super-low budget PC choices

[TdC]

Hi chumlars,

the student son of a mate of mine is looking to upgrade his extremely dated computer to something moderately current.

To that end, I've basically given him my GTX770 and my old Dell TFT screen, but he's looking for the bits and bobs that remain. I'm basically set to advise him down the same route as myself, eg AMD based on the buck/bang calculations in recent times, but perhaps you can advise me based on your own experiences?

I'm thinking giving him the choice of Intel / AMD, with some I5 class, and some AM3+ FX class CPU. Unfortunately the smooth boy needs just about EVERYTHING new, and is of the poor-as-fuck student variant.

For example, the AMD thing could be:

CPU: AMD FX-6300 BE 6x core - 90 euros
MOB: ASRock 970 Extreme4 - 74 euros
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU 8GB - 67 euros
PSU: Cooler Master G700 - 64 euros
SSD: Sammy 850 series Pro 256GB 152 euros
CASE: Fractal Design Define R4 (best case ever) - 93 euros
TOTAL hairy men he needs to give oral pleasures: 540.

Any thoughts on Intel / driving down the price?

 

[Gwadien]

Hi chumlars,

the student son of a mate of mine is looking to upgrade his extremely dated computer to something moderately current.

To that end, I've basically given him my GTX770 and my old Dell TFT screen, but he's looking for the bits and bobs that remain. I'm basically set to advise him down the same route as myself, eg AMD based on the buck/bang calculations in recent times, but perhaps you can advise me based on your own experiences?

I'm thinking giving him the choice of Intel / AMD, with some I5 class, and some AM3+ FX class CPU. Unfortunately the smooth boy needs just about EVERYTHING new, and is of the poor-as-fuck student variant.

For example, the AMD thing could be:

CPU: AMD FX-6300 BE 6x core - 90 euros
MOB: ASRock 970 Extreme4 - 74 euros
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU 8GB - 67 euros
PSU: Cooler Master G700 - 64 euros
SSD: Sammy 850 series Pro 256GB 152 euros
CASE: Fractal Design Define R4 (best case ever) - 93 euros
TOTAL hairy men he needs to give oral pleasures: 540.

Any thoughts on Intel / driving down the price?

I don't think the fact that the most expensive part is an SSD is right, what's the point having a good SSD if you can't run anything?

I'd improve the CPU and get a SD/HD (50 squids or so?)

 

[GReaper]

SSD - get a cheaper 240-256GB model? Samsung 850 Pro is possibly overkill for the budget. Go for a cheaper model which will still give the experience you want (super fast loading) - but might not be top of the benchmarks.

Case - you've got cheap parts, don't go too far on the case. NZXT Source 210 maybe? Check for some other similar priced cases.

 

[ECA]

Yeah also the Fractal R5 is out, and all your other components, psu, case, ssd, etc are all overpriced.

 

[TdC]

I don't think the fact that the most expensive part is an SSD is right, what's the point having a good SSD if you can't run anything?

I'd improve the CPU and get a SD/HD (50 squids or so?)

yeah something like that would be ace, cheers.

SSD - get a cheaper 240-256GB model? Samsung 850 Pro is possibly overkill for the budget. Go for a cheaper model which will still give the experience you want (super fast loading) - but might not be top of the benchmarks.

Case - you've got cheap parts, don't go too far on the case. NZXT Source 210 maybe? Check for some other similar priced cases.

aye, see my comment to Gwad above. also, it turns out he doesn't need a case which is nice cos it saves him ~100 euros.

Yeah also the Fractal R5 is out, and all your other components, psu, case, ssd, etc are all overpriced.

Re R4/R5 the '4 is cheaper hence my choice. also, it turns out he doesn't need a case, which is great. Re your overpriced comment, welcome to Holland. Those are the cheapest prices I could find.

 

[caLLous]

If the budget is super low does the case have to be new? You can probably find any old case that you can whack an ATX board in for 20 odd euros.

edit - Oh, he doesn't need a case. OK then. I'm sure you could save on teh SSD, an 840 EVO maybe?

 

[TdC]

I've gotten it to this. Seems about right.



Bit bummed out by the ram, but tbh the RAM compatibility lists for this ASRock mobo are pretty weird. There's the off chance that getting a slightly more upmarket mobo will ultimately save me 10 euros or so in cheaper RAM, but hey ho.

 

[Gwadien]

'Winkelwagon'

So you.

 

[TdC]

Wagen. Dutch word for shopping cart.

 

[caLLous]

Wagwun. Yoof word for "how's it going old bean?"

 

[Raven]

I've gotten it to this. Seems about right.

View attachment 21601

Bit bummed out by the ram, but tbh the RAM compatibility lists for this ASRock mobo are pretty weird. There's the off chance that getting a slightly more upmarket mobo will ultimately save me 10 euros or so in cheaper RAM, but hey ho.

Seems decent but 250gb really isnt very much these days, I would sooner wang in a 1tb hd and save the pennies.

 

[TdC]

Yeah, there is that. I'll talk to his dad about maybe going the rotational disk route, and juggling mobo and ram to see if there's a better combination. Cheers dudes!

 

[Gwadien]

Yeah, there is that. I'll talk to his dad about maybe going the rotational disk route, and juggling mobo and ram to see if there's a better combination. Cheers dudes!

