Cheapest build?

Shampoo · Sunday at 15:28

Need a cheap desktop PC for 1080p browsing, YouTube and backup storage. No gaming whatsoever. Needs at least 3 spaces for HDDS and a few SSDs 16GB RAM and a CPU that doesn't take a century to do anything. OS required. Please do your magic and get the cheapest, reliable build possible! Looked at the entry level gaming pre-builts here and they start around £800 which is just too much for what we're needing out of this. Appreciate the help, guys!

So:
Case
MB
RAM
CPU
PSU
Cooler
OS
Little M2 for OS

andy_mk3 · Sunday at 15:38

Pick yourself up a used Dell/HP/Lenovo from eBay. £200-300 will get you a modern system with good specs.

Gray2233 · Sunday at 15:44

What do you use the HDD's for and how much space do they take up? You're pretty limited in case choices with your requirements, SSD's are very cheap right now and you could very likely totally swap to them while easily remaining in budget.

Tetras · Sunday at 15:47

I'd look at a prebuilt with a Ryzen 4600G/4650G/5600G/5650G, they're often very cheap and hard to beat.

This is the best I could do.

- There are cheaper boards if you don't need WIFI.
- i5-12400 non-F is often not much more than the i3-12100.
- CPU has a usable cooler in the box.
- I wouldn't bother with 16GB of RAM at this point, especially since you might get the nerfed x16 sticks.
- Small SSDs (250/500) are rarely good value, so I just did a 1TB one.
- PSU is Seasonic built, with a 10 year warranty and a passive fan mode.

Shampoo said:
Needs at least 3 spaces for HDDS and a few SSDs 16GB RAM and a CPU that doesn't take a century to do anything.

This is awkward, since most cases have only 2x max spaces for HDDs.

I could find 2 cases at OCUK that met this criteria and weren't very expensive, the Jonsbo in my spec and Kolink Levante V2 (£5 cheaper, but RGB bling).

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Intel Core i3-12100 3.30GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AK-IN) = £119.99
1 x Asus Prime B660M-A WIFI D4 - Intel B660 DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6HK-AS) = £129.00
1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (SKU: MY-0AJ-TG) = £55.99
1 x KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 1TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TSH-00981) = £58.99
1 x Jonsbo C5 - Black/window Midi Tower Case (SKU: CA-00A-JB) = £65.99
1 x Phanteks AMP 650W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply (SKU: CA-09Q-PT) = £89.99

1 x Microsoft Windows 11 Home 64-Bit DVD - OEM (KW9-00632) (SKU: SW-18J-MS) = £99.95

Total: £631.88 (includes delivery: £11.98)

Gray2233 · Sunday at 16:20

AMD version:

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Corsair CV Series CV550 550W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (CP-9020210-UK) (SKU: CA-25C-CS) = £44.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Six Core 3.9GHz (Socket AM4) APU with RX Vega Graphics - Retail (SKU: CP-3CW-AM) = £139.99
1 x MSI B550M PRO-VDH WiFi (AMD AM4) B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-358-MS) = £109.99
1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (SKU: MY-0AJ-TG) = £55.99
1 x Aerocool Bolt Mini TG Micro-ATX case - black (SKU: CA-234-AE) = £29.99
1 x BitFenix Spectre PRO 120mm Fan - All Black (SKU: FG-036-BX) = £4.99
1 x WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) (SKU: HD-58G-WD) = £119.99

Total: £505.93 (includes delivery: £0.00)

You could save money by opting for an AMD 4600G but OCUK don't sell them, I think they go for around the £70 mark.

Case has room for two 3.5" HDD's, obviously it's not the greatest, but there's plenty of room to pick something you'd prefer. I've went overkill on the NvME, you could opt to drop down to a 1tb drive such as the one recommended by tetras, anything smaller becomes very poor value.

You'll never get me to spend more than £5-10 on a Windows key, I'd rather run without and deal with some minor feature loss.

Threepwood · Sunday at 19:45

okay, this is the best that I can do,
the i3 has in built graphics that will cope with 1080p browsing and watching you tube etc, no problem, it also has 4 cores 8 threads with a boost up to 4.3GHZ t,so I think that it will be pretty nippy for what it is! comes with a air cooler too and the case comes with x4 fans, I don't know how many fan headers the motherboard has, so you might have to get a fan splitter from the rainforest, as I don't think that ocuk sells any, strange but true!

according to this it has the 2 HDD bays you need, and a few SSD bays too so I presume you have drives for the system
the psu that comes with the case is over-specced in case you ever want to add a wee gpu to the system
save yourself £100 and run an unactivated win10, or win 11, or just buy a cheap key from somewhere if you simply must run an activated windows, personally, I'd just run unactivated, like I have for years!

