£200 Build

neil27

neil27

neil27

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Joined
20 Jun 2006
Posts
444
Hi all

Son is dying for a pc for xmas! now for £200 he aint gonna get no rocket ship lol so I came up with a couple of builds that he can upgrade in the future.

Build 1
build1.jpg


build 2
build2.jpg


I dont need keyboard and mouse or operating system and he wants to play things like counter strike and mindcraft etc nothing to taxing. So which would be the better performace wise?

cheers neil
 
I did think about 2nd hand but to be honest you cant beat opening new stuff at xmas. Oh will be using onboard graphics too!
 
What about a Liano build. Superior onboard graphics than itel have on any chip.

AMD Llano A4-3400 2.70GHz (Socket FM1) APU £53:99
MSI A75MA-G55 AMD Hudson D3 (Socket FM1) DDR3 Llano MIcro-ATX Motherboard £54:99
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz £26:00 (liano needs as fast ram as possible)
Your case and drive for £38

Total £199 inc shippin

Sod forgot the hard drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB £31:99

Duel core with better graphics and faster memory :)
 
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If you can stretch a bit more I'd go for an AM3+ build, Athlon II X3. Use onboard VGA then add graphics card, ?second hand a bit later. You should easily be able to get the above for around £250. You could then at least add in a Phenom II X4 or Hex Core or even a Bulldozer CPU in a couple of years time.
 
shadow_boxer said:
If you can stretch a bit more I'd go for an AM3+ build, Athlon II X3. Use onboard VGA then add graphics card, ?second hand a bit later. You should easily be able to get the above for around £250. You could then at least add in a Phenom II X4 or Hex Core or even a Bulldozer CPU in a couple of years time.
Click to expand...

Problem being the "cheap" AM3+ mobos only support 95W CPUs. So the "good" phenoms won't run and it might cause headaches for BD too. If people want to go AMD I won't stop them but as you suggested an AM3+ mobo would make sense providing it's decent enough to run a range of processors not just 95W ones ;)

I prefer the second build. I'd change the RAM to the corsair XMS3 or kingston hyperX (whichever is cheaper) as it's 1600mhz. I know the price difference to what his spec'd will be minimal.

That H series mobo will still take an i3/i5/i7 should the OP want to upgrade later once the CPUs have depreciated or available second hand cheap.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/404?vs=88

Compares the AMD 955BE to the intel pentium G850. The intel is cheaper and can be run on a cheap mobo too (win,win).

The HDD choice has already been addressed so I dont need to say anything about that.

Good luck with the build any problems or questions post back.

*edit*

Oh i forgot to say that 500W PSU will be garbage. Initially it would be fine just using the IGP but I would consider changing it if and when you add a dedicated GPU. It was £20ish for the case & PSU so writing it off later isn't such a blow and like I said it gets you up and running.
 
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I have a never overclocked E8400 core 2 duo, 4gb of 1066mhz crucial ballistix RAM (2gb of tracer, 2 gb non tracer work happily together) with an artic freezer 7 pro (which kept the E8400 @ 26deg idle and no more than 50 under load iirc) sitting here doing nothing if you'd like to make an offer on these, guarenteed working only changed as to upgrading mine to an i5 rig, and switching parts with the 2nd computer.
 
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