My £15 build

almoststew1990 · 12 May 2013 at 10:57

I was trawling through Gumtree on thursday, sulking because I had horrendous ~~period pain~~ gut ache on my day off from work, and I noticed "a computer" on Gumtree for £15. Sure the advert consisted of one sentence and was entirely in caps, but I thought I might as well ask how old it was, fearing that a technical question might quicken the inevitably elderly seller's brain degradation. They came back saying 2007. I took the gamble and went round to have a look.

I noticed that it had some kind of dedicated graphics with DVI. Might be alright if it has a fairly new GPU, too?

Well, this is what I got:

A prebuilt by a company I'd never heard of MECH. Before taking the cover up, I tried firing it up. The Bios said it was a C2D e4500 at 2.2GHz, with 2GB of DDR2667 RAM. Not too bad for £15! Some champion had installed the DVD drive upsidedown. Good work!

Inside looked alright for a 6 year old PC that no doubt hadn't been opened before. I saw that

On closer inspection, there was lung cancer enducing amounts of dust all over it:

The graphics card turned out to be a cheeky little 8400GS:

Which then turned out to be dead, anyway- looks like I'll be shoehorning my 4850 onto that 300watt generic PSU.

But there was also a TV tuner too!

I thought I'd give it some fresh thermal paste after 6 years dusty use, which was definitely a good decision:

I bunged a cheap Asaka cooler on it, added a few old small HDDs I had hanging around and shoved it in my old case, and now I have the following under my TV as a HTPC.

My girlfriend is pleased because now she can skype from the sofa, I'm pleased because it rescued my boring day off and got a HTPC for £15

MSI 945GCM-F V2
Intel C2D e4500 2.2GHz (now 2.7Ghz)
2GB DDR2667
ATI 4850
500GB + 250GBHDD

Cool story bro, right?

implosiveturnip · 12 May 2013 at 11:17

Noice

I've always wanted to do the "gumtree gamble" as I call it, just never been able to pull the trigger and go for it. I probably wouldn't have the time to do anything with what I bought anyway.

But for £15? good show old bean!

(Now off to gumtree to see if i can find something similar...)

Deleted member 77746 · 12 May 2013 at 11:20

Case doesn't fit in the cabinet....

Shawy · 12 May 2013 at 11:23

Nice find! How the DVD drive was installed upside down for 6 years I have no idea..

deusexlumina · 12 May 2013 at 11:23

very nice

good call tbh

olivier renault · 12 May 2013 at 12:26

almoststew1990 said:
A prebuilt by a company I'd never heard of MESH.

My first PC was a Mesh. They were all the rage back in the late 1990-Early 2000's. Mesh, Evesham, Advent... I think they're still in business, but the PC crowd moved to self-built. Good times.

And good score

A C2D is perfect for a HTPC.

mickyflinn · 12 May 2013 at 12:32

I found a pc in a skip took it home and all that was missing was the hard drive. Put a hard drive in and away it went, still use it as a back up pc if anyones pc breaks down.

Ryan-3 · 12 May 2013 at 12:32

A good find! But...

¿ɥbnoɥʇ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ʎɐɹʇ pʌp ǝɥʇ ǝsıןɐǝɹ ʇou ʎǝɥʇ pıp ʍoɥ

Idleman · 12 May 2013 at 12:40

My first PC was a Mesh.

So was mine. Got a few awards from the Gadget Show in their day for prebuilt systems, but quickly went down hill. Went bust if I remember correctly but got bought out. Crap customer service.

almoststew1990 · 12 May 2013 at 13:21

I didn't mention a few issues I had

The bios battery was dead so the time would constantly reset to 1st Jan 2002. This meant windows update wouldn't work, amongst loads of other installers etd and I ended up manually installing XP service pack 3. The only way I could do this (with a 'quick' IE6, 800*600 google) was the IT Professional ans Network Installation version. So far there doesn't seem to be much difference, except I don't have windows update application... I have to use the update website. But meh its sorted now

foster grant · 12 May 2013 at 13:42

I was given an old dell a few years back by a woman who was moving out of the flat next door ...and when i looked on the hard drive to see if there was anything on it ......there was some.........shall we say personal pictures that she hadn't deleted lol

Kosmiche · 12 May 2013 at 14:13

Ryan-3 said:
A good find! But...

¿ɥbnoɥʇ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ʎɐɹʇ pʌp ǝɥʇ ǝsıןɐǝɹ ʇou ʎǝɥʇ pıp ʍoɥ

Maybe they did and just put up with it

They probably had a "system" where inserting a disk was done with the assistance of another person holding the disc in place as the tray closed

Ksanti · 12 May 2013 at 14:22

Yeah had my first 5870 system from Mesh as it worked out being a good £200 cheaper than building it myself. When it went wrong and I contacted them I found out why. To be fair, my little brother's system has performed flawlessly for the last 4 years on a Mesh system but I didn't like them one bit. Nice find though

Schizo · 12 May 2013 at 14:23

Nice find...
My first pc was also a mesh

£2100 back in the day !

Sal0hcine · 12 May 2013 at 14:41

Nice find. Very impressive for £15.

garnhamr · 12 May 2013 at 20:00

Eames said:
Maybe they did and just put up with it

They probably had a "system" where inserting a disk was done with the assistance of another person holding the disc in place as the tray closed

Or maybe they thought the pc was made by HSEW