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-21600C18 2666MHz Dual Cha (SKU: MY-0AF-TG) = £68.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 11 Home 64-Bit DVD - OEM (KW9-00632) (SKU: SW-18J-MS) = £99.95
1 x Seasonic Syncro Q704 Midi Tower Tempered Glass + Syncro DGC-650 80+ Gold Power supply - black (SKU: CA-07V-SS) = £319.99
1 x Gigabyte B760M DS3H DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5C0-GI) = £114.98
1 x Intel Core i3-12100F 3.30GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AS-IN) = £73.99

Total: £677.90 (includes delivery: £0.00)

HERE is a link to the basket to make your life easy

tamzzy · Sunday at 19:45

andy_mk3 said:
Pick yourself up a used Dell/HP/Lenovo from eBay. £200-300 will get you a modern system with good specs.

this

freddie64 · Monday at 06:33

Threepwood said:
the i3 has in built graphics that will cope with 1080p browsing and watching you tube etc

The i3-12100F does not have onboard graphics. (none F version has but costs more)

Shampoo · Monday at 10:43

^Particular models/numbers to look for?

mickyflinn · Monday at 11:20

You will need a motherboard with at least 5 sata ports according to your first post and maybe more so I would go down the custom build as you can always add a Sats pcia card for more ports .

Case choice should be considered further depending on future needs, slots available.

Windows keys can be had for £10

Warranty is a big thing for me and new parts will give you 3 years .

If you have a spare GPU then the 12400f 6 core is a great choice for £99.

Threepwood · Monday at 13:34

freddie64 said:
The i3-12100F does not have onboard graphics. (none F version has but costs more)

according to the ocuk page it does have an igpu take a look, here top right here
is that a mistake on ocuk behalf?

ED209 · Monday at 13:53

Threepwood said:
according to the ocuk page it does have an igpu take a look, here top right here
is that a mistake on ocuk behalf?

Under the star review bit at the top right it says this

BX8071512100F, 4/8 Cores / Threads, 3.30GHz Clock Speed, 4.3GHz Single Core Max Turbo, 12mb Cache, 60W TDP, Dual Channel DDR4/DDR5 Controller, Onboard Graphics: No, 3 Year Warranty

Tetras · Monday at 14:08

Threepwood said:
is that a mistake on ocuk behalf?

No F/KF CPU (AMD or Intel) has integrated graphics, but sometimes it is copy and pasted from general blurb about the CPUs which makes it appear that they do.

Threepwood · Monday at 14:14

ED209 said:
Under the star review bit at the top right it says this

BX8071512100F, 4/8 Cores / Threads, 3.30GHz Clock Speed, 4.3GHz Single Core Max Turbo, 12mb Cache, 60W TDP, Dual Channel DDR4/DDR5 Controller, Onboard Graphics: No, 3 Year Warranty

thanks for putting me straight I was only seeing the onboard grapphics, and not the ':no' part not the best text formatting there.

freddie64 · Monday at 14:41

Threepwood said:
thanks for putting me straight I was only seeing the onboard grapphics, and not the ':no' part not the best text formatting there.

Agree that they should do something about the format.

Bet you are not the only one being caught out by this.

ED209 · Monday at 14:47

Threepwood said:
thanks for putting me straight I was only seeing the onboard grapphics, and not the ':no' part not the best text formatting there.

it Happens! lol

Threepwood · Monday at 14:56

okay, build altered, it still comes out at under £800, added the real i3 with igpu but I've taken the OEM windows OS dvd off there to bring it down to £630 too, if he really wants cheap then get a key from somewhere else
[
My basket at OcUK:

1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-21600C18 2666MHz Dual Cha (SKU: MY-0AF-TG) = £68.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 11 Home 64-Bit DVD - OEM (KW9-00632) (SKU: SW-18J-MS) = £99.95
1 x Seasonic Syncro Q704 Midi Tower Tempered Glass + Syncro DGC-650 80+ Gold Power supply - black (SKU: CA-07V-SS) = £319.99
1 x MSI Pro B760-P WIFI DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-37J-MS) = £129.98

Total: £630.90 (includes delivery: £11.98)

Threepwood · Monday at 15:12

could get that build even cheaper too, as the case takes micro motherboards too

pastymuncher · Monday at 15:14

That's a rather expensive case and psu for a budget build. That's also a lot of money for a basic pc. The op's requirements scream out second hand parts to me.

Shampoo · Thursday at 11:31

Thanks guys for all the suggestions. Tried looking for used DELL and the like on the bay, but the cases seemed tiny and the details on how much room there was for drives or quality of the PSU were missing so didn't fancy shelling out £400 for the risk. Some of the builds here were quite close in price to a pre-built as well so ended up just getting a pre-built. Room for 4 drives in there and I can just get a PCI card with some more ports when needed. Case always has room for more SSD drives as long as you're smart with cable ties and rubber pads!

Enough power in this to be used as emergency rig as well should catastrophe befall the main system!

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