Overclockers UK has a range of gaming motherboard bundles available. The Recon Anniversary Intel bundle is the cheapest from the range (at present), but don’t let the price fool you into thinking corners have been cut.
The bundle is certainly good enough for the modest gamer on a budget. It features an Asus H81M-Plus Intel motherboard, an Intel Pentium K Anniversary Edition G3258 processor overclocked to a decent 4.2GHz, 8GB (2 x 4GB) Kingston HyperX 1866MHz memory and a Prolimatech 68 CPU cooler.
To begin with, the Asus H81M-Plus is a micro-ATX board for Socket 1150, fourth-generation processors. There are a pair of DIMM slots for a maximum of 16GB, a single PCIe x16 expansion slot and three PCIe 2.0 x1 slots. The back IO ports consist of two PS/2, DVI, HDMI, VGA, gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0, four USB 2.0 and three audio jacks.
Although there’s no support for CrossFire or SLI, this budget motherboard is quite capable of powering a decent GPU, while still being a good, stable workhorse for more everyday duties. Overclocking in this respect is good too, and the new looking UEFI is easy to use and makes slight changes to the system speeds a doddle.
The Haswell dual-core Pentium G3258, also known as the Pentium-K, features an unlocked multiplier that can provide a stable overclocking speed of up to 4.8GHz – there are even some examples of it going higher.
It’s not the greatest performing CPU, though (after all, it is a budget level processor), but with a base clock of 3.2GHz, 3MB of L3 cache and a TDP of just 53W, it’s a good start for more casual gamers. The CPU has a HD4000 GPU, which obviously won’t offer the best frames per second in the latest games, but it’ll take on older games at higher resolutions quite happily. It’s worth noting that HD video playback won’t be an issue with this chip.
Ultimately, what really matters here is the overclocking potential of this processor and the fact that you can have a lot of fun tweaking it to its limits.
Using the Kingston HyperX 1866MHz 8GB set may seem a little extreme, considering the entry-level appearance of everything else so far, but it represents a considerable boost in performance for both gaming and other duties – enough that without it you’d certainly notice the difference.
The final component in the bundle, the CPU cooler, is another good choice from Overclockers. Rather than opting for a more inferior stock-like cooler, instead the Prolimatech 68 has four highquality heat pipes and a 120mm fan housed in a reasonably thin profile. This is especially good, since the H81M-Plus board is so small, and things can get begin to feel a little cramped once fitted inside a case. At least with the thin profile of the cooler, you could always opt for RAM with bigger heatsinks without fear of components touching.
Overall, the Recon Anniversary bundle from Overclockers is a great choice for the entry-level gamer. It’s reasonably priced at £210, and it’ll play a good selection of titles at higher resolutions, as well as being suitable for a capable media centre with extras.