It was @BloodOmen that advised me to get this; http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/solutions/solid-state-hybrid/

Frankly, so far, I'm very happy with it, it's probably not as far as SSD speed, but it's quick enough, boots very quickly, and things operate generally pretty happily, it also allows room for me to upgrade and get a SSD in the future and use this as a backup.

 

[Tuthmes]

SSD is a must.

 

[TdC]

what does the PC do with such a disk chums? does it automatically do the cache goodness without any config or does it see two disks and you have to faff about?

 

[Gwadien]

what does the PC do with such a disk chums? does it automatically do the cache goodness without any config or does it see two disks and you have to faff about?

Nope, it's a disk which keeps track of the processes that run on a regular basis and over time runs them quickly, so IE booting up is very fast.

 

[TdC]

so you just treat it as a normal disk, and over time the cache gets hot and thus your regularly used stuff gets a speedup?

 

[Gwadien]

so you just treat it as a normal disk, and over time the cache gets hot and thus your regularly used stuff gets a speedup?

Pretty much yeah.

The only thing I heard is negative is about is that you can't defrag it, but I'm not entirely sure that's true, or if you actually need to.

 

[TdC]

yeah, I can get the mechanics behind that idea. one can also ask themselves how often "normal people" do a defrag. ah well.

 

[MYstIC G]

SSD minimum. Intel chip will last longer even if you go dual core low end. AMD will struggle much sooner.

 

[Tuthmes]

Pretty much yeah.

The only thing I heard is negative is about is that you can't defrag it, but I'm not entirely sure that's true, or if you actually need to.

It doesnt need defrag as it doesnt have a spinning disk.

so you just treat it as a normal disk, and over time the cache gets hot and thus your regularly used stuff gets a speedup?

Yeah just treat it as a normal disk. SSD's have read and write speeds from 230 to 500+MB/s (also depends if you have SATA2 or 3) where's your normal disk will usually reach anywhere between 65-110MB/s. Starting up of your OS, applications and games, loading times, installing stuffs, everything will just go a lot faster.

 

[Gwadien]

It doesnt need defrag as it doesnt have a spinning disk.



Yeah just treat it as a normal disk. SSD's have read and write speeds from 230 to 500+MB/s (also depends if you have SATA2 or 3) where's your normal disk will usually reach anywhere between 65-110MB/s. Starting up of your OS, applications and games, loading times, installing stuffs, everything will just go a lot faster.

Teedlepips is a SSD whore like yourself, he was asking about SDHDs;

Personally, when I was building my PC, I could've gone SSD, but I didn't because I knew that it'd be a relatively low disk capacity one, meaning that I would be forced to buy another SSD or HDD in the future.

I mean, I know loads of people with SSDs, and they have 3-4 because they simply don't have the room on one, that, or people are constantly installing and uninstalling games, if that's the case, frankly fuck that, I have like 30 games installed on steam at like 6-7gig per minimum - Ask your sons friend if he's like me, or if he'll play like 2-3 games.

End of the day, it's down to what people need it for, I'd just be wary to say that a SSD is minimum when actually, it'll just cause someone like myself a fuck ton of bother.

 

[Tuthmes]

Ohh ok. Ill just go back to my corner and behave.

 

[MYstIC G]

SSD raid tbfh.

 

[TdC]

no worries @Tuthmes, I wasn't being very clear.

SSD raid tbfh.

Reminds me of this. Such fun Still, my home infra is ridiculous as is. I mean, not as redic as @caLLous' disk fetish, but I'm getting there. I mean, I run 10Gbit glass between my computers, so fairly strong nerd tbpfh.

 

[caLLous]

Tell me more about 10Gbit @TdC! This is your thread so I don't feel bad mini-derailing it.

At the moment everything is in one box so the next step for me is separating my storage server from my everything-else server. But I want to connect them faster than 1Gbit and 10Gbe NICs and switches look to be 100s and 100s of €. So what's the fastest economical way of connecting two (let's say rack-mounted because I've been on /r/homelab quite a lot recently and I have an itch ) servers? Maybe a 10Gbe NIC in each one and a direct connection? Speed to elsewhere on the network is fine at 1Gbit and tbh I could survive with 1Gbit between these two but... you know...

The (very) long-term plan at the moment is an 18u cabinet with 2x 4u 24-bay servers for storage and another server for ESXi or a KVM solution or something.

 

[TdC]

heh, buy my two quad-GBE cards Cal. only 150 euros excl postage you can trunk your server in to the network at an 8GB bond interface on Linux using le good old CAT-5

re glass: I got two Intel 10GB PCIe 4x cards and 5 meters of fiber off of some second hand / refurbished server gubbins site fairly cheapish. These cards are the models with fixed transducers, rather than switchable ones if that means anything to you. These are new but EOL cards that no company will ever buy due to the EOL status. That doesn't mean they don't work ofc. I checked them against the HCL's of both Linux and Windows (7), and when in use they show up as ethernet cards, so you can run TCP/IP over them rather than exotic stuff like infiniband or some SCSI protocol or whatevers (even though that is ofc faster given that there is fairly large overhead in the network stack). Anyway, the cards directly connect my workstation and server to each other no switches or anything (I checked that before hand ofc) and I run iSCSI over the link. 10GBe is simply redic bandwidth, and far more (actually, about 2.2x max bandwidth) than my single 4x raid card can handle in a direct connection to a 1x iSCSI server (I run Target which only allows one connection per host).