Budget System?

[Gray]

Got a call earlier from a cousin who wants to get a new system all built up. Im up for it, havent really been inside the PC's since i got new Graphics Card, but still, its only updated stuff nothing new..

Anyway, he wants a budget system, i havent gone into detail with him on what to spend, but anyway, all he wants it for is mainly work/school stuff.

Ive come roughly up with some ideas, no manufacturers/models or whatever, but anyway...

Processor - AMD Type; probably about 2 Ghz
Motherboard - Unsure about this one, maybe an Nforce2 type like the one i have now
Graphics - Nothing to outrageous, since its not gonna be primarily for gaming, maybe a Geforce2 or similar
Sound - Im hoping this could be onboard, if not, a soundblaster type
Hard Drive(s) - As it maybe used for working, it could also be for music/movies whatever, probably about 50gb would be fine?
CD Rom/DVD - Dunno about speed of CD Rom, and unsure whether he wants to use DVD.
Monitor - Dependant on whether he wants to keep old or new one, probably go with bogstandard 17"

Ideas would be useful, im gonna ask about if he minds em being second hand so hopefully wont have to pay top charges for stuff on sites.

So, if you can maybe say what would be useful that would be charming

 

[Cask]

A7N8X-VM Motherboard.

• nForce2

• Onboard sound

• Onboard GeForce4 MX

• Onboard LAN

• £53.76 from overclockers.co.uk

I don't like Asus but that board might fit the bill.

 

[Xavier]

It might also be handy to know the budget for the above, if it's £375 or thereabouts you could get an entire box & 17" CRT from Dell with support and would save you a lot of headache down the line...

 

[PLightstar]

Yeah but Dell are no good, hate the damm systems I have to work with them all day and they are a pain. The Custom ones are far better in terms of maintence and generally day to day usage

 

[Xavier]

Dell are great for end users... perfect for this scenario. I don't think you're even considering the situation Gray is in. He's not buying this for himself it's for a cousin, if the cousin buys from Dell then Dell support it, not Gray. No calls at 11:30pm asking why after he poured coffee into the back of the case it doesn't work.

Incidentally, Dell are intels biggest customer, selling more CPUs than intel do boxed apparently. With that in mind there's bound to be people out there with bad experiences of them through the law of averages alone, but for them to be the biggest (and believe me, they are) they've got to be keeping a massive number of consumers happy, which again is more what this is about.

 

[Vae]

We use Dells (mainly laptops) at work and for office machines they are great. I've had very little problem with them over an average life of 4 years per machine. I've had a couple of power connections go dodgy after 3-4 years and one screen develop a problem after similar time but just managed to salvage those into 1 working one and some spare parts.

Dell support is pretty good and the only issue I have is that they won't supply small replacement parts e.g. a new hinge or replacement screws, instead you have to send it of to a Dell repair centre where you will get charged a exhorbitant amount to replace 1 screw.

 

[Jupitus]

Hmmm... good old DELL argument again

Xav's right to a degree... hassle free package from DELL with their support would likely be the best option. All I'll throw in is NOT to go with DELL if there is a likelihood that the cousin may want at a future stage to upgrade components, such as mobo, ram, cpu and so on.

Dell boxes are nicely put together for normal maintenance, but the chassis design means to replace a mobo is pretty serious effort. In addition, they use what appears to be a standard ATX power supply and connector, but it is in fact proprietary to DELL, and could cause some damage if used on a standard replacement mobo.

My conclusion when trying to upgrade my DELL before: don't bother, as it was too much of a headache (even the PSU seemed to be a non-standard size and fit in their case, hence I couldn't swap PSU to get over the non-ATX issue)... so although I would recommend their build quality and prices (some nice 'bargains' from time to time) if upgrading might be required, shop elsewhere.

 

[Vae]

I fully agree with Jup and also would say that Dell are great for people who want a computer and don't really care too much what the components are. So great for the office and for people who aren't particularly computer literate but not for me

Also bear in mind that Dell themselves have an end-of-line / returns store (linked from their website) with some cheap bargains.

 

[Gray]

Hmmm, yeah interesting ones this.

I think the Dell option would be suited, as my cousin does have a PC which is pre-dated from 2000, so its rather old in a way, and only uses it for small things.

I suppose what i could do is check on the Dell Website, get ideas of what theyre using/prices and then order myself, if Dell are selling them for as little as £500 it should be all good.

Besides, i miss having to be "hands on", its been such a long while since ive done it i feel like i wanna get back into something like this now

 

[Xavier]

I can see a starter system from about £380 which will do the job.

Incidentally, what Jup and co say only really applies to the corporate tier systems such as optiplex. The normal dimension desktops now all use standard ATX boards, etc... so there's no problem there

 

[Tallen]

Im building a system at the moment, aiming for the following parts which tally under £500, i have been shopping around for about a month now.

