Possible budget build for £350?

booey1

booey1

booey1

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Someone from my family has asked me to look into building a new PC for them. Already got periferals and will get the OS seperately.

To be used for web, email, possibly the occasional old game and watching dvds.

I've struggled a bit with finding cheap enough parts, can anyone recommend a build?

Possibily something with more processor power as they are worried about things running slowly.

Thanks :)
 
Depends what you define as slow, most of it comes down to the OS becoming slow. If they have an Intel Celeron or Sempron atm, which most average users on a budget have then you will see a pretty big improvement straight away. This is what i'd buy if someone gave me a budget of £350 if a monitor is needed id say its out of the question to look at a build less than £350 as your pushing getting a decent amount of performance. Bare in mind that most retailers actually sell you crappy hardware.

350Build.png


The graphics card is by no means a high end beast that will give you playable frame rates on games like crysis and bad company 2. If there looking for something that will play something like that then your gonna need to spend 600+ My build (see sig) was £653 and it gets me well playable frame rates on every game except the newest ones like Bad company 2 which pushes it but im still able to get 30-60fps.
 
You dont need 4 gb, get 2 bg of ram

No need for a 30 pound case, get something cheaper, like 15-20 pound.

No need for a oz 400w. Get something cheaper, like a 20-25 pound artic brand 400-500 W.

Get a cheaper mobo, around 30-35 pounds.

get a OEM dvd rw. Around 14-15 pound.

And if your family doesnt play games, no need to buy a graphic card. Save another 40-50 pounds.

If you are doing it cheap.. 200-250 should do. I just build an i3 system for family uses. It cost 360 pounds. And I even have a 17 pound cooler to over clock it to 4.1 ghz.

I am planning to build a medium gaming rig with i3 and 5770. It should cost around 460-480. So 350 is a lot.


I wont post competitors site, but for light family system, overclockers is not the best place to buy parts.
 
Well he said they play old games so i think the graphics card should be fine but the rest i think you could save money and drop down abit.
 
Don't buy cheap crap.

I've had a cheap power supply 20 quid special. It gives you the worst 12 volt rails meaning your pc can become unstable to hell.

Case wise, coolermaster combine inexpensive with quality to give you a good all round product. I've had another competitors value case for 20-30 quid and i could litterally twist it from the top of the psu to the bottom of next to the power switch.

Having a graphics card speed up your system as the systems RAM is not being used where as on board graphics are crap and most of them use part of the RAM for graphics memory. Could buy 2GB but if you want Windows 7 which you should really think about 4GB is nice to have.

DVD-RW wise you can get OEM I was just quickly speccing a system and there good burners.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. If you pay around 350 and get what I said you probably will have a nice stable PC. Whereas buying cheap parts you will see issues a lot. a dogey PSU pushing the wrong Voltages into your PC will just kill your hardware. Oh and half of the cheap ones say there 400W say and there really 350W max.
 
mkfk1 said:
You dont need 4 gb, get 2 bg of ram

No need for a 30 pound case, get something cheaper, like 15-20 pound.

No need for a oz 400w. Get something cheaper, like a 20-25 pound artic brand 400-500 W.

Get a cheaper mobo, around 30-35 pounds.

get a OEM dvd rw. Around 14-15 pound.

And if your family doesnt play games, no need to buy a graphic card. Save another 40-50 pounds.

If you are doing it cheap.. 200-250 should do. I just build an i3 system for family uses. It cost 360 pounds. And I even have a 17 pound cooler to over clock it to 4.1 ghz.

I am planning to build a medium gaming rig with i3 and 5770. It should cost around 460-480. So 350 is a lot.


I wont post competitors site, but for light family system, overclockers is not the best place to buy parts.
Click to expand...

Everything here apart from dont skimp on the PSU! Get the more expensive OCZ one or a corsair/seasonic/antec brand equivilent.

Also just to clarify to the OP, the extra cost of getting an i3 system is offset by the i3 CPU having built in on die graphics so you wont need a graphics card. This isnt the usual intel GMA crap either its better than that.
 
MaxP779 said:
Everything here apart from dont skimp on the PSU! Get the more expensive OCZ one or a corsair/seasonic/antec brand equivilent.

Also just to clarify to the OP, the extra cost of getting an i3 system is offset by the i3 CPU having built in on die graphics so you wont need a graphics card. This isnt the usual intel GMA crap either its better than that.
Click to expand...

Doesn't that have a problem with having no VRAM so you end up using system RAM as VRAM though? Like intergrated graphics.

A graphics card will always outperfom onboard graphics any day. its worth the 50 odd quid to get one. Speeds up your computer aswell as the RAM isn't being used to render the display.
 
The main issue with the Nvidia 7025 chipset is that the HT is not run at full speed:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=3270

I would spend a few quid more and get the following motherboard instead:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-377-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1482

Another alternative is to go with the following AM3 motherboard instead:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-355-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1481

The Asus M4A785TD-V Evo has 128MB of dedicated DDR3 for the IGP.

You could get the following DDR3 RAM:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-165-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-025-PA&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-181-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-086-GL&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1516
 
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rumble291 said:
Doesn't that have a problem with having no VRAM so you end up using system RAM as VRAM though? Like intergrated graphics.

A graphics card will always outperfom onboard graphics any day. its worth the 50 odd quid to get one. Speeds up your computer aswell as the RAM isn't being used to render the display.
Click to expand...

Not really, my i3 system still has 1.81GB of useable memory out of 2GB. It is extremely quick. In fact it transcodes HD video and still dosent run out of memory so its all good on that front.

A graphics card will be better if modern 3d gaming is involved if not then it wont make a difference.
 
thats alright. Do you notice any slow downs though?

for whats it worth its probably alright to get a graphics card.

The i3 sound pretty cool for a non gamer sorta average user.
 
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