Basic MOBO/RAM/CPU combo with onboard VGA

[pflynn]

Hi,

I'm building a cheap Internet browsing machine for a relative (possibly to run Vista) but most probably XP. Their old Pentium 3 machine that they have is finally dying.

I'm not bothered about running the latest games on it so am looking at onboard VGA options. (I've seen that some motherboards have onboard Direct-X 9 - neat!)

Does anyone have any good recommendations. The person I'm building it for doesn't want to spend too much.

I was looking at ATX Motherboard, CPU (Retail with heat sink) and 1Gb RAM combinations.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what would make a good cheap machine?

 

[steve258]

Abit IP-95 Micro ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
£31.99
(£37.59)

OcUK 1GB (2x512MB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
£17.99
(£21.14)

Intel Core 2 Duo E2140 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.60GHz (800FSB) - Retail
£47.99
(£56.39)

Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU
£39.99
(£46.99)

Sub Total : £137.96
Shipping : £9.95
VAT : £25.88
Total : £173.79

Not sure how cheap you want it to be though so here's the cheapest. Can you reuse the hard disk and optical drive?

 

[pflynn]

Thanks.

Noticed you added the power supply on there too. Think the current one will cope but will put this to her to see if she's happy with it. It should last a few good years on that for browsing.

Does this handle Vista (obviously not with all the bells and whistles from the user interface)??

The optical drives and hard disks are fine. It's only a smallish drive (80Gb) but will do.

 

[steve258]

As long as the onboard GFX is DX9 compatible it should run the Vista aero interface.

If the power supply was from the Pentium 3 era it most likely certainly won't be able to handle the new hardware.

 

[mattyrigby00]

Thanks.

Noticed you added the power supply on there too. Think the current one will cope but will put this to her to see if she's happy with it. It should last a few good years on that for browsing.

Does this handle Vista (obviously not with all the bells and whistles from the user interface)??

The optical drives and hard disks are fine. It's only a smallish drive (80Gb) but will do.

the old psu from the p3 will be too old and probably at or very early atx and wont even have the 4 pin plug, that case comes with a psu which will be fine should be fine with vista but tbh xp is better atm

 

[eyetrip]

If this machine is likely not to change at all (or much) for many years, I would recommend installing an OEM copy of Vista Basic, keeping future updates/securit in mind

 

[pflynn]

Thanks for all the replies!

Have told them the options and they're going to go for it. Excellent.

Have got all versions of Vista right up to Ultimate. Think Ultimate is a bit overkill for her but Home Premium looks good.

Have to check software requirements first as my brother plays online gambling software (poker) so I'll see if that works on Vista first.