Help with building a cheap pc

Jonnybmac

Jonnybmac

Jonnybmac

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My dad wants a pc and was looking at buying a pre-built one.. my experience with these is there limitations on if you need to upgrade due to having their own parts you cant really upgrade when it comes to it. I told him I would be able to build him one just as good but its been years since i built a pc and wouldnt know what to look for in terms of being the best for the price as there is a lot of new tech to when i used to build pc's.

he has a couple of printers he uses for creating canvas's and photo's. he wants a pc that will be able to handle photoshop well, doing rending and blowing up images fast whilst able to multitask. his budget is £300 for the tower and components, he wants to be able to dual screen but i imagine most graphics cards offer this nowadays?

can anyone offer me some help into what i should be looking out for?

Many thanks
 
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Ive had a look at what i think would be alright, providing my dad will push another £85 into the pc, could anyone tell me if this would be alright? maybe even tone down any components to get the price closer to £300 if im not going to benefit from certain parts used with others.

AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 565 3.40GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail £75.98


Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM - OEM (0F12115) (HDS723020BLA642) £69.98

**B Grade** Palit GeForce GTS 250 Green 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £59.96

Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard £54.98


OCZ StealthXStream 2 500W Power Supply £41.99

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £39.98

Cooler Master Elite 330 Midi Tower Case - Black £28.99
 
i3 would probably be best in all honesty.

A decent budget i3 mobo or even an AM3+ mobo for AMD CPUs will be £50ish but will have an IGP so you can dual screen but not need to purchase a gfx card. Which will help keep the cost down. Although RAM is reasonably cheap and 8GB would be useful providing you have a 64bit OS.

You could opt for the phenom 955BE which is certainly a better option than the X2 CPU you picked. It can be overclocked to 3.8Ghz easily with an aftermarket heatsink. Once overclocked it beats the i3 in a number of benchmark tests and comes pretty close when it does lose. However the i3 overs good performance at stock (with it's supplied heatsink) and uses less electric to run it, for what you dad needs this is the simplest and most cost effective option.
 
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something like this will be great:

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £83.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
1 x Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £54.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £35.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £27.98
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £296.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).

i would reccommend an intel i3 2100 with the £60 H67 motherboard, but i cant work out if it will allow multiple monitors to work from the onboard graphics
 
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No you won't need a gfx card providing the mobo has a IGP, like the one reaper spec'd. The graphics are built into it like what you get on laptops and they can use photoshop just fine. If it's just casual photo editing 4GB should be fine.

AMD is usually great at bang for buck performance but the H series Intel mobos are now on par for price. A i3 2100 is roughly the same price as the 955BE and offers better performance at stock settings for less power usage.
 
olivier renault said:
AMD / Intel integrated GPUs runs dual displays?
Click to expand...

the AMD one i specced definitly does. im not sure about intel onboard though which is why i havent specced the i3 2100/

the i3 2100 would be better with single threaded programs, whereas the phenom would wipe the floor with it if a program could use all 4 cores
 
I've rang overclockers and the motherboard isnt in stock. I can either stick with the same motherboard and wait or do i go for a different option?

is this just as good?

Asus M4A88T-M AMD 880G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard

or

Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 AMD 880G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard

or

Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard

or this one because it provides usb 3.0

Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) DDR3 microATX Motherboard


Do i acutally need usb 3.0? I would have said i would due to him needing the faster transfer to his printer, but if It's not that great of a deal, is this much of a different to the one I purchased and was out of stock?

Asus M4A78LT-M 760G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard
 
None of those motherboards are as good as the one that Reaper specced you because they are AM3. The one Reaper suggested is AM3+ which will allow an upgrade to Bulldozer when it comes out.

This is a good one.
 
Yeah, I've just swapped motherboards and it all should be here tomorrow. Bit of a dissapointment to my dad as he was exited about having a new pc today but oh well. Atleast he will get full benefit from his hard drive with this mobo.

Thanks for the help Jordan.
 
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