Abit Kv7 Mobo (About £35 with 6 channel onboard sound and 400 fsb, yum ), there are so many cheap mobo's around now, but Abit are one i like, you can find better im sure.

Athlon XP3200+ 400 fsb 2.2gig Can get these for about £90-£110 if you shop around, the 2800 and the rare 3000 with 400fsb are cheaper alternatives, get an oem for cheapness

Radeon 9550 Pro 128ddr, cheap as chips, if yu want something a bit faster try the 9800 pro 128ddr, they are available from £130ish, less if you shop around.

Thermaltake12 is a beast of a heatsink for well under £20, the 11+ is a cheaper option for about £10. Zalman CNPS7000A is another more expensive option as is the Thermaltake Volcano Silent boost for XP for £17, cool and quiet this one, but im unsure if it can handle a 3200.

You can get a monster of a case from Aria, £22 for a 420 watt black-silver case, very nice looking and well put together, yet to find a better cheap one.

3200 DDR, about £50 for a 512 stick oem and its also 400 fsb!
RAM is a lottery, its price fluctuates all the time so its best to find the pulse and wait for it to dip and then buy.

Hard drives, you can get a cheap 40-80 gig 7200/133 with 2/8meg cache cheaply from almost anywhere, well under £30 for the 40 gig, and under £35 for 80.

Case fans cost next to nothing.

If he's not interested in cd/dvd rewriters, you can get a nice 16xDVD rom for under £20, seen them for as cheap as £15 (branded).

Monitors, you can get a cheap LCD 15inch for about £150ish, not too sure about this as im not looking to replace mine.

Dont bother buying a modem unless you absolutely have to, most ISP's are giving them away nowadays (they dont cost much anyway).

Hope some of this helps, my system should outperform most others from that price bracket, to be honest i have tried many combinations of chips, sockets, even looked at PCI-E (too pricey still, cheap ones are crap imo).

The 9800 pro is a beast for the price, if your flush the 256ddr is even nicer

Where to look?

OCuk and E-Buyer are decent, but very expensive for certain things, shop around and you'll find this out for yourself. Scan and Aria are well worth a look especially their one-day offers (dont rush to buy these, they come around all the time, but Scan especially is a good place to hunt for RAM).

Earthing yourself:

Dont want to sound patronising, but I have had a friend ruin his PC because he chose to install a RAM module while wearing socks on a thick carpet with the tower laid on this carpet while he installed the module. Needless to say after rummaging around trying to install a RAM module he had ruined his mobo, amazingly the rest of the PC still worked ok
An Anti-static wrist band is worth a few quid

Hope this helps.

 

[Gray]

Heres what ive got so far, from OCUK (Ex. VAT)

Abit NF7-S v2.0 Motherboard £53.95
AMD Sempron 2400+ (1.6GHz) Processor £35.95
XFX Geforce MX4000 128DDR Graphics Card £29.95
WD Cavier 40GB ATA100 Hard Drive £30.95
LiteOn LTN-525 CD ROM CD ROM Drive £10.25
Hyundai L50S 15" LCD Monitor £125.00
Sunbeam Samurai ATX Black ATX Case £29.95

Im unsure about the Sempron Processor, altho im only looking for a cheap one so?

With VAT etc it comes to just under £370... That is excluding as you can see, the memory sticks

 

[Xavier]

Quick comparison, from dell, you get this for £380:

Dell Dimension 3000

Celeron D 330 (2.66Ghz, 533FSB)
256Mb RAM
80Gb 7200RPM storage
17" Dell CRT
48x DVD/CDRW Combo drive
Dell A215 Speakers
Dell Quiet Keyboard
Dell USB Optical Mouse
v92 Fax/Modem

1 year collect and return service

All installed with Windows XP Home, SP2, Microsoft Works and Norton Internet Security 2004

£379

So, that's a machine, monitor, peripherals, OS, basic apps, shipping AND Dell building, configuring and looking after it rather than you... If he wants to spend slightly more then just nudge the spec up slightly... shimple

 

[Jupitus]

Incidentally, what Jup and co say only really applies to the corporate tier systems such as optiplex. The normal dimension desktops now all use standard ATX boards, etc... so there's no problem there

Actually, I'm referring to my Dimension, so saying Dimensions are fine could be a tad risky, Xav, particularly if they look at 2nd hand kit.

 

[Xavier]

My words were "the normal dimension desktops NOW all use standard ATX boards...."

and they do.

I can't comment about your machine - I've no idea how old it is but I do know that Dell have made huge noise about the dimension finally conforming to the ATX specs...