Spec a base PC £500 - No Gaming

Paul N

Paul N

Paul N

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26 Jul 2004
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I last upgraded 3 1/2 years so its that time again. I'm looking for an everyday fast machine. I won't be using it for any gaming. It needs to last 3-5 years. It's for home business use, and has a budget of about £500.

What's Important:

1. Reliability - I've previously used hardware RAID with 2 mirrored drives so I don't bother with backups. Would like this again.

2. Quiet - My last build had a silent power supply and stealth fans so was very quiet. Would like it as silent as possible as its near my seat when I work.

3. Cooling - I used SATA drives with my last build and they got extremely hot stacked on top of each other. I re-used my old case and I ended up hacking two 4 inch holes in either side of it to install a couple of fans, which blew across the drives. I don't want to be hacking any new case so I'll need a case with adequate cooling ability along with silent fans.

4. Speed - Not so much of an issue but obviously appreciate a quick boot and speedy browsing. Will be using minimal amount of packages, a little bit of photoshop but nothing intensive, email, mainly web browsing. Will be running Windows XP.

What's not important:

1. I'll be doing no gaming what so ever (got the 360 for that)
2. Don't need monitor, keyboard/mouse.
3. Case asthetics
4. Don't need bundles of space. 160GB will be plenty.

Other points:

1. Want to stick with Intel processor and am assuming 800 FSB will probably do. Have had an ASUS motherboard for over 3 years now without a single problem so would like to stick with them.

2. Motherboard must have hardware RAID option for mirroring two hard drives.

3. May output to TV sometimes for movies so 5.1 sound output. Monitor has DVI input and VGA. Not sure what's best.

Sorry its not an exciting build but would appreciate some help because I'm lost with the current hardware specs and compatibility issues. Some of the processors I've looked at seem quicker than others, yet cheaper. Obviously I'm missing something there. And do bus speeds need to match to get the most out of the components?

It's a bit more specific than usual with the RAID and the cooling, but thanks in advance.
 
Paul N said:
I1. Reliability - I've previously used hardware RAID with 2 mirrored drives so I don't bother with backups. Would like this again.
Click to expand...
Before I start on the spec, I'd like to take a moment and warn you that this is a deceptively poor idea. Mirrored disks are nice if a disk dies on its own, but you're boned if, for instance, you PSU blows up and takes out both disks simultaneously. There are all sorts of horrible things that can wreck a computer; flood, fire, theft, electrical surge, mechanical failure of motherboard, etc. RAID is not a backup solution!

If you want to do useful backups I suggest you get a hard disk that you can disconnect and move somewhere else.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by BillytheImpaler and the Coca Cola corporation...
 
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The quad is slightly overkill but it should be respectable years down the road. If you want to save some money, swap it for an E2200.
 
Yeah I know its not ideal and I'm only protecting against the event of one hard drive failing. Real backups used to take me forever though as I'd copy individual files and folders (this was several years back). Is there a quick way now to do back-up of all emails, email settings, email folders, other specifc folders/files, etc, to an external source with the click of a button?

If there is, forget the RAID and I'll have just one drive.

And thanks for doing a spec.
 
To what media would you back up?

If it were me, I'd get two identical disks and periodically make a disk image of the main disk onto the backup disk using Norton Ghost Ghost or any Linux liveCD or any other disk imaging software. It's not exactly one click, but it would be quick (~10 mins) and would give you a bootable volume.
 
Try Acronis, I use this to back up my files by taking an image of the disk, I'm using an Akasa integral with a 400gb Samsung Hard drive.

Acronis I think do a thirty day free trial.

Rob
 
That looks like a great spec til I realised there was no RAM :)

I can cut back on hard drive size (and maybe quantity, see above post) to make up some of the cash. My real concern is making everything work together, as in motherboard/CPU/RAM, and that it all fits in a case.

Thanks for the advice on back-ups. I'll look into imaging for a solution.
 
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Seeing as reliability is an issue here, I would seriously recommend dumping the PSU that comes with the case and buying something like a Corsair.
 
I was thinking that cause I also want to make sure I get a quiet one, and I've heard the corsairs are quiet. I've got something in mind and I'll post it up soon to get an opinion on compatibility and that it all works well together.

Thanks again everyone.
 
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