Anything wrong with this £400 build?

Streeteh

Streeteh

Streeteh

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Trying to build a computer for my missus, budget is £400 max and it will mainly be used for web/work etc with the odd bit of the sims 2.

specj.jpg


Catches are that it will be running in a rather warm conservatory so heat is what killed the last one, because of this it probably won't be overclocked and i've bought a decentish case/heatsink in order to stop dust buildup (which is what caused the other one to die combined with the heat) and keep things cool and relatively quiet.

Anything wrong with the spec and any suggestions on how to improve it? Thanks in advance.
 
I'd up that to the Fenrir if you could have heat issues, it's not that much more. Otherwise it looks good, no issues from what I can see.
 
Raikiri said:
I'd up that to the Fenrir if you could have heat issues, it's not that much more. Otherwise it looks good, no issues from what I can see.
Click to expand...

Excellent, i'll certainly take that into consideration as it doesn't push beyond budget. Thanks for the feedback.
 
Maybe consider an AMD set up?

Asus M4A78 AMD 770 (Socket AM3/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £59.98

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7750+ Black Edition 2.70GHz (Socket AM2+) - Retail £49.99

Sub Total : £95.63
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £15.58
Total : £119.46

Bit cheaper and suppots AM3 so you could upgrade to Phenom II at a later date with a Bios update.
 
That AMD 250 review certainly is very interesting, tbh i didn't even realize AMD were 'back in the running' as it were. It seems they've come leaps and bounds since i last had a proper look at CPUs. I noticed you specd a seatgate harddrive. Have they overcome their high failure rate yet? Last i checked they were dying left right and centre due to a firmware issue so have been wary of them ever since.

Thanks for the very helpful reply btw, good to see a completely different take on the build.
 
The new athlon x2 is based on a brand new core (a stripped down phemon 2) and so has similar performance clock for clock to core 2

I just specced the seagate drive cos it was bigger for the same price, and 500Gb/platter

Personaly I went for wd640's

if you go for the phemon x2, with an asrock or biostar motherboard with an sb750 southbridge you could theroetically unclock it to get a tri or quad core, this is however more uncretain than overclocking see link
 
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Cool, thanks again for the feedback. Will sleep on this and then make my purchase tomorrow, i'm leaning towards the AMD system at present. I think i'll avoid the phenom though as ideally i want to keep things simple + reliable. I will literally be throwing this together then shipping it over to the missus' parents house by the end of the week, i won't really be tinkering with it so would rather avoid things like overclocking etc that i like to keep an eye on for a while if you see what i mean.

I'm always impressed by how helpful the peeps in general hardware are.
 
Phenom Phenom Phenom!!!

Okay, what am I doing, I'm not even a fanboy - phenom chips run ridiculously cool, however, and I'd strongly suggest it for this build. The E5200 is an excellent chip, but it's not a cool runner.

The new Phenom II chips, or athlons based on them, really would be a good choice. As an example, my overclocked tri-core 720BE runs 20 idle 40 load with a TRUE (not as good at cooling as the fenrir, but quieter with a noctua) and antec 300 with stock fans and a couple of sharkoons.

In terms of performance it's quite hard to choose between AMD and intel, but in terms of heat there's very little to go against the new amd's
 
Drop the case down to a coolermaster 335, and get a 4670. Otherwise the gaming performace isn't going to be great.
 
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