CSM's Ultimate Gaming rig is pretty potent, cheap... in the UK

Every so often, we get wind of a mysterious gaming rig that's so powerful, so mighty, that the entire world just has to see it. Unfortunately for most, this particular one will remain a pipe dream, primarily due to the UK's impeccably strong pound and America's woefully weak dollar. Nevertheless, those shacked up on the other side of the pond can grab Computer Supermarket's (we know, we know) Ultimate Gaming rig, which is home to an Intel Q6600 quad-core CPU, 8GB of DDR2 RAM, a 750GB SATA II hard drive, NVIDIA's 512MB 8600GT graphics card, a dual-layer DVD burner, 22-inch LCD, Windows Vista, keyboard / mouse and a fairly decent assortment of ports. All this pizazz can be yours for just £938.83 if you're in the right place, but for $1,829, we'll probably look elsewhere over here.

[Via RandomlyAccessed]

[Neebs @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:39AM]

That number of pounds actually convert to higher than the US price (ignoring tax and shipping).

[Paul @ Jan 23rd 2008 9:28AM]

@Mike, hate to say it but Nvidia still is making the chips, so an 8600 GT, or GTS is still just an 8600 GTS whether it is made in Europe or not.

My final point is that the 8600 GT or GTS is simply not in the same league as the 8800 GT. The 8800 GT is pretty much the best bang-for-your-buck card out there right now.

[Neebs @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:02PM]

What?

[i.c. weiner @ Jan 23rd 2008 5:02PM]

ummmm, maybe WRONG COMMENT REPLY. yeesh people, use your common sense

[cxp3 @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:42AM]

I think they mean a 512MB 8800GT not 8600GT, there's no such card!

[Paul Chan @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:49AM]

yeah, i think so too how can you say a comp with 8600 be for ultimate gaming??

[theohner @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:53AM]

Yes there is a 512MB 8600GT, there is also a 1GB 8600GT both by Gainward. Although, I do hope it actually is an 8800GT. Why spend all that money on getting 6gb of essentially useless extra RAM versus getting a massively superior graphics card.

[Mike @ Jan 23rd 2008 8:38AM]

no offense guys, but the gainward cards with those specs would trounce any 8800GT over here in the states.

oh wait...it's an 8600GT...not a GTS....

yea this thing is a piece of shit may it burn in hell :P

[theohner @ Jan 23rd 2008 9:09AM]

This company sells some pretty weird computers. Their model down from this 'advanced gaming' uses a dual core 6850, 4gb of ram and an 8500 GT. 8500GT's are barely capable to play games, and really shouldn't be sold as a gaming card. Again, why not spend less on the processor and ram and more on the graphics - they could easily have a more powerful rig if they went with a 6750 and an 8600GT. It would probably cost them less to make too...

[vladsinger @ Jan 27th 2008 2:28PM]

Maybe they get really cheap RAM from somewhere. =p

[fischju @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:46AM]

Well, somebody doesn't understand how international currency works...

[Leo M. @ Jan 23rd 2008 9:21AM]

I was thinking the exact same thing.

[Kurt @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:53AM]

8 Gigs of RAM?!?!?!?! Holy Crap! Is anyone else seeing this?

[vermaak @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:01AM]

8 gig is a lot TBH. Vista being the only operating system for gaming that could make use of some of it, but then vista will take its nice chunk of that as well!

Don't forget Mac Pros take 16gig of ram

pretty much useless unless you are working with very large photoshop files or editing high def video

[XGM @ Jan 23rd 2008 8:32AM]

@ vermaak

Mac Pro's actually take 32GB of ram now. Tho for 99% of people here its useless, but for some they will manage to use it all in every day work.

As for 8GB ram, well i can find ways to use it, usually when im working on the Unreal 3 editor along with other things at the same time I easily cap out my 4GB of ram, and about 3-4 GB more on pagefile then i normally have.

[vermaak @ Jan 23rd 2008 8:53AM]

Your right it is now 32 gig!

And yes 3d work can kill the old ram usage as well.


I still feel most people who would want a spec like that would pay a little more for an 8800gt though.

[Ken @ Jan 23rd 2008 9:43AM]

@Vermaak

Are we forgetting nearly every distro of linux, Mac OSX, and XP 64?

