Cheapo Silent Media and Web Browser PC

mattyj1085 · 18 Feb 2010 at 10:58

I'm building a pc on a tight budget for my mate all he wants to be able to do is connect it to his HDTV and watch downloaded movies, youtube etc and browse the internet.

Heres what i've come up with, this comes in at about £240 with his max budget been £250

Any thoughts on component choices? improvements?

I went with the X2 and that MB as its supposed to be able to unlock to a quad if you get lucky!

Cheers

Spec

PhoenixUK · 18 Feb 2010 at 11:14

swap the 5000+ with 240e or 405e and you're set, eventually the normal 240/250 or 425 will do, they're all under 50quid.
Get better hdd, it's cheap, not worth saving 2pounds, get spinpoint f3 250gb.

mattyj1085 · 18 Feb 2010 at 14:19

PhoenixUK said:
swap the 5000+ with 240e or 405e and you're set, eventually the normal 240/250 or 425 will do, they're all under 50quid.
Get better hdd, it's cheap, not worth saving 2pounds, get spinpoint f3 250gb.

Do those CPU's have the chance of unlocking to a quad or tri though?

PhoenixUK · 18 Feb 2010 at 15:51

mattyj1085 said:
Do those CPU's have the chance of unlocking to a quad or tri though?

405 is a tri core already.
Yes they both do, and they provide better performance than the old x2 chips.

On the other hand I wouldn't be buying any of those with unlock in mind but they have enough power as it is. They're also very power efficent and will run very very cool and so will be easy to OC even on stock cooling you should see at least 3.2ghz from both.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=114&p2=33&c=1

Azra · 18 Feb 2010 at 16:13

the 240e starts at 2.8ghz and 3.5ghz is fairly simple.

Seing as an atom chip would be fine why would you want to oc anyway? 240e has very low power consumption and is more easily cooled = easier to keep quiet.

[RB] · 18 Feb 2010 at 16:19

Surley with those requirements an Atom based system with the ION chipset would be the way to go?

mattyj1085 · 18 Feb 2010 at 16:28

I just thought why bother with a atom as power consumption isn't really an issue and even the above amd isn't going to draw hardly any but it has the extra power if for instance he ever wants to encode a dvd on it or something.

I've slightley tweaked the spec now,
changed the hard drive for a 2.5" Western Digital 320GB
changed the antec case and psu and gone for a little piano black media centre case and a Be Quiet micro ATX 300w PSU
changed the processor for a AMD X2 240

Now coming in a £251.63 which is spot on budget and I don't think im going to get any better

PhoenixUK · 18 Feb 2010 at 16:34

Looks great, the mobo also comes with nice little HD4200 inbuilt which will even do on some light gaming.
I'd really try to get 2gb of ram tho....

Azra · 18 Feb 2010 at 16:59

+1 for 2gb

mattyj1085 · 19 Feb 2010 at 08:10

Yeah I was pricing on 2 sticks of the crucial ram above anyway, cheers guys think its sorted.

Final spec

AMD Athlon X2 240 2.8Ghz £44.89
Asus M4A785D-M Pro 785G Motherboard £60.99
2 x Crucial 1GB DDR2 800 Memory £31.96
Western Digital 320GB 2.5" SATAII 5400rpm £39.30
Samsung SH-S223C 22x DVD-RW SATA £14.99
Piano Black Media Centre Micro ATX case £21.59
Be Quiet SFX 300W Micro ATX PSU £37.90

Total Cost £251.62

Azra · 19 Feb 2010 at 09:43

Operating system?

Minimoke · 19 Feb 2010 at 09:53

+1 for Operating system. If you haven't already got one to put on there, that'll set you back at least £60 0r £70. Haven't looked at prices recently.

bledd · 19 Feb 2010 at 09:57

Acer Revo 330, 2gb

Azra · 19 Feb 2010 at 10:18

unless he goes linux ofc

tundra · 19 Feb 2010 at 10:51

why not get a g31/41 motherboard and e5200 cpu

mattyj1085 · 19 Feb 2010 at 11:09

Was guna stick a copy of XP i've got and run XBMC on it, might go ubuntu and XBMC if I can get it working though

mattyj1085 · 19 Feb 2010 at 11:19

tundra said:
why not get a g31/41 motherboard and e5200 cpu

Didn't think I'd be able to do it as cheap but looking at prices it will work out slightly cheaper.

Don't have the chance to unlock extra cores though and they'll clock to about the same I bet on stock cooling?

I Could get Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2H G41 Socket 775 DVI VGA HDMI Out 8 Channel Audio MATX Motherboard

and

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz Socket 775 800FSB 2MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor

Takes total down to £247.02

Ahhhh more decisions I thought this was sorted!!

PhoenixUK · 19 Feb 2010 at 23:50

mattyj1085 said:
Didn't think I'd be able to do it as cheap but looking at prices it will work out slightly cheaper.

Don't have the chance to unlock extra cores though and they'll clock to about the same I bet on stock cooling?

I Could get Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2H G41 Socket 775 DVI VGA HDMI Out 8 Channel Audio MATX Motherboard

and

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz Socket 775 800FSB 2MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor

Takes total down to £247.02

Ahhhh more decisions I thought this was sorted!!

The athlon performs better so I see no reason to go for the 775?
Or maybe that's due to clock but it's not like you're going to OC the 5200 to 3.7ghz on stock cooler.

At worst they will end up with pretty much similar performance with the exception that you get a lot better GPU with am3 board and newer tech that's running cooler and better possibility for upgrades.