kitting out with £500

[luap.h]

I'm looking to spend around £500, less if possible on a new system

I'm not looking for a game pc, I have an xbox for that. Just looking for something to update my current Athlon 2000XP system!

I've been tempted by the Dell offers, but they give you so much crap you dont need that bulks up the price

I'm looking for any type of processor, preferably dual core of some sort and 2GB RAM. I'd like as many SATA ports as possible as I don't have any IDE drives bar the DVD.

I'm running my desktop at 1280*1024, so I'd need a graphics card that can do that comfortably, onboard or whatever.

I'm also looking at a new monitor - I saw the widescreen LG 19" LCD L194WT - though I'm not really sure if I really need widescreen, but some kind of flatscreen around that price range would be good

I went through Komplett and got this:
LG 19" LCD L194WT TCO-03, Silver 1440x900, 5ms, 2000:1, DVI/VGA £125
APLUS Case 188A, Black Midi tower, 2xUSB Front, 2xaudio Front(Without PSU) £29.95
Upgrade Kit AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, ABIT NF-M2S, 2048MB, PCI-Express £185.02
Samsung SpinPoint T166 250GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM £45.01
Club3D GeForce 7600GS 256MB DDR2 AGP, DVI, Video out £69.99
NorthQ 4775-400, ATX 400W Silent, 140mm Fan, 12-17dBA, 4xSATA, PCI-E, 20/24pin £40
Total £494.97

Thanks for any help guys.

[staffsMike]

Akasa Zen Case - £29 (less if you search around)
4200+ - £65
Abit NF-M2 nView WiFi - £58
Corsair xms2 pc5400 - £82
spin point - £45 (your price)
palit 7600GT - £65
fsp 400w psu - £32
LG monitor - £125 (your price)

£501

Other prices from Scan

only 4 sata ports though.

[mathewdbarlow]

If you like dell machines and aren't looking for anything too fancy check out http://outlet.dell.com/Emea_Dfo/EuDi...onstraint=PREC

Have been looking at Dell's factory outlet closely, they sometimes have some really good stuff going through there really cheap if you're quick enough to spot it. Even if you're not, you'll still save yourself a couple of hundred quid on the list price of a normal system.

[frazered]

Upgrade Kit AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, ABIT NF-M2S, 2048MB, PCI-Express £185.02

Club3D GeForce 7600GS 256MB DDR2 AGP, DVI, Video out £69.99

pci-express board and a agp card are not going to mix well

i would be wary of the club3d cards - they often don't have many features on them - i.e. temp monitoring

do you have an operating system?

[luap.h]

cheers staffsMike, sounds good

pci-e with AGP, haha, you can tell how long it's been since I built a PC!!

Yep, I have an operating system ok

thanks for you help - prob just go for what you said Mike

[frazered]

bit more of a stronger psu and a mainboard with 6 sata connections, slightly lesser spec ram

configured at komplett, you may have to watch postage to NI as it can add up!

Akasa Zen Case - £29 your price
ABIT KN9 Ultra, nForce 570 Ultra, Socket-AM2, DDR2, GbLAN, ATX, PCI-Ex16 - £58
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Socket AM2 1MB, BOXED w/fan - £65.01
Corsair Value S. PC4200 DDR2 2048MB Kit w/two matched Value Select 1024MB - £75
Point of View GeForce 7600GS 256MB DDR2 ,PCI-Express, DVI/TV-Out, 400/800Mhz - £61.01
Samsung SpinPoint T166 250GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM - £45.01
Tagan Easycon 480W, Modular Cables, 120m Fan, 4xSATA, ATX/EPS, SLI, 20/24pin - £63
LG monitor - £125 your price

total = 521.03

[nvening]

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 - 101.04
2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5300 (667) - 76.68
320 Gb Samsung HD321KJ - 52.89
Antec NSK4400 inc Hi-Efficiency 380W - 45.83
Samsung SH-S183A DVD RW - 20.22
Gigabyte GA 945GZM-S2 - 35.24
Belinea Artistline 2225S1/W 22" 5ms Widescreen TFT - 189.99

TOTAL: £521.89

Bit over but good performance and a lovely 22" monitor

All from scan apart from the monitor which is from play - so free delivery all round!!

