£300 Build

Slime

Slime

Slime

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I'm after a bit of advice and guidance as a mate is after a new PC after his has come to the end of it's life. His budget is £300 absolute max including delivery. I know it's not a great deal but his requirements are minimal and he doesn't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or OS.

I've tried speccing something up but i'm looking for alternative opinions and suggestions as although I can put together something for less than £300, it always seems a bit overkill for his needs. He wants to be able to surf the internet, watch the occasional film and play a bit of online poker so absolutely nothing graphic intensive. The only other requirements he's asked for is that it has at least 200GB of space and 1GB of mem.

Here's something i've quickly put together:

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £31.99 (£37.59)

Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H GeForce 7100 Micro-ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £43.99
(£51.69)

Antec NSK 4480B Mini Tower Case (Black) - 380W Earth Watts PSU £45.99
(£54.04)

Samsung SpinPoint S 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD250HJ) £35.99
(£42.29)

Intel Core 2 Duo E2140 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.60GHz (800FSB) - Retail £35.99
(£42.29)

Samsung SH-S203NBEBN 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£19.96)

Sub Total : £210.94
Shipping : £9.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £38.66
Total : £259.55

Onboard graphics is fine for what he needs but i can't help but think that a C2D setup is just more than he needs. The only other ways i can cut costs is to reduce 2GB of mem to 1GB but even that wouldn't reduce it by much.

Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated. Thanks
 
What about an Asus Vintage case/PSU/mobo setup to cut costs further? Something like :- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-037-AS&groupid=43&catid=110&subcat=

He might not need dual core but as they are "run of the mill" now then you are going to get it! £40 for a new CPU is peanuts really.
Running XP he could get away with 1Gb for sure, change the 2Gb to http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-059-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=144

~£40 saving with the above case and memory and shouldnt run any differently for his needs.
 
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Slime said:
Total : £259.55
Click to expand...
Considering you're under budget, that's a very good spec :)

I'm sure your mate wants something that will last (& easily upgradable)? Therefore I'd leave the CPU & amount of memory as it is. Maybe change to this cheaper 2GB 5300 kit ;)
 
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Cheers for the input, he's actually offered me a bit of cash towards building it but i'd actually rather he put it towards better components so i'm thinking i'll probably stick with something similar to the system i've spec'd above but maybe stick in a e2160, buy a cooler and clock it. What could I expect to get from the e2160 OC'ing wise?
 
Did I skimp too much? :p

EDIT: Individual prices are screwed for some reason, (sub)total is correct though.

capture7xj1.jpg
 
both of those specs are really good... it's possible to skimp even more by getting an AMD system, with only a gig of pc2-5300 ram, but unless he really wants to pay the absolute bare minimum right now, I'd go with one of the core2duo setups posted above.
 
oh I put the spec above in my basket to check the actual price, comes out to £198, not bad! You might as well let him burn dvds though, it's only another £8 or so :)

picture9ql8.png
 
just for fun, I took Skyboats spec and downgraded it a bit. To be fair, even this would probably be great for watching movies and browsing and so on. I've got an old single core 3500 (socket 939) setup somewhere which I built 3 or 4 years ago, with only a gig of pc2-4200 ram and the same hard drive, and it can run photoshop great, even run games like doom3 and prey (obviously with a real graphics card).

picture10ii3.png
 
He didn't specifically say that it had to be as cheap as possible, only that he definitely didn't want to spend more than £300. Obviously the cheaper the better but i'm pretty sure he wants something that is fairly future proof so that if he wants to upgrade it later he can. With that in mind, I'd rather go down the C2D route. I think he'd notice the difference in performance a lot more if he spent £300 on a C2D instead of £200 on an AM2. Is that an accurate analysis or am I talking rubbish?
 
Yeah, personally I'd go for core 2 duo even in a budget spec like this. If he only wants to spend £200 then Skyboat's spec comes to £198, but if he's happy spending a bit more then I'd say your original spec is pretty much spot on. Maybe a E2180 would be nice for some real future proofing, you could get a cooler in the future and overclock it like a crazy person.
 
Yeah i'm very tempted to do that, trying to fit it all in under £300 will be tight but i'll have a tinker and post the final spec here for one last check in the next couple of days. Thanks all :)
 
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