Spec a build for a 7yr old

[tintin82]

So my boy turns seven soon and loves computers. He is at age where I think he is ready to learn a lot more than Minecraft, so agreed that he can have his first PC of his own, but he has to build it!

All the parts need to be second hand, total bill under £300, preferably below £250! That doesn't include monitor, mouse , keyboard which we already have.

Now I used to have a 2500k so was looking down this route, but I am not really aware of the older tech or other options from that generation.

Any ideas for me to look into?

this is purely for a kid to mess around with, screw up, overclock, and generally learn... and stay away from my 6700k 1080ti

 

[marco.da.man]

2500k or 2600k you should be able pick these up for around £100 now or look for someone who is selling a full rig to save the hassle, you should pretty much pick one up for 250 - 300

 

[LewisRaz]

Buy an old i5 prebuilt and stick a 1030 in it

Take it to bits and make him rebuild it.

If he can rebuild an old optiplex without learning to swear then he can build any rig

 

[harvey.l12]

Great idea to let him build it as I built my first at 16 and you can learn a lot! Probably an old i5 like suggested will do and a new but lower spec GPU.

 

[harvey.l12]

Buy an old i5 prebuilt and stick a 1030 in it

Take it to bits and make him rebuild it.

If he can rebuild an old optiplex without learning to swear then he can build any rig

Yep, Optiplex's are horrible to mess about with, have to take everything out just to get to the RAM!

 

[ExoMale]

any reason why you want the 2500k? you can buy that processor between £40-50 in a used shop maybe, but then you got to find the rest, for my area, i have been seeing motherboard bundles like an 1150 board with a G pentium processor for £50(no cooler or ram), am3 i think A8 6600k(or some 6000k model) with board, cooler, 8gb ram for £70, seen skylake versions for £60, theres even complete systems with these sort in for your budget.

obviously that is based within a 50 mile radius of my location, but be a much better option that trying to source the older sandy bridge/ivy bridge parts.

 

[harvey.l12]

The only issue is finding new parts for an old PC such as RAM and Motherboard's, the market has now dried up and not much choice. How future proof are you wanting the machine?
Are you going to want to upgrade it in the next few years to keep it going strong? If so maybe go with a new motherboard and chipset to support DDR4 and newer CPU's etc.

 

[DragonQ]

Good luck finding a motherboard for an i5-2500K. I had to settle for the only new H77 board I could find a couple of years ago. I'd definitely buy the lot together.

 

[ExoMale]

Good luck finding a motherboard for an i5-2500K. I had to settle for the only new H77 board I could find a couple of years ago. I'd definitely buy the lot together.

you can find them easy, just not the sort you want lol. i had an acer veriton m290 that was an 1155 socket which had support for the 2500(k aswell i think) on its standard issue board, never went beyond the i3 that it came with to test, but i have seen many systems like that supporting H61, trouble is they are usually standard issue so no fancy settings etc if thats what the OP is after.

 

[harvey.l12]

you can find them easy, just not the sort you want lol. i had an acer veriton m290 that was an 1155 socket which had support for the 2500(k aswell i think) on its standard issue board, never went beyond the i3 that it came with to test, but i have seen many systems like that supporting H61, trouble is they are usually standard issue so no fancy settings etc if thats what the OP is after.

From the OP it doesnt sound like they will need to OC, just a simple build, but its weather they want it to be 'upgradable'

 

[ExoMale]

From the OP it doesnt sound like they will need to OC, just a simple build, but its weather they want it to be 'upgradable'

yeah i didnt think they would want to OC, was more whatever features a branded board offers over standard issue that they might think they will want, that veriton i had supported the i7 2600 and couple higher versions and 8gb ram, some of those era of systems support 16gb as well, so they have some sort of upgrade path, but im sure when the kid gets older and wants to broaden their knowledge they will get more up to date stuff and more proper stuff anyways, Dells are probably the worse to rebuild, but while i was in my early/mid 20's when i got interesting in building, i started out with a dimension 5000 i upgraded to play WOW.

 

[britain4]

If you're willing to buy from Aliexpress there are plenty of 2500ks on there for reasonable prices and lots of suitable boards for under £40 new or used. Was considering going down that route myself for an ultra budget second build but decided against it.