£500 - Spec me please.

[just Scott]

Hey, my brother is getting a computer for Christmas which I am building for him. I have £500 to play with but need everything, including monitor keyboard, mouse, speakers etc.

The computer will be used for general stuff, the only thing that would be remotely stressful to the computer would be video editing, but there won't be a lot of video editing. The computer needs to be just good enough to run Sony Vegas properly I imagine. He has no interest what so ever in games, I doubt any will ever be installed on it. So keep the graphics card as cheap as possible please.

Also, if you can, can you choose the cheapest possible LCD monitor. £500 isn't enough for everything really so the cheapest, half decent monitor will suffice.

Thanks a lot lads.

 

[semi-pro waster]

This is about as cheap as I think I can reasonably make it and keep all parts worthwhile, however if you also need an OS then you should go for an Intel 805 chip and drop the Conroe(+cooler) and it would still be fairly decent. Graphics card is onboard which I think will suffice in this instance.

MB-004-AK Asrock Conroe945G-DVI (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-004-AK)
£45.99 £45.99
MO-016-OK OcUK Gamer Extreme 178GP 17" LCD Monitor - Black (MO-016-OK)
£99.99 £99.99
KB-072-LG Logitech Cordless Desktop EX-110 - Retail (KB-072-LG)
£17.99 £17.99
SP-023-LG Logitech S100 10W RMS Speakers Black - OEM (SP-023-LG)
£5.49 £5.49
CA-035-AN Antec Performance TX1088AMG Metallic Grey Tower Case - 480w Truepower PSU (CA-035-AN)
£38.99 £38.99
MY-030-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX21GB5300DC) (MY-030-GL)
£79.99 £79.99
HD-023-SA Samsung SpinPoint P HD080HJ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-023-SA)
£25.99 £25.99
CD-042-NE NEC AD5170 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-042-NE)
£18.99 £18.99
CP-135-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN)
£99.99 £99.99
HS-021-AR Arctic Cooling Alpine 7 CPU Cooler (Socket 775) (HS-021-AR)
£5.99 £5.99
Subtotal £439.40
VAT £76.90
Total £516.30

 

[just Scott]

This is about as cheap as I think I can reasonably make it and keep all parts worthwhile, however if you also need an OS then you should go for an Intel 805 chip and drop the Conroe(+cooler) and it would still be fairly decent. Graphics card is onboard which I think will suffice in this instance.

MB-004-AK Asrock Conroe945G-DVI (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-004-AK)
£45.99 £45.99
MO-016-OK OcUK Gamer Extreme 178GP 17" LCD Monitor - Black (MO-016-OK)
£99.99 £99.99
KB-072-LG Logitech Cordless Desktop EX-110 - Retail (KB-072-LG)
£17.99 £17.99
SP-023-LG Logitech S100 10W RMS Speakers Black - OEM (SP-023-LG)
£5.49 £5.49
CA-035-AN Antec Performance TX1088AMG Metallic Grey Tower Case - 480w Truepower PSU (CA-035-AN)
£38.99 £38.99
MY-030-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX21GB5300DC) (MY-030-GL)
£79.99 £79.99
HD-023-SA Samsung SpinPoint P HD080HJ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-023-SA)
£25.99 £25.99
CD-042-NE NEC AD5170 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-042-NE)
£18.99 £18.99
CP-135-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN)
£99.99 £99.99
HS-021-AR Arctic Cooling Alpine 7 CPU Cooler (Socket 775) (HS-021-AR)
£5.99 £5.99
Subtotal £439.40
VAT £76.90
Total £516.30

OS is OK. I have an unused MCE '05 here which will do fine.

Thank you very much, I didn't expect a conroe machine, although very basic, with only £500. Thanks a lot, I'll probably get what you mentioned.