Build an Intel Sandy Bridge budget system - Overclockers UK

Want to build a budget Intel Sandy Bridge LGA1155 computer for as cheap as possible? Check this out!

Since the beginning of the year Intel have been dominating the market with their new Sandy Bridge LGA1155 line of processors.

Times are hard in today’s economic climate, not everyone can invest in a fully fledged high-end computer system and so it is needful for many to keep cost as low as possible. The Sandy Bridge platform bridges the gap between performance and cost, meaning that many can now move across even if money is tight.

Today we will be doing something a little different from the typical review/article. With many moving over to the Sandy Bridge platform due to the excellent price : performance ratio, those wanting to upgrade at the current time will be surely considering Sandy Bridge. But not everyone has the cash to spend on a high-end system, and as our Sandy Bridge reviews have revealed – mainstream boards are now at a much more affordable cost when compared to any other platform to launch. Mainstream performance comes at budget pricing.

So the idea of today’s article is to show how you can build a budget system around the Sandy Bridge architecture, at an affordable cost. We are looking at keeping costs to around the £400 region and well under £500. The machine may not be capable of running the latest gaming titles at high resolutions with all the eye candy but that’s not the objective here. This machine will be suitable for typical operations such as web browsing, image editing and light gaming.

The components selected in this article are only an example of what can be used to construct a budget Intel Sandy Bridge computer. You may prefer different brands, different rated components. Remember this is just one of the many avenues that can be taken. Over the following pages are the selected components and then the final build.

CPU & Motherboard – Intel Core i5-2300 & ASRock H67M-GE

Intel Core i5-2300 Full Specifications

To start things off the core components featured in this system are surely the CPU and motherboard. The CPU chosen for our budget system is the Intel Core i5-2300 which is the cheapest of Intel’s 2nd generation Core i5 family of processors. It’s stock speed is rated at 2.8GHz and will move to 3.1GHz if you have turbo mode enabled within the BIOS. This chip comes with 6MB L3 Cache and is Intel’s most affordable quad-core processor currently on the market. Not only does it bring quad-core functionality at a fantastic price-point but it also has an IGP meaning that we can take advantage of onboard graphics capabilities.

Being a retail version of this processor, we get the Intel HSF and also the extended warranty of 3 years.

Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor – Retail [BX80623I52300] @ Overclockers UK

PRICE: £148 inc. VAT (price at time of article)

ASRock H67M-GE (mATX) Full Specifications

Next up we have the motherboard. Our intention is to select a board with integrated graphics ports but with a view to future-proof, so we want PCI-E lanes too. We won’t be overclocking due to many reasons such as the intended use and also the fact that we are using a non-K processor. Only the K series of Sandy Bridge processors have the capability of being overclocked because they have unlocked multipliers unlike the non-K processors (like the Core i5-2300 we are using today).

Essentially, the Intel H67 chipset is perfect for our intended use as It comes with integrated graphics ports (DVI and VGA). The ASRock H67M-GE has PCI-E lanes so we can add a graphics card in the future if we want and it also has additional DDR3 DIMM slots over the non-GE ASRock board. We also have the luxury of 2 x USB3.0 and 2 x SATA 3 (6Gb/s) ports for faster hard disk drive usage.

We’ve seen UEFI BIOS on Intel P67 motherboards but our Intel H67 courtesy of ASRock in the H67M-GE comes with UEFI too. So you can navigate the BIOS using your mouse over a intuitive, efficient GUI. For the price, this is a fantastic board when you consider the features included – we’ve only briefly gone over a few. This is the one of the cheapest Intel H67 boards currently on the market and is a good choice.

ASRock H67M-GE Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard – (Sandybridge) @ Overclockers UK

PRICE: £75 inc. VAT (price at time of article)

RAM, Case & PSU – G. Skill RipjawsX, CM Elite 430

G.Skill RipjawsX Full Specifications

Carefully selecting a memory kit is essential because we won’t be overclocking so we ideally need a kit with low, tight CAS timings. G.Skill recently launched a new dual channel DDR3 kit designed specifically for the Sandy Bridge platform. This kit follows on from the previous series “Ripjaw” which was extremely popular amongst hardware enthusiasts and gamers. The new RipjawsX are available in a range of rated frequencies and CAS timings but the kit we have selected is a C7 kit with tight timings, low cost and has been recently reviewed here at Vortez.

This kit is 1600MHz and comes with the stock CAS timings of 7-8-7-24 @ 1.5v and we also have the benefit of lifetime warranty. This kit is fantastic value for money.

