Budget Spec Challenge ~£500

SiD the Turtle

SiD the Turtle

SiD the Turtle

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The parents are after a new system, which will mainly be used for work (Word, Excel, Interweb etc), no need for any gaming performance. They've seen off the shelf systems with 19" screen, Vista (no doubt basic addition) and bunch of fluff applications for around the £500 mark, so I need to see if I can do better.

So here are the requirements:

Base unit, 19" screen, CPU, MB, RAM, sound and video (can be onboard), large capacity hard drive (+250GB) and DVDRW drive. No need for keyboard, mouse, printer or software though if you can fit Vista in there you get bonus points.

Any ideas? Haven't built a box for a while so I'm not clued up on all this Core 2 Duo business etc (I can download one MP3 and listen to another?! :confused: :p )
 
I think this should be a pretty good setup (wouldn't mind some of the components myself :))

35jkpx1.jpg
 
Pretty much bang on the budget if delivery is excluded. I don't know about the 250gb hard drive, if your parents are anything like mine they will struggle to fill 10gb of it but you asked for it so it is included. :)

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) £63.99
(£75.19) £63.99
(£75.19)
Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
OcUK Value Hanns-G HW191D 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver £94.99
(£111.61) £94.99
(£111.61)
Asrock Conroe945G-DVI (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £41.99
(£49.34) £41.99
(£49.34)
Intel Core 2 DUO E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £94.99
(£111.61) £94.99
(£111.61)
OcUK 1GB (2x512MB) PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £37.99
(£44.64) £37.99
(£44.64)
Liteon DVD-8900 16x DVD±RW/RAM (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£16.44) £13.99
(£16.44)
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A33423) £36.99
(£43.46) £36.99
(£43.46)
Sub Total : £424.92
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
Vat : £76.28
Total : £512.15
 
I wouldn't bother getting vista if you're on a tight budget. The money is much better spent on hardware.
 
Thanks for the ideas guys, anyone got any more?

The big HD is 1) because the off the shelf one has one and 2) because my Dad as a tonne of music, videos and pictures and is a nightmare at managing his data (just like all users :p ). I think I'll bin Vista as XP SP2 seems a lot more stable.

RAM wise what's the standard these days? There seems to be quite a few to choose from.
 
1GB standard definitely. 2GB if gaming is involved. Brand wise, Corsair and GeiL are very good for budget and a little overclocking, whereas OCZ and G.Skill are more expensive and are designed for overclocking and high performance and so cost more.
 
Antec NSK4000 380W
£34.20
Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 2.13Ghz
£133.45
Kingston 2GB (2x1GB) DDR 533
£69.89
LG GSA-H12N 18x DVD±RW
£21.99
Asus P5GZ-MX
£44.41
Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200rpm
£81.06
19” Widescreen TFT LCD
£108.80

£493.80 Delivered
 
Last edited:
alexisonfire said:
c2d for word processing? Slightly OTT no? What about a cheap 939 X2 machine. Just because the budget is 500, doesn't mean you have to spend 500.
Click to expand...

Very true, you don't need a monster machine for the tasks illustrated, in fact single core would be quite sufficient - anything from 1.5ghz with 512mb Ram would handle it pretty comfortably. However the task was to see if the specification from an off the shelf system could be beaten for a set amount (£500) and I think it has been proved it can be done. :)
 
alexisonfire said:
c2d for word processing? Slightly OTT no? What about a cheap 939 X2 machine. Just because the budget is 500, doesn't mean you have to spend 500.
Click to expand...
But surely it's better to encourage people to get a slightly better machine, so their options are left open later on - if they decided they wanted to do something a bit more processor hungy. Or even if system requirements start to climb, their PC will last that little bit longer...
 
furnace said:
But surely it's better to encourage people to get a slightly better machine, so their options are left open later on - if they decided they wanted to do something a bit more processor hungy. Or even if system requirements start to climb, their PC will last that little bit longer...
Click to expand...

I can't imagine even the lowest spec X2 having problems with microsoft word in the future... :p
 
Thanks for the advice guys, though clearly none of you have tried Office 2007, it eats memory like nobody's business! :p

A Core 2 Duo is probably overkill, but I think I need to account for the fact that I don't want to be upgrading it any time soon.
 
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