New PC build

My wife has finally won her disabled student's allowance, which includes £1550 incl VAT for the cost of a new PC. There are specialised suppliers, but looking at their prices it's a joke. For example, £169 + VAT for a 17" TFT. I therefore want to build a sensible PC for her, quiet and powerful, within the £1550 budget. She will NOT be gaming, and the most cpu-intensive programme she will be running is probably Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred.

I have tentatively put together the following spec at ebuyer. If you work through the spec, you will see that I have two motherboards, because I was thinking of replacing the E6600 CPU with an E6750 when it comes out on 22 July. Any comments on this please?

I have included 2 HDDs for RAID1, but I wasn't entirely sure whether the MSI mobo supports that.


1 Antec P182 Gunmetal Grey Super Mid Tower Case - No PSU 126946 215 in stock £68.88 £68.88
1 ASUS P5W DH Deluxe SKT 775 dual-core Core2Duo Conroe ready Crossfire
8channel audio ATX 113951 209 in stock £85.25 £85.25
1 Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4ghz) Socket 775 FSB1066 4MB Cache Retail Boxed
Processor 112706 902 in stock £117.64 £117.64
2 Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drive 16MB Cache - OEM 130454 39 in stock £68.35 £136.70
1 Scythe Mine Rev-B Socket 478, 754, 940, 775, 939 & AM2 CPU Cooler 127438 87 in stock £19.85 £19.85
1 MSI P35 Platinum Socket 775 FSB1333 onboard 8 channel audio ATX 128048 19 in stock £88.35 £88.35
1 Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC
Unbuffered CL4(4-4-4-12) E.P.P. Heat Spreader Lifetime Warranty 111439 99 in stock £70.97 £70.97
1 Corsair HX Series 620W Modular PSU - ATX12V v2.2 APFC 114941 94 in stock £81.69 £81.69

There's a fanless graphics card I was considering here:
http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/pro...600gt-t2d256ez

There are a few more bits to add in, such as the 24" TFT, which all comes within the budget.

Any and all comments gratefully received.

By the way, we will overclock this if we need more power, so overclocking is a consideration, but it's not a main aim.

If you're not going to be gaming or running anything incredibly stressful, then I'd just get an el cheapo Dell and use the saving for a holiday. Am I a bad man for saying that? :D

The gainward silentFX range is on scan now. The 8500GT i have runs very cool for a passive card.

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My wife has finally won her disabled student's allowance, which includes £1550 incl VAT for the cost of a new PC. There are specialised suppliers, but looking at their prices it's a joke.

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If that is the amount given to you as a grant for her disability, then shouldnt you just spend the lot and get a custom built one from someone like Scan.

umm, why shouldn't he build it himself?

As for the system, i would consider an Abit mobo, not just because i love my own, but because you would get a lot more support from the Abit tech forum here in case of errors. Also the first board you mention (Asus) is a crossfire board (ATI) and you have chosen an Nvidia graphics card (umm, i did this too, it stil works and all but makes SLIing a pita later on).

All in all it looks pretty good, which monitor did you opt for?

It must be said that £1,550 is a ridiculous amount to be awarded, given the current prices of PCs.

I'm not disparaging the need for the claim, as my wife had one several years ago (as she is dyslexic), and got a (for the time) reasonably specced Dell. This probably cost about £1,500. However, £1,550 (less say £100 for the speech-recognition software) will get you a vastly-overspecced PC for your purposes.

Unfortunately, it is this kind of inefficiency which wastes so much money in the Civil Service and related QUANGOs.

That strikes me a way over spec for something that isn't going to be gaming.

For that kind of money and spec, I would go for same cpu + memory but have a Shuttle and use the integrated graphics.

I presume you need to add the cost of an OEM Windows license to that?

Thanks for the help. In the end, I got an E6850 and a P5K motherboard. Rest much the same as above.

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Originally Posted by schmunk

It must be said that £1,550 is a ridiculous amount to be awarded, given the current prices of PCs.

I'm not disparaging the need for the claim, as my wife had one several years ago (as she is dyslexic), and got a (for the time) reasonably specced Dell. This probably cost about £1,500. However, £1,550 (less say £100 for the speech-recognition software) will get you a vastly-overspecced PC for your purposes.

Unfortunately, it is this kind of inefficiency which wastes so much money in the Civil Service and related QUANGOs.

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Agreed. Im not having a go here at anyone, I just suprised at the figure awarded. For the prgrams going to be run on that machine a more sensible figure would be £750-£1000max IMO.

I would of gone with what DanceswithUnix said, most of the stuff on your list was massively over the top.

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It must be said that £1,550 is a ridiculous amount to be awarded, given the current prices of PCs.

I'm not disparaging the need for the claim, as my wife had one several years ago (as she is dyslexic), and got a (for the time) reasonably specced Dell. This probably cost about £1,500. However, £1,550 (less say £100 for the speech-recognition software) will get you a vastly-overspecced PC for your purposes.

Unfortunately, it is this kind of inefficiency which wastes so much money in the Civil Service and related QUANGOs.

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not so much to do with civil service but more to do with the silly amounts charged for speciallised disabled equipment.
We have a student in our school who has a special laptop and camera, basically the camera is designed to put a book under it and it blows it up on screen or twists to blow up what's written on the white board.
the camera&software cost nearly £1000 and it's stand got broken after a month because it was droped :rolleyes: it's since been replaced by a cheap £30 web cam and the stand from a desklamp that works nearly as well.

I agree it's ridiculous. There were two quotes from specialist suppliers, and my wife was awarded the lower of the two quotes. This provided as follows:
PC with Intel P4 3.4 GHz, 2 gig of RAM, 160 gig HDD, etc - £740
17" TFT, kbd, mouse £169
On-site assembly £80
Software installation and configuration £60
Delivery £35
Warranty £250
256 MB USB stick £20 (I kid you not!)
All above prices exclude VAT.

Canon Pixma iP4300 printer : £125 including 4 year warranty (but bear in mind that is nearly 3 times the going rate for the printer).

Part of the extra bunce comes from my willingness to provide support free of charge, and clearly you cannot expect a commercial company to do that, but a large part comes from the simply silly prices that these companies charge and manage to get away with for some reason.

If we don't spend the full allowance, we have to give it back, so we may as well go for a top-spec PC that will handle anything my wife may need to throw at it during the next 3 years.

Just as a quick thought, why not buy a lower spec PC, which will probably serve you just as well, and a laptop to take way with you when you are out and about?

Just a thought but you would find that the "preferred" suppliers issuing the equipment at high prices know they can get away with it 9 times out of 10.

It's not unknown for council departments to pay £120 + VAT for a 3.5" floppy drive!!! Wouldn't you love that contract!

I don't see anything wrong with that as a floppy drive costs at least £3.50!!!!

No wonder my council tax is so high.

If I was in your shoes.. I would have built a budget desktop PC, and then a half-decent decent laptop as well with having £1500 to spend!