£400 student rig challange....

[bfar]

My little sister is looking into a new PC. She's doing her Masters next year. We need a solid quality rig for ~£400. She already has a great monitor/keyboard/mouse/speakers I build PC's with my eyes closed, so I can sort that for her. Best I've come up with is £425 with a competitor.

A PC for College work, basic media, internet surfing, photographs & fun but she doesn't bother with games (Aero would be nice tho - she likes pretty new things)

Rules:

1) Floppy drive and Vista HP must be included & I feel a gig of RAM is needed for Vista.

2)£450 absolute tops or she might as well get a Laptop.

3)She likes to play music/movies/basic media while she works, so Dual Core would be nice but not required. We will NOT go over budget just to "go Conroe", but if it fits in the budget, well and good.

4)Needs to look tasteful in her bedroom, so no whacky cases.

5)No old 939 stuff - needs to be scalable in the future.

Whadya think?

 

[bfar]

Cheers for the replies guys

Yup, a laptop would be ideal, but we're looking at all available options too.

We're looking at etailors, but I've always been disapointed with the quality of those machines in some way.

I'm interested to see a lot of suggestions to get an entry level C2D. While I like C2Ds (I use one myself) I feel that an entry level X2 would be cheaper and completely adaquate for whats required. An OEM X2 3800+ with a cheap cooler is only about £75. A full £35 cheaper than a C2D 4300 - thats the price of a PSU or cheap case We're not going to be playing FEAR on this box

Bearing in mind she'll be upgrading from a P4 1.6ghz, I don't think she'll be disapointed.

 

[bfar]

Can I ask why you require a floppy disk drive?

Even PC world has caught up with the times and has stopped ordering them.

Good question! She uses them to move work between home and college. Ancient machines in college apparently.

 

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I'm a bit suprised that this is sparking a C2D vs AMD discussion. For a mid-high end rig, sure I'd be going Intel all the way.

But lads you don't understand - this is a budget build for very basic home use. Email, Messenger, Word, Itunes, a few IE windows, maybe a DVD here or there, a Ronan O'Gara wallpaper and thats more or less it!! She might burn a DVD once a month. She won't be running Orthos, 3D Mark, or folding@home, put it that way The cheapest CPU in the store would probably never see 100% usage in this rig.

We have £425, maybe £450. If a C2D fits in that price point than thats great, but I wouldn't base the whole build around it. I feel at this budget, I should be looking at good reliable parts that will do the job bank for buck. I'd rather get a quality case & PSU than just get a C2D for the sake of having a slightly faster CPU.

 

[bfar]

dupli, sorry

 

[bfar]

Wouldnt a £10 USB stick work just as well.

Yup. Little miss 'know it all' knows better. She's afraid she'll loose the USB sticks in her make-up bag

 

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Its hard to get a spec in here that don't in involve a 8800gtx and an 3.4 gig overclockered c2d.Even if it just for ms office. LOL

Aye There were a few sensible suggestions posted tho. Thanks all

 

[bfar]

Rather than saying 450, how about a challenge to get the most fully functional and smallest footprint, for the cheapest price.

A budget of 450 is very high for what you actually need, it is also right on the cusp of making complete sense to get C2D.

I like your first idea, but a C2D really wants a £500 budget. Thats definately laptop territory.

Just to point out, I can do a very good quality x2 3800 rig for £402.

 

[bfar]

MSI K9N Neo-F nForce 550 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £52.86

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail £74.01

Corsair 1GB DDR2 Value Select PC5300 Dual Channel Kit (2x512MB) £61.09

BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 6200 LE Turbo Cache 256MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £29.36

Akasa AK-ZEN-01-BK Zen Black Case - No PSU £29.36

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB ST3200820AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM £51.69

Akasa Ultra Quiet 400W Paxpower Active PFC ATX2.0 PSU - Black Nickel with Blue LED Fan £44.64

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) 72.84

Asus DRW-1608P3S 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) £19.96 inc VAT

£436

all there from what I can think of, but can't find a floppy on here, and I think another company sells then for £20max, so that'll be £456 at max. hope this helps

I like this one.

Just one question tho, do you really think 64bit vista is a good idea for a novice?

 

[bfar]

Er... you think a floppy disk is still going to work after a few hours of being knocked around in a make-up bag?

FDs are bad news, you can get USB sticks for a few quid these days.

You think? Like I said, she "knows better". I didn't set the requirements here, I'm just doing as I'm told. Besides, for the extra tenner Madam Princess should have her wish....

By the ways, I'm very impressed with the reponse here, you guys are outstanding

 

[bfar]

I hope you are practicing safe... backups.

Who needs a USB key when you can gmail all your documents and access them from anywhere - acts as a free backup too.

would you reckon that someone who carries floppys in a makeup bag would grasp the concept of gmail?