G.Skill RipJawsX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL7D-4GBXM) @ Overclockers UK

PRICE: £55.99 inc. VAT (price at time of article)

Cooler Master Elite 430 (with Elite Power 500W) Full Specifications

Next up, we need an enclosure to house all our components. At the lower end of the market there are cases that come bundled with PSUs (Power Supply Units). Depending on the specifications and price this is sometimes a good route to take. So with this idea in mind, the Cooler Master Elite 430 was chosen. This comes bundled with the passive Cooler Master Elite POWER 500W. The specifications and overall power rating of this PSU will support our system with no problems whatsoever, it will even give us enough headroom for any future upgrades – perhaps if we were to expand to more graphics power via a graphics card for example.

The Cooler Master Elite 430 is a sturdy midi-tower that offers great value for money. It may not have the best cable management options as we will learn a little later, but for the price, size and feature-set its a great choice. We have 4 x 5.25″ drive bays, 7 x 3.5″ drive bays, support for ATX and mATX motherboards and 1 x 120mm pre-installed LED fan located behind the front bezel that acts as an intake. With there being no rear exhaust or top mounted fan within the Elite 430 its advisable to install one of these to encourage positive airflow within the case. We can mount 2 x 120mm fans to the top, 1 x 120mm to the rear, 1 x 120mm on the side panel and 1 x 120mm at the bottom of the case. So there are plenty of options for creating good airflow.

Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case – Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) [RC-430-KWP500]) @ Overclockers UK

PRICE: £65.99 inc. VAT (price at time of article)

Media – WD Caviar Blue 500GB SATA3, Samsung SH-S223C

WD Caviar Blue 500GB SATA3 Full Specifications

With applications, operating systems and games pushing the boundaries in terms of disk space the average size of a hard disk drive has risen to between 500GB – 1TB. Prices for anything below 500GB are the same as above 500GB so it makes sense to go for the bigger drive. Upon investigation, the price of a SATA2 drive compared to SATA3 was exactly the same. Our ASRock H67M-GE has 2 x SATA3 ports so it would be advantageous to go with the faster SATA3 drive since this delivers 6GB/s rather than 3GB/s on the SATA2. So we chose to go with the Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA3 drive which operates at 7200RPM with 16MB Cache.

Investing in a new Sandy Bridge build brings with it newer technologies and whilst the pricing is good its worthwhile moving to the likes of SATA3 since the traditional HDD is will remain dominant throughout the year and beyond, even though SSDs are dropping in price.

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache – OEM (WD5000AAKX) @ Overclockers UK

PRICE: £29.99 inc. VAT (price at time of article)

Samsung SH-S223C

Moving onto the optical drives, taking a look at OcUK’s product listings the SH-S223C appears to be one of the best value drives currently available. We went with 2 drives since its always useful to include an additional in order to copy from disc to disc.

The SH-S223C is a 22x DVD ReWriter that has the SATA inferface so will offer slightly better performance over IDE which has almost been phased out now. At such an amazing price, I really don’t know how OcUK can do it!

Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) – OEM [SH-S223C/BEBE] @ Overclockers UK

PRICE: £12 inc. VAT (price at time of article)

Total Cost

Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz Retail
PRICE: £148 inc. VAT

ASRock H67M-GE Intel H67
PRICE: £75 inc. VAT

G.Skill RipJawsX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7
PRICE: £55.99 inc. VAT

Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case (with 500w Elite Power PSU)
PRICE: £65.99 inc. VAT

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s
PRICE: £29.99 inc. VAT

Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW
PRICE: £12.99 inc. VAT x 2

TOTAL: £400.95 inc. VAT

All pricing obtained at time of producing article. Some prices may have changed since

Build Complete

Building a system from scratch is a very rewarding thing. If you haven’t already tried it, then you should give it a go. There are lots of resources out there should you get stuck at any stage and of course you can always visit our community forums for assistance.

The more space you have inside the computer case you are installing the components into the better. There is nothing worse than struggling, knocking things and getting frustrated. Thanks to the mATX board that we installed within the Cooler Master Elite 430 space was not a problem. All of the kit went into the case without any major hiccups and it wasn’t long before we were onto the Windows install.

One thing I would mention is that the Cooler Master Elite 430 is a budget case, so there are various aspects that are absent when comparing to a higher priced case. Inside, we have no cable management cut-outs so you have to be imaginative in terms of your approach to organisation within this case. I fed some of the cables between the motherboard and the motherboard tray to keep things tidy and causing less obstruction to airflow. I also used spiral wrap to cover the PSU cables since they are not braided and can appear quite ugly when you have a side window as the Elite 430 does.

With the absence of a rear exhaust fan inside the Elite 430 I had various fans lying about so I dropped a Noctua NF-S12B inside the case in order to create positive airflow.

Hopefully this article has inspired, encouraged and given you an example to go by. Sandy Bridge is a fantastic platform, that bridges the gap between performance and cost. Overclockers UK have some of the best prices around and I have personally been a customer for many years now and would highly recommend them. This article has revealed that there are currently some fantastic deals on a range of components there.

Below are some images of the final build, thanks for reading and be sure to drop by our community forums if you have any questions or comments.

Article on OcUK: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=18523933