Low budget PC build

Failsafe

Failsafe

Failsafe

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5 Mar 2006
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My aunt and uncle want to replace an aging PC.
Doesn't need to be anything special, it'll only be used for emails and browsing.

Have been looking at building something around the Pentium G2020 or possibly an AMD APU.

What would fit the bill and be cheap?

Possibly the G2020, H61 or Z68 with case, ram, hdd, psu and dvd.

Can this be done for £200 - £250?

Your guidance / advice is appreciated.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor **FREE SIMCITY PC GAME** (AD560KWOHJBOX) £71.99
1 x **B Grade** Samsung 120GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD120BW) £60.00
1 x MSI A55M-E33 AMD A55 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £40.99
1 x Imp MicroATX Tower Case (500w PSU) £31.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £29.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £249.95 (includes shipping : FREE).



I've made the assumption they want it to be as fast as possible and don't need a huge amount of storage. (My dad uses a 120GB SSD as asole drive and he's not even used anywhere 50% in over a year, for the same tasks.)
 
Well worth working towards the free P&P :)

I wouldn't touch that IMP case with a barge pole. The PSU is very cheap and nasty, should it go pop the rest of the components could well be at risk.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI A75IA-E53 AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £69.95
1 x AMD A6-5400K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Dual Core Processor (AD540KOKHJBOX) £47.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £43.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Mini-ITX Case - Black £39.95
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) HDD £39.95
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £29.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £286.80 (includes shipping : FREE).



Yes over budget slightly. However.....small case, ITX mobo to fit it with bluetooth and wifi included. Good semi-modular PSU to help make life easier building in the tiny chassis
 
For a non-gaming, non-overclocked, low power system that PSU/Case bundle should be fine.

The performance difference between a dual cpu + HDD vs quad cpu + SSD would be like night and day to be honest.
 
I'm not questioning if it has enough juice to run the build. I'm stating that it's naff quality and I've seen first hand crap PSUs go bang and take out mobos etc.

The A6K is more than good enough. Yes the B grade SSD is nice but you've tried selling that in countless threads and there is only the one B grade. Should it sell or be a stock error he need alternatives. Also the mobo you picked doesn't do sataIII so it's not using the SSD to it's full potential either.

My mobo choice does have sataIII should they want to add an SSD later on and keep the HDD for storage ;)
 
I would imagine they won't want to change / upgrade again in the near future.

P.S. You've been saying that B Grade will sell out for the last couple of weeks ;) They seem to get them in regularly enough :p
 
Potty27 said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor **FREE SIMCITY PC GAME** (AD560KWOHJBOX) £71.99
1 x **B Grade** Samsung 120GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD120BW) £60.00
1 x MSI A55M-E33 AMD A55 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £40.99
1 x Imp MicroATX Tower Case (500w PSU) £31.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £29.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £249.95 (includes shipping : FREE).



I've made the assumption they want it to be as fast as possible and don't need a huge amount of storage. (My dad uses a 120GB SSD as asole drive and he's not even used anywhere 50% in over a year, for the same tasks.)
Click to expand...

Looks good for the money. The CPU could even be lowered for something as simple as web/email, I've used an SSD on an Atom PC (probably 1/10th the speed of this) and it was more than usable.
 
teppic said:
The CPU could even be lowered for something as simple as web/email, I've used an SSD on an Atom PC (probably 1/10th the speed of this) and it was more than usable.
Click to expand...

Quite true, but I included the quad as I assume the aunt and uncle wont want to upgrade again any time soon, to keep it as future proof as possible for their budget.
 
Potty27 said:
Quite true, but I included the quad as I assume the aunt and uncle wont want to upgrade again any time soon, to keep it as future proof as possible for their budget.
Click to expand...

I'd normally agree but they'd be perfectly content with an A6 for years - for email/browsing you can use a 10 year old PC with no trouble at all, which wouldn't begin to compare to an A6. If there was a bit of word processing, photo editing and stuff then I'd go with the A8.
 
Potty27 said:
If I were building for a family member at this budget I'd go with the A8, but your probably right :)
Click to expand...

It all comes down to balance fella and that's the problem I have with some of your specs. The whole point of building yourself is you know the quality of the parts and can choose how the money is divided out.

Your spec is close to what most high street store PCs are. They make a song and dance over the good CPU but everything else is cheap as possible. There is no excuse for using a naff PSU, infact in this thread I wouldn't have complained if you had used that OCZ coreXtreem PSU with a cheap case.

I'm not suggesting my spec is the best. My thinking was to make something small they could run through their TV for movie playback, skype calls etc along with general PC use. If they want a traditional tower setup that's cool and we can work something out after talking it through :)
 
The spec I've suggested is tailored the the OP's needs, sure it's not an ITX with Bluetooth, but I can't see why the OP's aunt and uncle would want it. (aka pay more for it)

There is a time and a place for cheaper mobo's and PSU's, in my opinion this is it ;)

2 of my family members have similar builds to this, they have been more than happy with it.

Most horror story's about cheap PSU's seem to involve people putting more load on them than they should (even if the rated watts leads people to think it's ok, aka I'd not load this 500w PSU anywhere near 500w).
 
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