Budget Low Power Build

[amjedm]

I have no idea about kit these days so some help will be appreciated

I have

HD
Case
PSU (old Antec Neo HE430)
DVD
HD5450 GPU
Windows license

Need the following

Mobo
CPU
RAM

Max budget is around £150 but would like to spend nearer £100.

Main uses are surfing, office etc. Would like to try Linux...

[Jtl2877]

If your looking for low budget might be a good idea to look at the AMD APU line if chips. You could pick up an A6 for for around £40 an FM2 mobo for around the same price, probably looking around £120 altogether with the ram.

Or you could always look at the Intel Celeron CPUs they are dual core and sell on scan for £30 and up, same again with the mobo for around £30/£40.

Just looked on Scan they have an AMD Sempron AM1 chipset for £27, might be worth a look. The mobo is about £25 and for 2gb of ram your looking at £20 that's around £72 total, could always get an SSD with the left over

You could probably find these cheaper elsewhere if you looked, could always check out end of line stuff, might be cheaper, but wouldn't get the same support with updates etc.. But it could be worth looking.

I'm sure for surfing and office these should be fine

[mikeo01]

I'll echo the above comment on this

I'd personally look at socket AM1 (Kabini chips, take a look on scan ), the Athlon lineup.

You can snatch a quad core for pennies. Not only that but it has decent graphics performance for pushing some good quality video playback, something the Celeron may have trouble with.

The celeron is a good buy is single threaded performance is a must, but in all honesty I'd look at socket AM1, you won't even notice it on your power bill it consumes so little

[Nezbert]

Does socket AM1 support only single channel RAM? Personally if that's the case I'd rather go FM2 and have dual channel.

[Top_gun]

I've a dual core APU from AMD which cost me just £34 around 18 months ago. Certainly has more than enough power to handle BBC iplayer, youtube, general web browsing and office application.

If you can, include in your build a SSD and 8GB of RAM. Your system will fly and the extra RAM helps reduce the annoying system pauses and useful for virtual machines running Linux. However some users here will say this amount of RAM is excessive for normal general software applications.

[Jtl2877]

Does socket AM1 support only single channel RAM? Personally if that's the case I'd rather go FM2 and have dual channel.

Looking at scan, it can support dual channel ddr3 on the AM1, I think it's worth a look. I would agree with Top_gun and go with 8gb ram, with the CPU/mobo so cheap that little extra would be worth it.

[scaryjim]

AM1 is only single channel RAM (you can use 2 DIMMs, but the controller only has 1 channel) but tbh you just won't notice the difference, as *nothing* you'll be doing with a low power rig will be memory bandwidth bottlenecked.

If you are going AM1 it might be worth checking ebuyer - they had a < £20 motherboard in last time I looked...

[DanceswithUnix]

I was recently in a similar situation, I went for this motherboard because it can take the latest AMD FM2+ APUs if I ever want an upgrade, and I wanted 4 ram sockets.:

http://www.ebuyer.com/611200-asus-a8...rboard-a88xm-a

If you want to keep the budget down you could stick with a dual core APU:

http://www.ebuyer.com/505360-amd-a-s...-ad4000okhlbox

Or you could make use of your graphics card and for another £30 get one of the quad core Athlons, which is basically an APU with the graphics disabled:

http://www.ebuyer.com/507066-amd-ath...-ad760kwohlbox

Sounds like 4GB of RAM would do you. Not checked this is on the compatibility list, I used Ballistix Sport memory in my build because I already had it.

http://www.ebuyer.com/274405-corsair...x4gx3m2b1600c9

[Pob255]

Curve ball, how about one of the intel NUC's? http://www.ebuyer.com/614389-nuc-box...boxdn2820fykh0
You need to add in an SODIMM and 2.5" hdd or ssd
Should be fine for websurfing & office and it's very low power draw

[Top_gun]

I was recently in a similar situation, I went for this motherboard because it can take the latest AMD FM2+ APUs if I ever want an upgrade, and I wanted 4 ram sockets.:

http://www.ebuyer.com/611200-asus-a8...rboard-a88xm-a

If you want to keep the budget down you could stick with a dual core APU:

http://www.ebuyer.com/505360-amd-a-s...-ad4000okhlbox

Or you could make use of your graphics card and for another £30 get one of the quad core Athlons, which is basically an APU with the graphics disabled:

http://www.ebuyer.com/507066-amd-ath...-ad760kwohlbox

Sounds like 4GB of RAM would do you. Not checked this is on the compatibility list, I used Ballistix Sport memory in my build because I already had it.

http://www.ebuyer.com/274405-corsair...x4gx3m2b1600c9

You could follow DanceswithUnix's advice but buy from Scan with a slightly faster processor for under £100 if you take advantage of Scan's free shipping offer. You can always purchase more RAM and a SSD card later if you wish but make sure you have a motherboard with sata III in order to get the full SSD speed.

[DanceswithUnix]

You could follow DanceswithUnix's advice but buy from Scan with a slightly faster processor for under £100 if you take advantage of Scan's free shipping offer. You can always purchase more RAM and a SSD card later if you wish but make sure you have a motherboard with sata III in order to get the full SSD speed.

I had free shipping from Ebuyer, for some reason I often find Scan aren't competitive on AMD stuff any more, or don't have the components I want to buy.

[scaryjim]

tbh, if you're looking to be budget conscious and you're literally looking at web browsing and office as your uses, you can do the job for £76.32 at ebuyer by going for:

Sempron 3850 (quad core 1.3GHz)
Biostar AM1ML (reduced mATX mobo with PCIe x1 and PCIe x16)
4GB Kingston DDR3 1600MHz CL11 @ 1.35V

Of course you can always up the APU to the Athlon 5150 or Athlon 5350 which only takes the cost up by up to £15, or a more featured motherboard like the ASUS AM1M-A, which is only £6: in other words, you can up the spec to a full mATX motherboard and a 2.05GHz quad core and still keep it under £100. Or you could stick with a cheaper APU and Mobo and up the RAM to 8GB. So many options once head down to the AM1 range of stuff (tbh the dual core Sempron 2650 would probably do the job and is ~ £4 less than the quad core Sempron)

[DanceswithUnix]

That Sempron 3850 is £1.60 less than the 3GHz A4-4000. You could stay single channel and use the same single stick of ram, dual core FM2 you probably won't notice the difference.

It all comes down to the cost of the motherboard.

[Top_gun]

I had free shipping from Ebuyer, for some reason I often find Scan aren't competitive on AMD stuff any more, or don't have the components I want to buy.

Swings and roundabouts. I checked the prices over at Scan and they were cheaper by £10 for like items. I've used Ebuyer and Scan. Scan's free shipping has next day delivery while Ebuyer's is five days with a minimum spending of £40. Ebuyer lost my trust when they were outed for misrepresenting their product reviews.

ETA: Ebuyer's threshold for free shipping is £49.99.

[amjedm]

Thank you all for the info and sorry for not replying earlier.

I like DanceswithUnix's choices - I don't like the AM motherboards... they appear really basic/low on features.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you can spend more something like an A8 5600K,would give you 4 threads and a reasonable IGP for some light gaming too.