£550 Spec? :)

[shinester184]

Yo, have been requested to do do a £550 build just after xmas and am interested to see your feedback. I'm wondering if anybody can give me a £550 spec, but to fit the following criteria.

Needs
-Windows 7
-A monitor of at least 22"

Does not need
-Mouse
-keyboard
-speakers
-A case (have a spare Antec 300 around which is fine for the job)

No gaming whatsoever, needs to be reasonably energy efficient as will be left on all day in an office. Most tasks will be CPU, ram and hdd dependent. So integrated graphics ok maybe.

Thanks for your time and help.

 

[Kellogz]

gave it a go first time specing me for someone rather than myself, was £10 over the budget if you dount count the p&p, got everything i think you need

 

[jms198]

If you don't have PSU with that case I would go for a prebuilt office machine. The energy efficiency is much greater, you'll get a screen, OS and some warranty too.

The savings on screen and OS ontop of the power savings will imo make far greater savings than anything you could put together.

I hate to say it but according to this article intel definately win in terms of power consumption:

"As for the manufacturer choice, I wouldn’t dare give any definite recommendation at this point, because the chipset and mainboard preferences matter a lot in this case. Platforms on AMD components have higher graphics performance and are more eagerly supported by multimedia software developers. Solutions built with Intel CPUs and chipsets have a completely different advantage: they are considerably more energy-efficient."

 

[deano1863]

If you don't have PSU with that case I would go for a prebuilt office machine. The energy efficiency is much greater, you'll get a screen, OS and some warranty too.

The savings on screen and OS ontop of the power savings will imo make far greater savings than anything you could put together.

I hate to say it but according to this article intel definately win in terms of power consumption:

"As for the manufacturer choice, I wouldn’t dare give any definite recommendation at this point, because the chipset and mainboard preferences matter a lot in this case. Platforms on AMD components have higher graphics performance and are more eagerly supported by multimedia software developers. Solutions built with Intel CPUs and chipsets have a completely different advantage: they are considerably more energy-efficient."

AMD use cool and quiet though, which, when the computer is left on all day will reduce power consumption drastically.

 

[jms198]

Page 9 from the same roundup. I'm only quoting from the article mind

"Moreover, to ensure that we estimate the power consumption in idle mode correctly we activated all power-saving technologies, such as C1E, Cool'n'Quiet 3.0 and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep."