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$200 Budget Build For Parent?

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Hehe, this is kind of a thread for shiz and giggles. My mother is getting into, uh, I dunno, I guess it'd be beginner game programming with these neat little program called Kodu which makes it so kids of 8 years and up can program their own game extremely easily. Anyways, she has an old 3 year old Dell laptop (integrated graphics), when she tries to use Kodu, it lags HORRIBLY (I'm talking 5-10FPS lol). Basically, I want to see what the cheapest desktop PC I could build to run it would be. Parts not needed would be a keyboard, mouse, and I think that's all. Would probably only need an AMD APU with some integrated graphics, and the processor wouldn't need to be extremely fast as she's only using... Uh a C2D T7250 haha. Probably not going to buy this, but this just interested me. Thanks.

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Heh sadly, since older generation tech is... well not produced any more, its hard to actually find the crap. Basically what im trying to say, is its actually hard to find a computer that works period for less than 100 to a couple hundred bucks lol. Basically, i was in a computer repar store in my little home town and this dude told me hed sell me a pos with like 256 ram, some 1.6 ghz processor and some boat anchor monitor that was, at least one time, made from white plastic but was now almost yellow, for like 175 dollars... and i mean thats way worse than your moms dell lol...

Idk man, best thing to do is use our old parts from builds long past to build them a nice little frankenstien inside a dell case lol.

oh yeah and you said you need a screen? yeah, crappy ones are at least 100 bucks lol

This is basically the cheapest functional PC it's physically possible to make with new parts and be relatively confident it won't explode (and I wouldn't be too sure about the case). It's over budget, but close:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/eGRM

Oh, just noticed you need a monitor too. That adds $60 minimum if you go refurbished, or $80 for a crappy new one. You might be able to shave off $30-50 from the tower by going refurbished/open box on some components, but basically, you can't go very far under $300...250 if you try really hard.

That's in the price range of the lowest netbooks, though, and the build I put together should perform better than a cheap netbook (I'm seeing 1.6 GHz Atoms in that price range) so it's still a pretty acceptable deal.

But if you could save up a bit more and push to $500, you could actually build a respectable general-purpose PC with an SSD boot drive and an i3 or FX (and a case that probably won't explode).
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Yea, I don't even know if its possible to build a PC on that kind of cash. I suggest scavenging at your local tip, or scabbing some hardware off friends. It is actually possible to build a system out of handouts (Friend of mine is doing exactly that, managed to get a 200GB IDE hard drive, optical and a generic case out of me).

Get a Phenom II x4 965, A motherboard and RAM since they will be the hardest components to find and scrounge up the rest.

AMD Phenom II x4 965. $110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

AsRock 970 Extreme3 AM3+. $75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

G.Skill Ripjaws 4GB (2x2GB) 1600Mhz CL9 1.5v. $30
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Total: $215

The problem with the Phenom is that then you also have to buy a GPU - they're great for ultra-low-budget gaming builds, but it's an unnecessary cost for a non-gaming build.

this will be better than the celeron/pentium/i3 graphically, while stayinmg close to $250


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD A6-3670K 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-A55M-DS2 Micro ATX FM1 Motherboard ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: AMD Entertainment Edition 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($19.98 @ Outlet PC)
Storage: Hitachi 320GB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill R101-P-BK MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($33.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec 350W ATX12V Power Supply ($26.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $260.92
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-08-15 11:20 EDT-0400)

I just got an email today from tiger direct with a MSI 760GM-P21 (FX) AMD Series Motherboard, Phenom II X4 965 Processor 3.4ghz and 4GB DDR3 for $130 after rebate. That seems like it would be a solid start to this build.

Not a huge fan of MSI boards but at this price point you cannot be too picky.
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