[vermaak @ Jan 23rd 2008 1:51PM]

No mate not at all. I have a MBP and a windows desktop machine.

I have to use windows xp (32bit) in boot camp for playing games on my MBP and also have Windows xp (32bit) running on my desktop. 32bit drivers under xp are much better for gaming than 64bit drivers. As much as I like Linux, as a proper gaming platform it's just not supported enough.

[gadgetgateway @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:58AM]

Very expensive computer indeed but that is also one good looking PC. With 8GB of RAM that computer puts mine to shame. I wonder if I can get it for my birthday as a great http://giftgadgetgateway.com">gift gadget

[TJ Johnson @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:46PM]

Worst. Plug. Ever.

The point of the article was that the computer was cheap for the amount of 'performance' you got. That performance has yet to be seen though since this is suppose to be a gaming rig.

In conclusion, you fail. Please feel free to choke yourself at any time.

[shaun @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:59AM]

I'm suprised....we (UK) normally get ripped off over most tech products

I wanted to get an iPod touch a while ago and its £270 here, and $400 in america (£200), so I tried getting one shipped over but the customs on it is huge.

I think I'll have to partake in a bit of smuggling gear home when I go on holiday to chicago :D

[beauchampy @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:04AM]

shaun, my friend is over is chicago at the moment. he actually owes me a little bit of money but was thinking i could get some cheap goods to sell on over here. what's cheap over in the US to maximise re-sell profit over here in the uk?

[Nick Tulett @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:44AM]

Too good to be true
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/computer-services-reviews-write/110720-computersupermarket-com.html

[shaun @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:08AM]

Not totally sure, I was looking at getting a macbook air or a new iPod over there, theres £300 difference in the price of the air.

Last time I went to america we went to this shop called B&H in New York and got a digital camera for pretty cheap.

I would say go on their website (www.bhphotovideo.com), because they sell almost everything, then find what you want because even though it's in NYC the prices will be similar to chicago shops

[DannyBoyUK @ Jan 23rd 2008 8:39AM]

Agreed, shaun, this is definitely one of the first times that we (the UK) can pay less than in the US. And, let's be honest, probably the only time it will ever happen.

[Krono6 @ Jan 23rd 2008 9:47AM]

Actually, here in the UK, if you're building your computer, you can get a pretty decent gaming rig for pretty cheap.
For around £500, it's easy to build a decent gaming rig with 500GB SATA HDD, 2GB DDR2 RAM and an 8800GT. Also, it all depends on where you're looking for your 'gadgets'. For example, I got a Griffin iTrip from Amazon for £5 including shipping, £15 cheaper than what it was going for at any High Street shop at the time.

[Ted @ Jan 23rd 2008 10:18AM]

Instead of buying stuff that depreciates, take several hundred pounds, convert it into dollars, wait for the exchange rate to normalise, then convert the dollars back into pounds :D Muwahaha more money ;)

[beauchampy @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:04AM]

meh. it's not that impressive. i built a pretty similar spec pc for less, but with an 8800 GTS 512mb. ddr2 is so cheap these days 8gb ram is hardly impressive.

[svunt @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:05AM]

"Ultimate Gaming Rig" - with a 5ms response time on the monitor? I don't know a serious gamer with a monitor over 3ms these days, that's appalling in a top of the line gaming setup.

[Gav @ Jan 23rd 2008 1:04PM]

3ms? How many Hertz would that be?

The display would have to be higher than 75Hhz to benefit anything under 12ms (approx).

[TheNomad @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:05AM]

There marketing gumf is purely trash. Myself and others have been building systems of this spec and higher for god knows how long for clients now as standard units (video & high end image manipulation uses) yet they claim to be the first. Shame they only provide a cheap 500W PSU with the unit that will probably fail to provide enough current under full load. Trial software aplenty there as well.
At least they are providing a 64bit OS with the system so the RAM can be utilised in certain applications.

[sdutton007 @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:11AM]

"All this pizazz can be yours for just £938.83 if you're in the right place, but for $1,829, we'll probably look elsewhere over here."

Yeah, its 194097-yen.............. 1GBP does not equal 1USD, so how can you say £938.83 is cheap, but the same amount converted into USD is expensive?????

