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SFF on a budget
My lil' sis is wanting me to build her a SFF, and has about £500 to do it with (excluding peripherals). I've trolled through websites a plenty, and read a magazine or three, but I reckon I'm far better off putting it to you guys....
She'll mostly be using it for games, office apps and web work, and the former isn't likely to be the most demanding of programs (that dead horse being flogged The Sims being her poison of choice atm).
Can anyone be bothered to give me a few pointers for a spec list of two? Many thanks if you can...
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Cheapest base Shuttle for that would be the SK41, not sure what the onboard gfx are like but they should be fine for the Sims.
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I just built my brother a SN41G2 system
Barton 2500
1 Gig DDR 3200
120 Gb Hd
DVD combo drive
Floppy and Modem
came to £461 inc vat + del from ebuyer
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You find the on board GFX sufficient?
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Do you find the heat a problem, and did you manage to OC at all?
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The onboard GFX are not too bad - its GF4MX (level ( well just below ) so sufficient for all but the most intensive games.
The Heatpipe cooling solution is fine - never really had a problem with it.
As the Rig wasn't for me I didn't really want to OC it.
I'm told the SN45G1 is better for clocking but you'll need to get yourself a gfx card for it.
However the SN45 is on Aria for 115+Vat at the moment so it coudl make a good building block.
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does she need 1gb of ram for the sims ? :p
sk41g - 118
256 ddr - 25
duron 1800 - 29
cooler - 5
cdrw/dvd combo - 35
to be fair thats more than she needs to browse interweb, few apps and the sims, would be just under 200 hopefully as well :)
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Youc ould go cheap cheal a la Swafeman.. but if she wants to spend £500 I'd invest that £500. Nforce2 Shuttle (dunno what model/s that is :p ) + barton, no vid card and at least half a gig of RAM. Probably go for a full gig of budget branded PC3200. + DVD combo drive.
Maybe drop some of the RAM, HDD space, slow the processor and go for a DVD-RW'er.
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Thing is that she's got a fairly low spec machine at the moment, and is looking for something that's going to last a while, plus I've got a spare copy of WinXP Home that I'm going to put on there, so I'll be looking at 512 DDR.
Looking at about 80Gig HD, that 512RAM, trying to pull a DVD-RW out of a hat (probs a Sony DWU-14A, saw it for >£80 on ebuyer), so I'm left with CPU, case and GFX card...
If anyone has anything else to add, I'd be glad to hear it. Watch this space and I'll let you know what I end up with...
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Soltek EQ3702M Qbic £164.98
AMD ATHLON XP2500+ 333MHZ £54.99
Kingston Hyperx 512MB Kit 2X256 DDR400 PC3200 £72.99
Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 120Gb 7200rpm UDMA133 £57.99
Sony 4x DVD DUAL R/RW IDE BLACK BURNER - OEM £69.95
Shipping Band: £4.99
SubTotal: £425.89
VAT: £74.57
Total: £500.46
Ran that through Ebuyer just now, also its on super saver delivery.
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Now that's what I call a comprehensive answer...
You sir, have way too much time on your hands ;)...
...for which I'm entirely gratefull...I'll check it out. Cheers.
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It helps I considering a new system myself, but yes I do have to much time on my hands. Lol my earlier spec came to £525 but that included matching black floppy (panasonic), Labtec optical mouse (black and silver) and labtec keyboard (black and silver).
I think The Solteks still come with free copper coolers for the athlon so i haven't forgotten. Below is the extended list including the quickfind codes.
Soltek EQ3702M Qbic II 055773 £164.98
AMD ATHLON XP2500+ 047843 £54.99
Kingston Hyperx 512MB Kit 2X256 DDR400 PC3200 050129 £72.99
Sony 4x DVD DUAL R/RW IDE BLACK BURNER 052096 £69.95
Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 120Gb 7200rpm 040965 £57.99
Logitech Labtec Internet Keyboard 048355 £8.72
Labtec Optical Mouse USB/PS2 048353 £9.14
Panasonic Floppy Disk Drive Black 1.44MB 043087 £4.39
Total: £443.15
Deliver my Order by:Tue 13th Jan 2004 (Super Saver)
Shipping Band: *£3.99
Approx Cart Weight: 16.00Kg
Shipping Surcharge: £0.00
SubTotal: £447.14
VAT: £78.29
Total: £525.43
