£200-£300 budget build

nwgilbert

nwgilbert

nwgilbert

Associate
Joined
14 May 2015
Posts
162
Hello, I would like to build a cheap computer for my partner for business work only - it won't be used for gaming. It will be for pretty basic use such as excel, word, possibly a bit of adobe.

If someone can give some general advice or make a suggested list it would be greatly appreciated.

I guess I would be looking at spending 200-300? Not sure how cheap it can really go when all the PC will be used for is word/excel/browsing...


Here is the build I have put together so far:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £212.65
(includes shipping: £11.70)
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Not sure if it is all compatible and if I can go cheaper?
Am I missing anything?
Can someone suggest alternate solutions for better parts?


Thanks in advance.
 
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £188.07
(includes shipping: £11.70)
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Bit cheaper.

Better SSD, with double the storage for £4 extra. The cheaper TeamGroup RAM is out of stock, so depends if you want to wait or grab that Kingston Fury.

PSU not as good as the one in the bundle but should be fine for a non-gaming system. Up to you. Just saves a few pounds, not much.

AM1 processor/mobo would be fine if you want to save there. Worst thing that could happen is that your partner decides the next PC should be a bit better for Adobe if they begin to do more than just a bit of work with it, imo. In which case, the 6420K would probably fall short too. Interesting benchmark results here where the Athlon 5350 beats the 6420K in CS6 common edits: https://us.hardware.info/reviews/60...-megatest-benchmarks-igpu-adobe-photoshop-cs6
 
Worth checking clearance items too at times.

Not sure four slow cores on the CPU benefit over two faster cores, to be honest even at a budget level I would rather have an Intel dual core but market dominance has just seen those dual cores hit silly money for what is on offer.

In reality the budget Intel stuff should be cheaper.

One option is a B grade G3258 with an 1150 motherboard at £75 the pair.

I would also chose two memory sticks for the slight performance gain there may be in office applications, but again silly money for budget DDR3.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £180.96
(includes shipping: £11.10)
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It can pay to shop around, and as much as I love Overclockers, if your after a budget PC it does pay to get bits from various outlets if they have no stock or cost is significantly cheaper.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £200.97
(includes shipping: £11.10)
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Thank you for your comments. I am still unsure as to whether I should go with Intel or AMD. Please can someone suggest which would perform better for basic PC use Browsing/Word/Excel/Some Indesign/Photoshop Adobe.

In my current basket below I have put both so I need to remove one and the motherboard to match. I am also open to someone suggesting another processor? Or are one of these two the best in my price range? I don't mind going a little higher if the difference in performance will be drastic.




My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £304.50
(includes shipping: £12.60)
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Since having a further look into the comparison of the two, I found the intel to have better performance results.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-G3258-vs-AMD-A4-4000
Please let me know if anyone thinks against this for any reason?

Having said that, Could I get a better processor than the G3258 for not much more? What would be the upgrade from that?

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Also wondering if it is worth getting a cooler, or not really on such a cheap processor? The reason I ask is it gets extremely hot in the room where we will have the PC.
 
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I would like to make purchase over the next couple of days - If anyone can take a look at this I would really appreciate before I go and spend money on something that may not be compatible or will slack in performance.
 
Can anybody give some feedback on the below build please :




nwgilbert said:
Since having a further look into the comparison of the two, I found the intel to have better performance results.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-G3258-vs-AMD-A4-4000
Please let me know if anyone thinks against this for any reason?

Having said that, Could I get a better processor than the G3258 for not much more? What would be the upgrade from that?

-

Also wondering if it is worth getting a cooler, or not really on such a cheap processor? The reason I ask is it gets extremely hot in the room where we will have the PC.
Click to expand...



nwgilbert said:
Thank you for your comments. I am still unsure as to whether I should go with Intel or AMD. Please can someone suggest which would perform better for basic PC use Browsing/Word/Excel/Some Indesign/Photoshop Adobe.

In my current basket below I have put both so I need to remove one and the motherboard to match. I am also open to someone suggesting another processor? Or are one of these two the best in my price range? I don't mind going a little higher if the difference in performance will be drastic.