[staffsMike]

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 - 101.04
2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5300 (667) - 76.68
320 Gb Samsung HD321KJ - 52.89
Antec NSK4400 inc Hi-Efficiency 380W - 45.83
Samsung SH-S183A DVD RW - 20.22
Gigabyte GA 945GZM-S2 - 35.24
Belinea Artistline 2225S1/W 22" 5ms Widescreen TFT - 189.99

TOTAL: £521.89

Bit over but good performance and a lovely 22" monitor

All from scan apart from the monitor which is from play - so free delivery all round!!

terrible motherboard.. but the rest is ok. The problem will come when you do want to play a game the graphics will be really comprimised at that resolution. (where is the gfx card btw?)

If you go for that setup, drop the monitor back to the LG and get a better mobo.

[Happyman88]

Good luck

[luap.h]

nope - not something I'd pay extra for anyway

[luap.h]

ok, this is what I've gotten so far


look ok? Will I need a heatsink/fan with the CPU or does it come with?

Should I wait a bit for the DX10 cards to come out? nvidia 8600 is it? Will it be similar in price and performance to the current card?

[staffsMike]

Everythings kool apart from the RAM. AMD's prefer low latencies if i remember correctly and the xms2 4-4-4-12 is only £10 more..

[mishima]

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 - 101.04
2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC5300 (667) - 76.68
320 Gb Samsung HD321KJ - 52.89
Antec NSK4400 inc Hi-Efficiency 380W - 45.83
Samsung SH-S183A DVD RW - 20.22
Gigabyte GA 945GZM-S2 - 35.24
Belinea Artistline 2225S1/W 22" 5ms Widescreen TFT - 189.99

TOTAL: £521.89

Bit over but good performance and a lovely 22" monitor

All from scan apart from the monitor which is from play - so free delivery all round!!

I agree going for a core 2 duo would be x10 better than the AMD systems suggested. AMD's CPUs on the market at the moment are way below Intel's dual core's - even at stock. They are highly overclockable which make them so popular. Even with a budget of £500-£550 its possible.

[Pob255]

I'm going to rock the boat a bit here.

I'm not looking for a game pc, I have an xbox for that. Just looking for something to update my current Athlon 2000XP system!

Do you really need to upgrade?

The are rather few commonly used programs that push the speed of a pc, the biggest one is games and as you say this is for non gameing then you really don't need much at all.

There is litterally no differnce running windows xp on 2gb compaired to 1gb (the differnce of 512mb over 1gb is also very small)

You could have a look at www.novatech.co.uk while they are not the cheapest around there bundels & barebones come pre-built.

Other thing is of course scavageing bits off your current PC for a new one.

A cheaper option over the core duo is the pentuim D (which is still a dual core cpu.

[luap.h]

I see where you're coming from, and this is pretty much just some retail therapy to be honest, but I have been known to do a bit of video editing for my band, and designing posters and stuff, and that's when it really starts to crawl!

Thanks for all the help guys, I went for the following:
Abit KN9 Ultra
320 Gb Samsung HD321KJ Spinpoint
19" LG L194WT Silver/Black LCD
AKASA Zen case - Black Silent Cool
AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3800+
400W Enermax Liberty Modular Series
2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR
256MB Palit 8600GT, PCI-E (x16)

I went a little over budget, but I'm happy and that's all that matters

[Pob255]

Ahhh Video editing is another of thoes things that chews resources because the uncompressed raw data is large.
Not sure what the AMDs are like on the video editing front :/
Overall a nice little system for it, you could of saved a bit of cash on the video card as video editing relies on the CPU and memory not the video card.
A 2nd hard drive, just a small one to put the programs and OS on would be a good idea.

Ok a bit late if you've already ordered the bits.