Cheap, Quiet £300 Build

turboturtle

turboturtle

turboturtle

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Norfolk
Hi guys

I need to build my mother a pc within the next week to replace her 6 year old pc.

Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and DVD Drive are being transferred from the old computer. Therefore I am trying to spec a reasonable pc up for the budget...

Case: Coolermaster Elite 330 Midi Tower Case - All Black - £30.64
Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 240 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail - £46.99
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78LMT-US2H 760G (Socket AM3) DDR3 - £61.99
PSU: Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply - £39.99
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - £32.99
RAM: Patrtiot G Series Sector 5 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel - £79.99
Graphics - Integrated on motherboard

Total = £292.59
Can anybody improve on this? It's been a while since I built a pc, a few years at least...
It is going to be used for word processing, browsing and watching the odd film, and will never be overclocked. I'd like it to look reasonable and be as quiet as possible!

Thanks in advance
George
 
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You can get that case for £5 less. Then i'd get a motherboard like the Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H for the same price but has a 785G chipset. I'm sure you could get a bigger (320GB?) hard drive for the money but right manufacturer and series i'd say. Do you really need 4GB? I'd definitely recomend downgrading to 2GB for about £40 then use the money you save to get a cooler like the TX3. Could even get a new DVD drive depending on what the old one's like.
 
Hi thanks for the replies!

Cookeh, good shout on the memory, saved £30 there. I guess I went for 2x2GB to make it easier to upgrade later on? 2x1GB should do for now though.

edit: mis-read it, thought it said 2x1GB! So yes 2GB stick is great :)

Superewza, I assume you meant Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UD3H? :) Also, how come you'd spec the 785G chipset? Any reason why you'd choose the motherboard above over the "Asus M4A785TD-V Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard"?

Thanks again!
 
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Nope, i meant what i said ;) You don't need crossfire support do you? Basically it's more powerful and better than the 760G. As for the Asus one, Gigabyte's board is cheaper and i prefer them as a manufacturer, but it's your choice.

Since quiet is one of the main criteria then i'd recommend getting something like the Coolermaster TX3.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-028-CM
 
Superewza said:
Nope, i meant what i said ;) You don't need crossfire support do you? Basically it's more powerful and better than the 760G. As for the Asus one, Gigabyte's board is cheaper and i prefer them as a manufacturer, but it's your choice.

Since quiet is one of the main criteria then i'd recommend getting something like the Coolermaster TX3.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-028-CM
Click to expand...

On OCUK, the asus seems to be cheaper? Might be a different story at other shops! Thanks for the recommendations though :)

Biz.Kid09 said:
Well if you want to save even more and you have some ddr2 knocking about you could get http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-377-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1482 or if you want to stay ddr3 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-373-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1481 will be fine....No need for 785g chipset if your only using it for word and movies e.t.c as the 760g can do them....
Click to expand...

Thanks Biz Kid, I have 2x512MB 5300 DDR2's in the cupboard, but for 7 i imagine i'm going to need 2GB+...

Does anybody know whether AM3 is worth the extra outlay over AM2? And the same with DDR2 and DDR3?
 
Update:

This is my spec now, any changes anybody would make?

Case: Coolermaster Elite 330 Midi Tower Case - All Black - £30.64
Processor: AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail -£71.99
Motherboard: Asus M4A785TD-V Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard - £72.99
Power Supply: Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply - £39.99
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Green 640GB SATA-II 64MB Cache - OEM - £44.99
Memory: Corsair Value Select 2GB (1x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz - £40.85

= £301.45
For now I'm hoping the stock heatsink will be quiet, and that 2GB RAM will suffice. Looks about right though?
 
Yep, looks good.
If you want to save a bit more money, Id get a Sempron cpu - should be more than adequate for your mothers needs :) (Save you about £40 depending on where you buy from)
 
turboturtle said:
Thanks everybody, about to order! This spec is MUCH better than my original! :D
Click to expand...

Not sure on how quiet the cooler is, if it's the one that comes with the Phenom II X4s then it should be reasonably good but if it's the one that comes with the Athlon II X2s then it'l be questionable.