My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £304.50
(includes shipping: £12.60)
​


​
Click to expand...
 
Intel is the way to go but i would not be buying clearance items with 3 months warrranty, This is the latest skylake equivalent i have added an extra cse fan for better airfow to put in the front of the case.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £244.56
(includes shipping: £11.70)
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Thank you, looks good - I like it. What are others thoughts?

mickyflinn said:
Intel is the way to go but i would not be buying clearance items with 3 months warrranty, This is the latest skylake equivalent i have added an extra cse fan for better airfow to put in the front of the case.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £244.56
(includes shipping: £11.70)
​


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Click to expand...
 
At £100 more for basic office work, word processing, excel and a little adobe, not sure it is worth the premium.

I bought that B grade G3258, currently residing in my S340 build, it seems fine, it was never installed just an opened box. I also bought a 120gb Samsung 850 Evo, no box, £30, and it's going like new. More than good enough for me.

Last B grade motherboard I had was an LGA 775 that ran without issues until an accident shorted the motherboard last year. Look up how many years ago a P45 motherboard was desireable to get an idea how long ago that was! 2 core gaming was where it was at then.

Last free motherboard and CPU I got, an Asus EPU with an E6300 and 2gb of ram, all still runs, a friend sent me it years ago for my lad to get started with.

What I am saying is, in my opinion based on my experience, dont worry about it being B grade or second hand, because rarely is there a problem, and the savings can be worth it, as opposed to spending twice as much than you will ever need for a performance increase you may never utilise.

If your building a budget PC to do a job, only buy what is needed to do that job. In the real world that job has been getting done for years on end with budget PSU's in budget steel cases with budget dual cores with VGA output. If an old Pentium 4 or Athlon XP 3200 can still do word processing, if an old E6300 can manage, then I am sure a £200 budget is more than sufficient.

The real cost is the software. You factored that in yet?

The Fractal case bundle is nice, though a bit overkill for an office PC doing word. A basic office PSU and office PC case cost a total of £20.

Another point, there are more budget office PC's still doing their job with less failure rates than self built gaming PC's built by gamers. And most of those off the shelf office PC's use budget parts. Skips all over the world are full of perfectly fine office PC's in excelent working order.
It is very easy to shop around and just pick the best bang for buck item to get the job done. You would have to be silly to decide an office PC for word processing can only have a reputable branded £30 PSU and £30 case when millions of office PC's do not have such luxuries.
There is no law against shopping around, buy budget items suited to the task, buy them from whoever has the best deal per item or free delivery. You dont "need" branded items. Your on a budget and really should not be looking at over £200 in bare components to build your own basic word processing office PC.

My V350w PSU cost I think it was £17 in a sale in a high street store.
My Fractal Core 1000 case was £14.99 new from a competitor (and it came with a fan).
I got a 120gb SSD for £30 from Overclockers clearance section.
I could have picked up a basic dual core PC secomd hand ready to go for about £50 if I looked.

I could have picked up an AMD A4 400 dual core CPU, Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM motherboard, 4gb of Corsair DDR3 XMS3 memory, hard drive and a budget case with a 450w psu for around £155 total that would fulfill the duties of an office PC.

Shopping around. I could buy a pre build office PC, that is as well specced, with Windows 10 and a 2 year guarantee, for around £330, or a bare bones basic budget PC with no software that will do the job for £140, IF I shop around.
The reality is, it's a budget office PC, software or not, you cant really expect to beat shopping around for a prebuilt or sale items. Overclockers is a great place to shop and up to £200 is the component spec pricing range for most places selling budget office PC's.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
  • 1 x "Primo Pro AX" Configurable AMD A Series APU Office PC = £188.02
    • Build Time:Standard Build Systems - Dispatched within 7 working days
    • Secondary Hard Drive / Solid State Drive:No Second Hard Drive Option (ZERO Cost)
    • Optical Drive:No Optical Drive Selected
    • AMD Processor:AMD A4-4000 3.00GHz (Socket FM2) APU Richland Dual Core Processor (AD4000OKHLBOX)
    • Networking:Networking Not Selected
    • Warranty:OcUK Standard System Warranty - 3 Year (24 Month C&R + 12 Month Labour)
    • Memory:Team Group Elite 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Single Channel Module (TED34GM1600C1101)
    • Primary Hard Drive / Solid State Drive:Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) HDD
    • Operating System:No Operating System
    • Security Software:Unwanted

