Which of these budget PC's

sswats · 11 Mar 2008 at 11:56

Sisters PC is messing up, and is getting on a bit anyway so time for a new one.
So mainly for internet, MS office, music, and watching videos.

Have a monitor, OS.

I've come up with the following. Ram, HDD, DVD will be the same on both so need to list those-

Asus Vintage V3-M2V890 Barebones System - AMD64 (Socket AM2) £52.99 (£62.26)
OEM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3600+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - OEM £20.99 (£24.66)
Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2) £4.99 (£5.86)

£92

OR
Asus Vintage V3-P5945GC Barebones System - Intel Core 2 Duo (LGA775) 55.99 (£65.79)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £37.99 (£44.64)

£110

OR any other recommendations.

radderfire · 11 Mar 2008 at 12:04

I like the AMD Athlons so the first one for me, plus it's cheaper, and should be more than powerful enough.

Indy500 · 11 Mar 2008 at 12:08

Hmm, those Asus barebones are a lot cheaper than a few months ago...

smyth · 11 Mar 2008 at 14:51

I'd go for the intel and overclock it, should be a good deal faster then the athlon

spicypixel · 11 Mar 2008 at 14:57

As he said, office machine. So AMD vote from me.

PS they need money and its alright for an office machine

smyth · 11 Mar 2008 at 15:07

spicypixel said:
As he said, office machine. So AMD vote from me.

PS they need money and its alright for an office machine

Oops missed that bit, in that case the AMD machine will do just fine and is cheaper.

sswats · 11 Mar 2008 at 16:53

Ok it seems the AMD version of the barebones doesn't have sataII. Only sata150.

thats making me sway towars the Intel. but then the intel barebones only has a 250W power supply which makes me wonder if it will hack even a basic graphics card or other PCI cards in the near future if need be.

Are there any alternatives of a mobo and case combo at around the £65-70 mark?

I've found a coolermaster case with a 460W PSU for £45. And i know there are motherboards that start at £25. So any ideas?

smyth · 11 Mar 2008 at 17:14

sswats said:
Ok it seems the AMD version of the barebones doesn't have sataII. Only sata150.

thats making me sway towars the Intel. but then the intel barebones only has a 250W power supply which makes me wonder if it will hack even a basic graphics card or other PCI cards in the near future if need be.

Are there any alternatives of a mobo and case combo at around the £65-70 mark?

I've found a coolermaster case with a 460W PSU for £45. And i know there are motherboards that start at £25. So any ideas?

Apparently there is no such thing as sataII
There is a sata 150 and sata 300 (which people seem to call sata II) tho

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

You could go for this case and psu

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-095-AN&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=160

the psu will be enough

Also you can get a cheap AM2 mobo for less then £30 delivered which has sataII (sata300) and onboard gfx.