£400 budget, spec please

builder22 · 28 Aug 2013 at 23:52

mate's looking to spend about £400

will be used for light? audio and video tasks

will be used for recording/arranging with ableton and he also wasnt to be able to edit short movies without it taking hours

I'm thinking a decent sound and video card would be good but has got a tascam external soundcard thing with mic/midi/line inputs so don't think a fancy soundcard is necessary

already has monitor/mouse/kb, might need case, not sure what kind his current one is

not wanting to overclock, most important thing is that it's stable

builder22 · 29 Aug 2013 at 12:01

any suggestions ?

been so long since I looked at pc parts I've no idea what's the best value cpu etc

not even sure if £400 is realistic for what he wants to do

builder22 · 30 Aug 2013 at 10:30

will £400 be enough ? need some sort of starting point

Idleman · 30 Aug 2013 at 10:36

Can you list his current PC spec, so we can see what can be reused.
Will he also require an OS?

Devrij · 30 Aug 2013 at 12:15

You'll want a decent cpu if he wants to edit movies quickly. As above, anything that can be reused (eg optical drives, HDDs, etc) will help improve the spec within your budget.

builder22 · 30 Aug 2013 at 15:26

he'll need everything apart from the dvd drive and maybe the case

the 400 is for motherboard/cpu/psu/hdd and memory really
he has vista just now, prob lookin to upgrade that too

just trying to gauge what level of machine £400 will get

hadn't thought about the drives + OS actually, 400 seems a bit low now, but would like to see what it gets you ATM, i'm certain it will be a vast improvement to what he has now anyway

one of the main things is that's components thta are known to work together, he's not the most patient when it comes to sorting out pc problems!