Total: £202.12
(includes shipping: £14.10)
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In reality, what is that spec not doing for you that we have not already covered, £180 with a spec that would cost you around that to do yourself, with the added bonus of a guarantee, and no hassle.
 
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Thank you for your useful comments and you are right on so many points.

My main concern would be if my business partner was to start using more adobe software such as Photoshop and Indesign as we do use both of those within our business.

The question I have is... how well could this build you have suggested take on Photoshop and Indesign processing?
And if that was my concern, what should I look at upgrading from your suggestion if it wasn't going to be enough... is it the ram? is it the cpu? or is it a bit of both?

Bearing in mind that we have already purchased software both OS and packages so that is not considered as part of our cost.



Reflecting back on this build ...
mickyflinn said:
Intel is the way to go but i would not be buying clearance items with 3 months warrranty, This is the latest skylake equivalent i have added an extra cse fan for better airfow to put in the front of the case.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £244.56
(includes shipping: £11.70)
​


​
Click to expand...


It is £244 which in reality is £42 more expensive than yours. Plus lets say I was to shop around... I might even get those parts down to £200.
Just a thought, what do you think?
 
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Honestly, you are going to keep going around in circles with this budget build, just configure a PC from the link below, i3, 8gb or ram, optic drive IF needed, I would rather have 500gb of storage over a 120gb SSD, but you can have an SSD instead in the configuration choices.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/prim...l-pentium-core-i3-i5-office-pc-fs-197-op.html



If you are worried about future proofing and heavier use of the below software, then spend more.


InDesign CC (2015) system requirements

Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 processor
Microsoft Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10
2 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended)
2.6 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash storage devices)
1024 x 768 display (1280 x 800 recommended) with 32-bit video card; supports HiDPI display
To use the new InDesign Touch workspace, you must have a touch screen enabled tablet/monitor running Windows 8 or above (such as Microsoft Surface Pro 3) with the screen resolution set to 2160 x 1440 or more
Adobe® Flash® Player 10 software required to export SWF files
Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.*


Photoshop CC 2015.x system requirements

Intel® Core 2 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor; 2 GHz or faster processor
Microsoft Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10
2 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended)
2.6 GB of available hard-disk space for 32-bit installation; 3.1 GB of available hard-disk space for 64-bit installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system)
1024 x 768 display (1280x800 recommended) with 16-bit color and 512 MB of dedicated VRAM; 2 GB is recommended*
OpenGL 2.0–capable system
Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.**


When your talking a £200 to £300 budget, £42 is a huge percentage for another dual core CPU and for what performance benefit versus cost?

To be honest we could all spec hardware untill the cows come home, my prefered personal option would be an i3 build, and I would be shopping around for parts in clearance, sales etc in various retailers such as a case that includes a PSU for £20. But even at that, your not saving a huge deal of money versus some of the prebuilds considering the warranty and labour.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
  • 1 x "Primo Pro iX" Configurable Intel Pentium / Core i3/i5 Office PC = £308.52
    • Build Time:Standard Build Systems - Dispatched within 7 working days
    • Secondary Hard Drive / Solid State Drive:No Second Hard Drive Option (ZERO Cost)
    • Optical Drive:OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
    • Intel Processor:Intel Core i3-4170 3.70GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail
    • Warranty:OcUK Standard System Warranty - 3 Year (24 Month C&R + 12 Month Labour)
    • Networking:Networking Not Selected
    • Primary Hard Drive / Solid State Drive:Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) HDD
    • Operating System:No Operating System
    • Memory:Team Group Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01)
    • Security Software:Unwanted

Total: £322.62
(includes shipping: £14.10)
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