My father-in-law needs a value machine for coding - around £400

[naknakkus]

No monitor, no peripherals. He wants a reasonably quick machine with the following:

1tb of storage.
A motherboard with integrated graphics that can output to a 1080p display.
Provision for using two IDE drives - I'm guessing most motherboards still have one connection?

I was thinking a machine with one of the newest AMD boards and a dual/triple core processor might do the trick for him?

Oh, and it'll be running Win7. He's already bought that, though.

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[marc512]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-270-OK&groupid=43&catid=1078&subcat=

doesnt have onboard graphics but you can upgrade if you get a cheap OS for it. You can easily upgrade for another dvd drive.

 

[Atom]

The i3 530 has onboard gfx with H55..

 

[Frisby]

I don't know if any new boards have 2 IDE connections, this fits the rest of the requirements though. Do overclockers sell any PCI IDE cards?

 

[95thrifles]

you only need one IDE connector as the connector allows for 2 devices, and yes most mobos still have them

 

[naknakkus]

Thanks for the spec. I'll see what he thinks.

 

[Atom]

Frisbys spec is the same as what I am running now with regards to the i3, mb and ram and it was straight in at 4GHZ...

 

[Frozennova]

I'd recommend and AMD Athlon X4 build as you dont get much better on bang for buck.

It gives you native quad core instead of 2 physical and 2 logical cores and comes in quite a bit cheaper than an i3 build.

 

[naknakkus]

What motherboard would you recommend for a machine like that?

 

[kalvindeane]

http://api.photoshop.com/home_11904...be-px-assets/729d76f173be4367a53f4a2a6c35e7b9
400quid. Unlock the 555. If you go for cheaper ram/smaller HDD then you
could buy a better cooler and try OC'ing.

 

[kalvindeane]

Could've also bought one of OCUK's new AMD CPU's that can unlock, they're cheaper than the 555 I linked. Which did you buy in the end?

 

[PermaBanned]

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Patriot G Series 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel (PGS34G1333ELK) £88.99
(£75.74) £88.99
(£75.74)
AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 635 2.90GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £80.99
(£68.93) £80.99
(£68.93)
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard £72.99
(£62.12) £72.99
(£62.12)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £57.99
(£49.35) £57.99
(£49.35)
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) £38.99
(£33.18) £38.99
(£33.18)
Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case - Black £26.99
(£22.97) £26.99
(£22.97)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £18.99
(£16.16) £18.99
(£16.16)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.91) £13.99
(£11.91)
Sub Total : £340.36
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £61.62
Total : £413.73

 

[Bozebo]

With one IDE port you can ribbon 2 IDE drives on. Or am I mistaken?
edit:
oops sorry somebody already noted that

Just incase you're still looking. If you feel it's a good choice - the following components save a fair bit of cash but only if the extra performance isn't needed (perfectly fine for coding):
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB
AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 245 2.90GHz
Asus M4A78L-M LE AMD 760G
Corsair CX 400W
Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case
Samsung 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter

£324.72 inc shipping

Also check the member's market you might be able to save on RAM and possibly other components.

 

[kalvindeane]

Naknakkus what did you buy in the end?

 

[Admetos]

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £18.99

Careful with this on small boards, if you have memory with heatsink the fan cover catches the memory. I have this problem on P55 gigabyte board and fitted said cooler in reverse.

 

[gibb]

Careful with this on small boards, if you have memory with heatsink the fan cover catches the memory. I have this problem on P55 gigabyte board and fitted said cooler in reverse.

I have had the same problem when helping a friend before, was a pain and reversing the cooler didnt feel right.

 

[Admetos]

I have had the same problem when helping a friend before, was a pain and reversing the cooler didnt feel right.

It don't make much difference to CPU temps, however creates a heatspot over the memory.

 

[olivier renault]

I quite like that system

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-258-OK&groupid=43&catid=1078&subcat=

It's got a ATI HD 3000.

 

[naknakkus]

I sent him a spec that looks similar to the one kalvindeane suggested, but he hasn't got back to me yet. Thanks for all the ideas. He's going to have to build it himself, so compatibility of components out of the box is essential as he hasn't built anything in years. He knows his way about a machine though, so as long as nothing needs to be tweaked in BIOS to work properly (ie: memory) he should be fine.