Spec me a pc

meghatronic · 25 Mar 2006 at 20:55

Owing to a dead HD where I lost everything, I've decided to buy new. Twas a laptop.. with a broken dvdrw, so it isn't like I can just buy a new hd.... easily...

Budget sadly is £300-400.

I do not need a HD (I have 2 or 3 IDE, so unless it is good and needed)
I do not need a monitor/keyboard/mouse/mouse mat

))

I would like the pc however to cope with HL2/Battlefield 2/The Sims 2 etc.... BUT a graphics card is not essential. If onboard will handle this then great. I will in the next x months be buying a vga card to go in it and a tft, so for now, I just really need case, motherboard, cpu, memory and dvdrw. A shuttle or Asus Presso's are looking like the obvious contender. AMD is preffered, but only owing to cost... so I'm open. Budget can possible be extended either way... for good reasons. Needs to be semi-future proof.

I'm used to a 2.4Ghz ish setup with 512mb ram, 64mb vga.... so naturally anything plus of this is great.

Any help?

Explicit · 25 Mar 2006 at 21:29

I think you should use onboard graphics until you buy a good card later on. Doubt it will play anything well, but it works out best for a low budget.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
£211.44
Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 nForce 6100 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-042-GI)
£52.82
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL) **this week only**
£52.82
Samsung SH-W162C 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) (CD-068-SA)
£23.44
Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£70.44

Total inc VAT: £410.96

All of the above can also fit in an Aspire X-Qpack Cube Case if you prefer that option. Also includes dual core, but if you want to lower the costs, you may want to consider the 3700+ single core CPU.

meghatronic · 25 Mar 2006 at 23:38

Any idea what onboard graphics are like on this?

isn't a 3800 dual a little overkill? Then again, might be worth buying more now to save buying less later.....?

Any other ideas anyone?

Explicit said:
I think you should use onboard graphics until you buy a good card later on. Doubt it will play anything well, but it works out best for a low budget.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
£211.44
Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 nForce 6100 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-042-GI)
£52.82
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL) **this week only**
£52.82
Samsung SH-W162C 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) (CD-068-SA)
£23.44
Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£70.44

Total inc VAT: £410.96

All of the above can also fit in an Aspire X-Qpack Cube Case if you prefer that option. Also includes dual core, but if you want to lower the costs, you may want to consider the 3700+ single core CPU.

AMDX23800+ · 25 Mar 2006 at 23:55

Yes, that is a good spec, you want to have the best of what you can afford at the moment so that later, when you can afford to buy a good graphics card it will perform really well due to the quality processor

Remember, there's no good in mixing good components with bad components

m3csl2004 · 26 Mar 2006 at 00:11

i think that spec could be better - dual core is not worth making everything else is the pc poor

MB-120-AS Asus A8N5X nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-120-AS) 1
£49.95 £49.95
GX-054-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-054-PC) 1
£79.95 £79.95
CP-117-AM AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3000BPBOX) (CP-117-AM) 1
£84.95 £84.95
MY-005-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL) 1
£44.95 £44.95
CA-048-AN Antec SLK3800BUK Black Quiet Midi Tower Case - 400W SmartPower PSU (CA-048-AN) 1
£51.95 £51.95
CD-030-NE NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE) 1
£24.95 £24.95
Subtotal £336.70
VAT £58.93
Total £395.63

play games now and will be plenty powerful especially if you fancy clockign it

meghatronic · 26 Mar 2006 at 04:15

what cooler for the 939?

anything nvidia are offering at the moment. not a fan of ati really...

ACESHIGH · 26 Mar 2006 at 07:50

Explicit said:
I think you should use onboard graphics until you buy a good card later on. Doubt it will play anything well, but it works out best for a low budget.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
£211.44
Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 nForce 6100 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-042-GI)
£52.82
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL) **this week only**
£52.82
Samsung SH-W162C 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) (CD-068-SA)
£23.44
Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£70.44

Total inc VAT: £410.96

All of the above can also fit in an Aspire X-Qpack Cube Case if you prefer that option. Also includes dual core, but if you want to lower the costs, you may want to consider the 3700+ single core CPU.

This is what i would be going for if it was me. Later on the only thing to be added will be a better graphics card & everything will run ace. If you get a slower CPU & graphics as an alternative, later on you have to upgrade everything.

meghatronic · 26 Mar 2006 at 10:25

ACESHIGH said:
This is what i would be going for if it was me. Later on the only thing to be added will be a better graphics card & everything will run ace. If you get a slower CPU & graphics as an alternative, later on you have to upgrade everything.

If I use onboard for now, then surely all I'll need to replace is CPU... and I *must* be able to get at least a certain % of that back if I sold it?

meghatronic · 26 Mar 2006 at 11:22

What about:

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3
Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 Floppy & Media Drive
Aspire X-Qpack Cube Case
CP-117-AM AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail
Samsung SH-W162C 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter
Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 nForce 6100 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard
250 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 , SATA II , 7200 rpm , 16MB Cache

Comes to about £479 inc... yes I realise I went over my budget.

Hence, dropping ram to 1gb (OR GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5) = £423.35

It would cost £479.75 (£423.35 for 1gb) (+£100 for the dual core 3800)

What do you think?