[theohner @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:16AM]

It's probably to do with how we get charged more than the US for all hardware components. Eg. an 8800GT from newegg is going to cost around 270 dollars depending on what you buy specifically. From Scan (basically a newegg equivalent in the uk) it's around 350 dollars. I'm guessing what he's trying to say is that whilst this is a good deal in the UK, it might seem expensive in the US.

[sdutton007 @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:25AM]

Yeah, but if you buy ANY product from UK, it is going to cost more than it would in the US..... if a US shop bought these computers from the supplier, they would be far cheaper than the equivalent UK shop

[theohner @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:51AM]

Unless it was made in the UK :P

[sdutton007 @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:54AM]

Nope, made in japan by "pc koubou"

[Maff @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:56AM]

the pound is actually quite weak at the moment against most other currencies except the dollar, surely this is even more bargainous in Euros?

[Tom @ Jan 23rd 2008 8:04AM]

For all of you who don't understand how currency works:

The exchange rate, or value, of a currency is often very different from what it will buy you in real life. The best example is the "Big Mac Exchange Rate". Compare the cost of the same product in two currencies. Although the $1 currently equals about 50p, see what happens when you compare the price on a real world product from July 2007 when the exchange rate was about the same as it is now.

Big Mac price in USA: $3.41 (approx £1.70)
Big Mac price UK: £1.99 (approx $3.88)

The real world exchange rate is therefore about $1.00 to 60p, not 50p. This means that my pound will buy me more in the US than it will do in the UK. This is very pleasing because it means that aside from being better looking, more charming, healthier and better paid, we Brits are also comparatively richer.

[joewat @ Jan 23rd 2008 8:46AM]

And Brits are also funnier...oh you were serious. I see. Nah, just kidding of course everybody knows the British girls (do you call it girls?) are the world's prettiest!

[Ken @ Jan 23rd 2008 9:46AM]

Your best bet is to go to another country with a working piece of crap computer, declare it when leaving your country (they are never concerned with the internals), upgrade it in the cheaper country, and bring it back through customs with no added cost.

[Ken @ Jan 23rd 2008 9:47AM]

This was meant to be a reply to Shaun, but engadgets quirky blogware decided it wasn't.

[Zeus.:God @ Jan 23rd 2008 10:18AM]

The Ultimate Gaming PC has a mid to low end video card? I didn't know that you could have that title with such a tame setup.

8GB? Well, as that might be useful on down the road, games today aren't using that much memory, and if they were, I doubt that 8600 would run them.

However, the rest of the system sounds pretty OK, for the price, if that is, in fact, the actual price, for maybe a first computer. On the other hand, I could build a much more competent computer for less. i guess the only real value of this comes in the fact that its a pretty decent build and that it comes with everything you need; keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers.

[Ted @ Jan 23rd 2008 10:20AM]

Uhm, well 5ms is perfectly fine for gaming, you won't see any delay or blurring between inputs and the screen.

[Ted @ Jan 23rd 2008 10:27AM]

FFS! That was meant to be a reply for someone, please fix the reply system engadget!

[Zeus.:God @ Jan 23rd 2008 10:21AM]

Ken, while he did miss XP 64, he did mention "operating system for gaming", not just operating system in general, so you can obviously see how Linux and Mac OS X don't fit that description.

[Ted @ Jan 23rd 2008 10:26AM]

For 1000 GBP I would rather spend on a 30" Dell monitor with the DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort inputs :)

Then survive off of savoury crackers and beans plus turn off electricity to my house until I can afford a quad SLi setup.

[Ken @ Jan 23rd 2008 11:38AM]

This was meant to be a reply to Shaun, but engadgets quirky blogware decided it wasn't.

[pigfister @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:41PM]

dam and i just coughed up for an ailenware that isn't that much better speck for twice the amount!

[Gav @ Jan 23rd 2008 1:01PM]

That's an awful price. It's (imo) about £200-£400 overpriced. Surely Engadget can work this out?

[Gav @ Jan 23rd 2008 1:04PM]

3ms? How many Hertz would that be?

The display would have to be higher than 75Hhz to benefit anything under 12ms (approx).