

Looking forward to see the BBB topic now.

Regards,

Tam

I have had a Maxtor drive fail on me but then I've heard horror stories from other people about other brands. I don't think Maxtor are particularly bad (despite having 1 fail) and you should be OK. Nowadays, there are very few HDDs that are just rubbish and to be avoided IMO and I think Geiseric agrees - hence the Maxtor drive. IIRC Maxtor is owned by Seagate now (or something like that) anyway.

As for an AMD based system, I believe Geiseric uses Intel because it offers better value at this price point. Intel processors tend to overclock better than AMD models so you'd have to spend less to get good performance.

Also, Tam, may I ask how you found us here? The question sounds weird but I promise it isn't lol. Some people are just interested in where the new users are finding us - be it through search engines, the old Dennis forums, whatever.

I think people have different experiences too. I've had lots of reliable Seagates and a couple of crap Maxtors. I've also had a really good Maxtor and a Seagate that sounded like it internally exploded. But I'm currently using Hitachis which others would run a mile from and I've found them fine.