Cheap build for friends dad - £200 (or there abouts) budget

buchtis · 25 Sep 2012 at 09:47

Morning guys,

As per title i'm planning to put a PC together for my mate's dad.

All he needs is the tower and i've sorted RAM out already so I just need everything else. Unfortunately a competitor to OcUK seems to have substantially lower prices and I also get free shipping with them so i'll be listing some of their parts down.

This PC will be used to work, internet browsing and the stock market. I've already made a thread here about a suitable graphics card that will support a minimum of 4 monitors or above at different sizes/resolutions but i'm still unsure about it as i've never used a multi-monitor set-up myself so any help/advice is greatly appreciated.

Here is what i've got so far:

Ezcool NA-705B Black Mesh Mid Tower Case with 500W PSU - £***

Intel CPU Pentium G850 Socket 1155 Dual Core Processor - £***

MSI H61M-P25 Motherboard Micro-ATX Intel Socket 1155 - £***

Samsung SATA 22x DVD Writer SH-S222BB/BEBE Black Internal OEM - £***

OCZ 120GB Solid 3 SSD - Solid State Drive SATA III - £***

Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) [DT01ACA050] - £***

Now all i'm missing is a graphics card capable of running 4 monitors at different resolutions without a hitch.

The total so far is £213.

*** = not OcUk pricing

buchtis · 25 Sep 2012 at 11:45

22 views and not 1 reply? Come on...

jackocurly0074 · 25 Sep 2012 at 11:51

Well I wrote a long reply and then the site told me I have logged in since I submitted the post, so it lost it all ...

Therefore this will be more brief...

SSD Drive - Avoid OCZ! Go for a Samsung/Crucial/Corsair and as you have a 2nd HDD you can probably get something smaller (64GB).

There is a link below with the number of monitors that AMD cards support based on the series, gives you a better idea of the max number of screens you can use etc and is useful -

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/amd-eyefinity-technology/how-to/Pages/faqs.aspx

Though I am unsure myself on the multi resolution/screen types, though I don't see it being a problem as long as the resolution of each screen is 1920x1080/1200 or below. Having seen the other thread, USB monitors will be a bit sluggish and not what you want to use in time critical situations!

Hopefully that is useful to you!

Orcvader · 25 Sep 2012 at 12:31

£90 over:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 64GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC064D/EU) £57.98
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) £43.99
1 x MSI H61M-P31-G3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £38.99
1 x Intel Celeron G530 2.40GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail £34.99
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £32.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case - Black £29.99
1 x Asus HD 5450 SILENT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Low Profile Graphics Card £22.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
Total : £290.02 (includes shipping : £11.75).

Assuming he needs them to run in extended mode, the 5450 can run 2 of the monitors, and then the Intel HD Graphics can run the other 2. This will give a total of 4 outputs.

However it also depends if his monitors can support DVI/VGA. Any idea what monitors he'll be using?