Why not get the motherboard i suggested (or similar, like the Biostar TA785G3 for £55) for £60 and use the savings to get the cooler i suggested?

Actually, don't answer that. It's the funky looking heatsinks on the Asus board isn't it? Tut tut :p
 
Superewza said:
Not sure on how quiet the cooler is, if it's the one that comes with the Phenom II X4s then it should be reasonably good but if it's the one that comes with the Athlon II X2s then it'l be questionable.

Why not get the motherboard i suggested (or similar, like the Biostar TA785G3 for £55) for £60 and use the savings to get the cooler i suggested?

Actually, don't answer that. It's the funky looking heatsinks on the Asus board isn't it? Tut tut :p
Click to expand...

Haha, something like that! I guess its cos I've had good experience with Asus' in the past. Though I'm not sure where your getting these models from - The motherboard I spec'd is one of the cheapest in the AM3 range, and the motherboard you recommended is £2 dearer :S I'd prefer to buy from ocuk in one big order...

I think i'll build it as it is (as the cpu will come with a heatsink whether I like it or not), and perhaps buy a cooler at a later date if the OEM one proves noisy :)
 
turboturtle said:
Haha, something like that! I guess its cos I've had good experience with Asus' in the past. Though I'm not sure where your getting these models from - The motherboard I spec'd is one of the cheapest in the AM3 range, and the motherboard you recommended is £2 dearer :S I'd prefer to buy from ocuk in one big order...

I think i'll build it as it is (as the cpu will come with a heatsink whether I like it or not), and perhaps buy a cooler at a later date if the OEM one proves noisy :)
Click to expand...

OCUK are an enthusiast shop. They don't really cater for the budget end of things.

And if you change it later then you've got the whole hassle of taking off the board, then cleaning the CPU and applying new paste.... you're choice :p
 
Small update...

Built the pc yesterday, all went very well! (Except forgetting the small 4pin power plug, d'oh!)

All nice and quiet, so very pleased about that. Read up about unlocking the 2 other cores, so had a go at disabling ACC and enabling unleash in the BIOS, and suprisingly it worked! Booted into 7, showed 4 cores in CPU-Z and after priming for an hour it hit around 50c...

At what point would you declare a cpu 'stable'? I'm not bothered about overclocking as such, but if there are two available cores I might as well take advantage :)
 
nice build.
for me stable is running everything i need it too without problems, and running prime95 error free for 6hrs.

you might want to get new cooler, as running all cores 100% & overclocked might get a little hot, im using a zalmon cnps9500 on minium fan speed and its really quiet.

my budget sytem build (£350):

athlon x4 620 (overclocked to 3.4ghz) & Zalmon cnps cooler
asrock k10n78 mobo
4gb ddr2 memory
600 watt power & shinobi case
1tb hardrive samsung, dvd rewriter, 5/1 card reader.
win 7 64

im pleased with my system, will be purchasing a graphics card/moniter & new rear case fan at some point.

i think for the performance vs cost these systems are great!
 
Hi mymorph, thanks for the reply :)

I primed it for a couple of hours before I had to go out, I'll give it another prime tonight. For now I won't be overclocking this at all, just doubling the cores (which has made a massive difference, everything is even snappier than it was before!)

It was peaking at 54c, which is about as hot as i'm comfortable with.. I cant see this setup hitting full load for long periods of time, so will stick with stock cooler for a bit.. unless you think its totally essential? At rest now, its sitting at about 31c according to HWmonitor (i have cool&quiet turned on too, which im sure is helping).

Nice setup too - I had a zalman heatsink on the previous pc, always liked how you could screw it down onto mounts, seemed sturdier lol. And yes, the value so far is brilliant! The unlocking alone brought my windows 'system rating' for the cpu from like 6.5 to 7.2! (if those ratings mean anything anyway..)
 
One last update before I let this thread die...

Computer is 13 hours prime stable on all 4 cores, good result considering there was no chance to vcore or anything - simply enabling unleashing and ACC was enough! :) 55c max too, reasonable.

Happy days!
 
I see no problem with that, and pay an extra £7 for a 500 seagate drive.
Totally worth it.
250gb won't last long AT ALL.
 
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