£200 quid base unit as quick as poss, no case needed

Soldato
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Hi guys. A friend has asked if I can knock something together around the £200 marker, as quick as poss, perhaps able to game a bit too.

He has an ancient machine at the mo so wants play a couple of games a few years old which his machine won't do. Too old to mess about upgrading :)

I have a case already so need everything else.

Mobo, CPU, RAM, 500GB HDD be fine, DVDRW, PSU, cheap wifi card, perhaps squeeze a video card in if poss I know it wouldn't be anything fancy.

Is it do-able? Any recommendations would be appreciated :) Already got Windows 7 so just the base unit hardware is whats needed.

Ta!
 
Any recommendations would be appreciated :)

There might be quite a few people out there with 2 year old builds containing parts that cost them £400-500, now willing to sell for around £200-250. Could look for a good deal on the Member's Market or somewhere.

Otherwise Reaper's basket looks decent for around £250. Me, I've always got an eye on getting the best foundation possible into the original budget, and then upgrading (primarily the/a video card), so I'd stretch the budget too and go for something like this:


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-4130 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £83.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Asus H81M-K Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £37.99
1 x SuperFlower Amazon 450W "80 Plus Bronze" Power Supply £35.99
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Single Module (GD34GB1600C11SC) £31.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
1 x TP-Link 150Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter (TL-WN727N) £5.95
Total : £264.49 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Which would give me a better processor to run whichever video card I saved up to add, at the expense of suffering slightly inferior gaming performance till I added the card (but better processing in other respects, straightaway). And a 450w PSU to allow for something like an R9 270X or GTX 660 later on.

I did make a basket for £200 originally, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Not if they intend to play games on it and want it to be as quick as possible. :p
 
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Cheers guys. My friend is looking to have as good a graphics performance as poss for the money. DVD and Wifi would be ideal really. Perhaps FM2 would be the best idea, would the CPU suggested be anywhere near something like a GT640, ATI 7750 or similar? Or is that expecting too much.

Think I have a spare PSU to help with the budget also :) 500GB would definitely be plenty also.

The case is an ATX one so ATX or mATX mobo would be fine, whichever is most cost effective :)
 
Cheers guys. My friend is looking to have as good a graphics performance as poss for the money. DVD and Wifi would be ideal really. Perhaps FM2 would be the best idea, would the CPU suggested be anywhere near something like a GT640, ATI 7750 or similar? Or is that expecting too much.

Think I have a spare PSU to help with the budget also :) 500GB would definitely be plenty also.

The case is an ATX one so ATX or mATX mobo would be fine, whichever is most cost effective :)

That you can gift him a PSU will help a bit. :)

1TB hard drives were chosen because there's only £2 between the 500GB's and 1TB's and only £4 between 250GB's and 1TB's. So for £2 you get an extra 500GB of storage. But up to you.

The graphics in the builds above (including in mine) won't perform anywhere near a GT 640 or ATI 7750. The one below comes a bit closer, especially with faster RAM, which is what gets the best out of AMD APU's.

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-6600K 3.90GHz (Socket FM2) APU Richland Quad Core Processor (AD660KWOHLBOX) £79.99
1 x Gigabyte F2A88XM-HD3 AMD A88X (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £52.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Patriot Viper 3 "Venom Red" 4GB DDR3 PC3-17200C11 2133MHz Single Module (P34G211UR) £37.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
1 x TP-Link 150Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter (TL-WN727N) £5.95
Total : £245.51 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
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Ended up popping OcUK on Sat and going to £280 for A10 6800K, 8GB Avexir 1600MHz, Gigabyte F2A78M DS2, 1TB Seagate 7200RPM, 24x Pioneer DVDRW, cheap ACE 750w PSU. Not too shabby :)
 
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