A really hard spec! £150!

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My friend wants a P.C, but has no money. Ever. He's tried saving up, and all he can do is skim £200 before thinking "Wow, I've got £200" and blowing it all... so can we spec him a P.C for only £150? It's entirely for LANing, so ethernet stuff and a graphics card are essential. He could probably stretch the £150 if you deemed it essential, or ideal. Many thanks in advance!
 
Yea, might be able to get a basic sort of second hand pc for that, but if he needs a monitor and such as well then theres no chance!

As for buying new, you'd be looking at at least £60-70 minimum just for your graphics card if your wanting to play the latest games with a playable fps
 
150dtc.jpg


Yeah, like the others said, you're not going to get anything worthwhile for £150. Even at £200 he'd struggle to get anything decent for gaming. That spec there was made of the cheapest stuff on the site and it's still over budget.

EDIT: Heh, and it doesn't even have a CPU yet. Whoops.
 
Ben M said:
Art, you could probably do with a processor...
Click to expand...

When has anyone needed one of those :p

I would rather tear my eyes out than use the above setup (including the all important CPU) as a gaming PC. You need a much larger budget, a mid range graphics card and lower end CPU will take up his £150 budget. He'd still need a motherboard, ram, hard drive, PSU, case and an optical drive.
 
I think the sweet spot for budget gaming is around £500, can get a great value set up for around that much. At the very least around £400, but you'll not get much for less than that
 
if he has that much trouble saving why not just buy the bits in stages ?

case/monitor/psu/keyboard/mouse will be suitable as items now or for a few months time (save price changes off course), then next time he has £150 memory/mobo then finally the processor.
 
What sort of games does he want to play? If its supreme commander and crysis then its a no no, if its call of duty, quake 3, AOE3 etc then something simple will do the job nicely.

Maybe a second hand laptop?
 
I think unless he is willing to save at least £400, he'd probably better off getting an xbox 360. There is no point going that cheap because he will only regret it later (if gaming is the primary use)
 
Alright, I've found a hard drive and a power supply for him to use. I can probably get him a case too.

£150, for mobo/ram/gpu and cpu. Is THAT possible?

Edit: He has a PS3; he only wants the P.C to join in LAN sessions of AOE3/2/1 and Battle for Middle Earth 2.
 
If your mate wants to LAN he should learn to save up!

You could probably scrap together a celeron based system, but its really not worth it.
 
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
CP-234-AM_60.jpg
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7750+ Black Edition 2.70GHz (Socket AM2+) - Retail £48.99
(£42.60) £48.99
(£42.60)
MB-021-FC_60.jpg
Foxconn M61PMV nForce 430 (Socket AM2/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £36.79
(£31.99) £36.79
(£31.99)
CA-088-AN_60.jpg
Antec Basic 350W Power Supply £33.98
(£29.55) £33.98
(£29.55)
HD-123-SE_60.jpg
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (ST380815AS) £29.89
(£25.99) £29.89
(£25.99)
CA-045-AS_60.jpg
Asus TA-861 Midi-ATX Case - Black/Silver (No PSU) £21.84
(£18.99) £21.84
(£18.99)
MY-083-CR_60.jpg
Crucial 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 PC2-5300C5 Dual Channel (CT2KIT6464AA667) £14.94
(£12.99) £14.94
(£12.99)
CD-115-SA_60.jpg
Samsung TS-H493B SATA DVD-ROM/CD-RW Drive - Black (OEM) £6.98
(£6.07) £6.98
(£6.07) Sub Total : £168.18 Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : FREE VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £26.91 Total : £195.34
 
Kenny's looks good, but only 1GB RAM and on-board graphics (which is probably the best you'll get for that price).

OP: just tell your friend he'll need to save more if he wants anything decent. He won't have much fun with a £150-£200 build, especially if he's gaming on it.
 
Yer, we've told him, but he has a harpy of a girlfriend. She eats up at least £200 of his a month, doesn't work more than 6 hours a week, e.t.c.

Oh well, I'll just keep rubbing it in his face each time we LAN and hope he learns to save =P Thank you for the effort guys. Although, as I have a PSU and a hard drive, do you think Kenny's would do the job for the relatively average games (Age of Empires 3 and Battle for Middle Earth 2) if it had a bit more RAM?

Edit: BFME2 says it requires nVidia GeForce3 or greater? Does Nvidia GeForce 6100 qualify?
 
Last edited:
AoE 2 ran on my old winME box (swiftly changed to 98!), that was a Celeron 700mHz with 64mb of RAM and christ knows what graphics, although I think it was integrated with its own dedicated 8mb of memory.

So yeah, I'd say you can run AoE2 on kenny's build; AoE3 should be playable but it might not be all that enjoyable.

Why not take his cash off him and save it if he really wants it. £40 at a time will get him a £320 pc (worth having) in 8 weeks/months however often you take it :-)

I'd say to just build kenny's suggestion and then take another few quid off him over the months afterward to upgrade it. For someone who can't budget, it's better to get it built cheaply and add bits on. Swap the RAM out for proper 2gb set for £30 or so, a basic graphics card for another £40 and a hard drive for £30 - that's £100 to bring it up to worth having.

The CPU should hold up nicely to the games you play, it's just a case of adding that extra RAM and the most basic GPU that can do the job.
 
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