How far will £250 go??

[halem111]

my mate wants to buy a pc but only wants the tower because he doesnt need things like the moniter or anything. So i was wondering what is the best system you can get for £250. Thanx

 

[speeduk]

Thats not enough really. I spent more than that on just a motherboard, cpu and memory. A top 3d card will cost 250 alone.... My best bet is £70 for mobo, £45 for 1700xp cpu, £50 for 256mb or £75 for 512mb memory.....

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=945569" target="_new"> MY RIG </A>
<font color=red> 120% overclocker </font color=red> (cheapskate)

 

[halem111]

he doesnt want the best i think hes aiming at somethin like a duron 1.3 gig

 

[speeduk]

1700xp £45
Abit KD7 (on board sound) £55
256mb pc2700 memory £27
Ati 9600 £100
40 gig hard disk £50

Total £277

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=945569" target="_new"> MY RIG </A>
<font color=red> 120% overclocker </font color=red> (cheapskate)

 

[pIII_Man]

you could go for intigrated graphics...that would cut prices further

 

[xeenrecoil]

heya halem111:

The instant gratification trend in this world is troubling.

That being said, i would suggest saving up more money and buying a decent computer core, you dont build a solid foundation on sand, if you want this thing to be more then a word processor, it would be in his best intrest to advise him to save and buy something decent, for that much money he will end up having a computer equal to an E-machine and HATE IT, and then probably blame you for his lack of willingness to spend more money to buy a better computer core, in that case i would refuse to help him build it.

tough love.

XeeN

 

[ChipDeath]

Epox 8RGA+ 88.87
XP1800+ 39.43
Corsair Value PC2700 256Mb 30.92
Cooler Master Fan CP5-7JD1B-0L (XP2800) 10.08
Q-tec ATX Midi Tower Silver Case (300W) 29.30
[+ 450W Q-tec PSU maybe....] 26.20
Maxtor DiamondMax plus 8 7200RPM 30Gb 40.31
CDROM/DVD/CDR - steal from old machine.
Total 265.11

Prices from Komplett.co.uk

If the 300W PSU in that case is sufficient, then that'll be 238.91 instead, but I would strongly suggest getting more power... I have built a system around a Q-Tec PSU, and found it was fine, but that was a 450W one, NOT the 300W one that comes in that case.

This system will have some room for overclocking - he should be able to just raise the FSB to 166, to give a speed of 1.9 Ghz (XP2400+ [ish]). The chip would easily cope with more Mhz, but the cheap RAM and HSF would be holding you back.

The Mobo has Built-in sound (NForce APU - better than most add-in cards) and built in Vid Card (Geforce 4 MX).

When more money is available, he can shove a Decent GFX card into it too, as it has an AGP slot.

Seriously though, tell your mate to wait and save another £150, and He'll be able to get a much better system - a decent cooler (£25) and at least 512Mb of high quality RAM (corsair PC3200LL 512Mb - £130) and he'd be able to squeeze more performance from it.

But the above system, at stock speeds, will be able to play all the recent games etc. at acceptable detail levels, and will have some headroom for upgrades. You don't list all the parts he has available from the old system, so I'm assuming he at least can get a CD-ROM and an IDE cable from it.

HTH

---
$hit Happens. I just wish it would happen to someone else for a change.

 

[CaptainNemo]

Heh - when did an XP1700 with 512Mb memory etc. become an E-machine?

That isn't much slower than my XP2100 (with an R9000 Pro), which is quite capable of doing everything that I want it to do...

Oh, and the PSU that came with Aopen H600A has given me no trouble...

 

[ChipDeath]

Yeah - Things like E-Machines are not bad because the 'Paper Spec' is bad, they're bad because they use crap motherboards (pc Chips, anyone?), slow RAM, and badly configured drivers/OS. those are why people hate them.

how much was that case (Aopen)? I only suggested that one because it was the cheapest one there, and I've used the Q-tec PSUs before.

---
$hit Happens. I just wish it would happen to someone else for a change.

 

[CaptainNemo]

The H600A with a 300W PSU is £68 from Dabs (£57.88 without VAT). That isn't exactly cheap, but it is quite roomy and built like a tank.

http://www.dansdata.com/h600a.htm

In addition to the somewhat thirsty Pal 2100, I have 2 optical drives, a 7200 rpm drive, and a couple of 120mm fans running off it; it hasn't given me any trouble.

I agree that £250 is cutting it a bit fine; spending an extra £50 would make a lot of difference.

 

[halem111]

ok then thanx everyone for ur advice/help it will help me because then i might be able to persaude him to get certain parts like better cpu with abit more money, he doesnt know alot about computers and doesnt seem to understand that a low spec computer wont be able to play recent games in high specs because he has an old 700 mhz comp that plays unreal tournament fine but lets face it although that game is good it doesnt need a graphics card to run or nehtin special. Thanx again