Need help looking for a reliable family pc.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
B

bythig

Distinguished
Feb 14, 2012
5
0
18,510
My last 3 pc's have all gone to heaven, hard drive fails, blown psu, usually 3 years into their life and beyond upgrading as I buy under £500. My last laptop lasted 15 months, failed backlight, battery died then hard drive failed. I paid £50 for a second hand dc7600 sff it has lasted well but won't play gw2.
I have a family of 4 children who like to play wow, minecraft and now want to try gw2.
Can anyone recommend a pc supplier or build that will last more than 2 years of daily use. My budget is approx £400 i already have a 6570hd & 9500gt (not sure which is better) graphics card and Sata 500 gb hd with xp os on it. Should I keep xp (I have the disk) my last pc with win7 never came with a disk and that hd is frazzled. I also have 4gb ddr2 ram spare but everything takes ddr3 now.

Any advice would be helpful as I would like to re-use most of my salvaged gear.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
maurelie

maurelie

Honorable
Oct 26, 2013
2,086
0
12,960
-Here is something for your budget
-About the 500GB HDD, you can reuse it as a storage for your kid's games, and the 1TB that i selected for your build can be used in two partitions, one as OS and the other as Storage or Backup
-For light gaming the 6570 or 9500 can do their job
-About the DDR2 ram, sorry but it can't be used in any modern pc configuration

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£83.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£59.00 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£46.42 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master K280 ATX Mid Tower Case (£32.74 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£35.34 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£13.18 @ Scan.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£65.99 @ Aria PC)
Total: £396.65
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-11-27 11:07 GMT+0000)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
A

AxlFone

Dignified
May 21, 2013
2,665
0
13,960
You can download Windows 7 fron internet and make bootable usb stick. This is big save. For that kind of use. Intel xeon is best buy cpu.
It is faster than i5 but takes less wattage. Still it do have HT + 8 treads.

This buildneed HDD / SSD + vieo card. (you did have one)
But maybe better sell out old stuff and buy new.

If you can go bit higher on budget buy GTX 760 / Ati R9 280 X
New HDD / SSF is good buy. Seagate orWD blue are good HDDs.
1TB ca be bit small for 4 kids so maybe 2-3TB is netter buy.
SSD 128-256GB is good. sandisk ultra plus is cheap and reliable SSD. Samsung PRO do have longer warranty but it is bit expensive.

CPU cooler you do not need if silence is not important.
But this is good for 30 £
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/thermalright-cpu-cooler-macho120

And remeber that you can try old video card with this. + old HDD.
If it is sata connector.

For cheaper build you can try GTX 650 Ti boost 2GB or Ati 7870

Depend lot monitor resolution what is good buy. Orhowwell it workson games.

Build: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/29xuN
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
maurelie

maurelie

Honorable
Oct 26, 2013
2,086
0
12,960
Well XP will lose its update support in one year or less, so you will not be able to install updates. Win 7 is relatively new, and microsoft says that it will be supported with updates till 2020 i think. Win 7 is more optimized and more user friendly than XP.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
A

AxlFone

Dignified
May 21, 2013
2,665
0
13,960
XP is still good for use now. I did use it lots of years and never did update it. Did just remove all stuff that I did not need.
It worked really stable and never did get any spyware or virus on that.

Still if buy new then 8 or 8.1 is better. It is faster and you can tweak it look just like7. I think it works with 8. Not sure if it works with 8.1.

But it depends lot what OP orkids like better. I think they are happy if build works :) They learn really fast use new stuff :)

Budget is tight but hope this helps:)

And about DDR 3 we are soon (really soon) going to DDR 4. So DDR 3 is coming to get old :)

http://www.crucial.com/promo/DDR4.aspx

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/125180-ddr4-ram-coming-next-month-double-the-speed-triple-the-density-and-20-per-cent-less-power-use-than-ddr3

Maybe DDR 4 is then for next build:) Vut it will come out forservers. Desktops may need wait bit longer :)

"That competition could be a good thing for pushing DDR4 forward on desktops and laptops, as it pushes the manufacturers to drive down the cost of manufacturing the technology. But the gating factor for DDR adoption will be how quickly CPU manufacturers adopt the technology and integrate it into CPU memory controllers. Intel's latest statements indicate the company doesn't have DDR4 on the roadmap for its processors until the Xeon Haswell-EX processor—in 2014. Desktop and notebook users may have a bit longer to wait. And the timeframe for a low-power version of DDR4 for mobile devices hasn't even been set. "
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom