£680 complete system fo my bro

[The Scop]

Hi everyone,


Many thanks again for the £1500ish specs you came up with for my work mate. he loved the great advice, don't he think he realised they're great communities like this of knowledgeable people on the web.

Changing from that one. My bro now wants desktop as he is sick of his old uni laptop. He wants me to build it (wonderful with my 6 years out of date knowledge ). He tell me he has a budget of £680 for a complete system. This includes tower, monitor, keyboard and mouse.

He wants it for fast internet browsing, watching videos (will need an optical drive), his guitar software and some games. Doesn't need to play latest games at max, he mainly plays old games like Unreal Tournament 3. Bit of future proofing would be cool, 8gb ram maybe, will need an OS disc too I'm afraid.

Monitor wise no bigger than a 22" 1920 x 1080 as he can't fit bigger on his cramped desk. Wasn't sure with his space restrictions if Micro ATX, small case would be better, but either is fine, I'll leave the choice with you guys.


Thanks so much again for your advice guys


Mark

 

[Danny75]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus VX229H 22" Widescreen AH-IPS LED Multimedia Monitor - Black £129.95
1 x Intel Core i3-4170 3.70GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £104.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) £79.99
1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU) £77.99
1 x MSI B85M Gaming Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 MATX Motherboard £68.99
1 x SuperFlower FX 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - Black £41.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Savage Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11SRK2/8) £38.99
1 x Aerocool V3X Devil Red Edition Midi-Tower - Black / Red £19.99
1 x Samsung SH-224FB/BEBE 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM M disc compatible £14.99
1 x Sumvision Nemesis Kane Pro Gaming Keyboard & Mouse Set £13.99
Total : £606.85 (includes shipping : £12.50 Ex.VAT).



Starts off with 250GB of SSD storage.

RAM will likely run at 1600MHz max unless that new-ish B85 mobo with some nice features (when compared to similar-priced Z97s) pulls a surprise. No problem with setting 1600 as the speed. If he'd be massively into overclocking later on, then go with Z97 instead, otherwise compare other features.

Leaves £80 or so for you to keep a close eye on B Grade video cards and snap up any great looking offer. Alternatively, could go with a new GTX 750 or R7 360 (latter seems better). But really, for that money, B Grade is best value.

Monitor is personally recommended, have used one.

Finally, wait for the Skylake CPUs to show up (by end of this week or next it seems), and if they are a decent price, then someone will make you a new spec.