spec challenge

[adolf hamster]

mate of mines looking to build a rig, budget is circa £200, doesn't need to be on the dot but none of this £200 turning to £250 turning to £300 turning to £1000 kind of speccing.

he currently has my old 7850, so gpu aint a problem. and he'll be using a set of old hard drives and there's an old case that could be re-used if it turns out an atx [old dell machine]

needs:
asus mobo
power supply fit for the 7850 [125w or thereabouts to the gpu]
ram
cpu

plus points:
mobo that could take a beefier cpu
ram in 4gb per slot [so can go to 16gb in future]
psu that could take a second 7850 or a beefier cpu/gpu combo

i'll confess to being stumped, best so far is a pentium g3220, asus b-85 plus, corsair cx500 and 4gb of corsair. hardly a flying machine but budget is tight.

rig will be mainly gaming, but also office work and possibly a touch of cad as well [nothing too heavy compared to gaming]

 

[adolf hamster]

good spec, scary to see the ram being the most expensive thing, guess i was lucky myself to have built my rig when 16gb of 1600 cost £56, shoulda got 32 while i was ahead

i know what you mean about the 8gb, i'm more inclined to have said go for 4 then put the money into better mobo/psu because ram is easy enough added later

afaik he's running a 3 year old mac [old dual core pentium] with 6gb of mismatched ram, so there's a benchmark to beat.

 

[adolf hamster]

there isn't one, i've explained to him its probably not worth it compared to saving up and getting a proper rig but he's wanting something to make it a functional computer.

i suppose say £220 maximum unless there's a real good reason to go over

 

[adolf hamster]

Are the hard drives SATA?

Also the motherboard in post 4 will probably need a BIOS update to get the cpu to work

there's 3 of them, but if none of them are sata he does have a spare sata drive in his mac he can use.

these are looking good, i'll have to talk to him see if i can persuade him to release more money.