PC for GF, cheap as possible

[Andeh13]

My girlfriend is in need of a new PC, but she doesnt have a very big budget, so the cheaper the better. She uses her PC for films, internet, MSN & very limited gaming (sims, guild wars & counter strike) so it doesnt need to be anything impressive spec wise.

Ideally £200-300(again, cheaper the better). She has a 300watt PSU,case, CD/DVD drives, screen, keyboard etc so doesnt require any of them, just a mobo, CPU(duel core ideally), ram and graphics card.

Cheers guys

[staffsMike]

AMD dual core, around 4200+ should do for all that. £45ish

2gb of RAM (ocuk have geil ultra pc6400) for £38 at the moment

Asus 690g motherboard - £35 with dvi and fairly decent onboard gfx.

£118 for that lot, then work out how much you want to spend on the gfx card if you want one.

[Rosaline]

Staffsmike seems to have a good build there. I'd consider replacing the PSU if the old one is really ancient and unbranded, since you don't want to burn out the new kit immediately.

Given that the motherboard recommended has radeon X1250 based graphics, it will hopefully be more than enough - the key feature to emphasise if getting a discrete graphics card would be, in my opinion, video playback acceleration.

As for how much she games, it sounds to me like it's not that limited at all (once you don't look at it from a hardcore gamer point of view)! If you can afford fancier gaming stuff, she would probably enjoy some of the newer games on the market, from the sound of it.

[Lee`]

You could get the RAM even cheaper if you went to ebuyer and picked up a 2Gb kit around the £30 mark and used the £10 off googlecheckout, ie

Kingston 2GB DDR2 Memory - Cheap at Ebuyer!

and just add something to make up the 30p like some network cable.

[staffsMike]

Think i'd spend the extra on something like the geil.. its down to £35 now anyway.

If you do go AMD they are better with tighter timings and higher speed RAM so it might be worth it..not sure how obvious the difference would be without it though lol

[kungpo]

You can get a decent(ish) Dell Vostro 200 for £351 delivered (less if you don't need the monitor) and the choice of XP Pro or Vista Business. Seems like pretty good value and everything is new.

[Lee`]

You can get a decent(ish) Dell Vostro 200 for £351 delivered (less if you don't need the monitor) and the choice of XP Pro or Vista Business. Seems like pretty good value and everything is new.

Further to this, I think the new set of dell deals come out tomorrow (1/11) and if I see any decent ones in this price bracket I'll post them up.

[scrandman]

Dell is probably your cheapest option. If you want to go down the self-build route, a single core AMD CPU can be had for cheaper and will be sufficient for what she is doing. Heck an old socket A would do!

[Rosaline]

The price difference between single core and dual core is so small nowadays that dual core is frankly completely worth it.

Don't forget, someone how is not a hardcore power user or obsessive gamer will still love the performance gains and the ability for flash-heavy websites to no longer ruin your computer's usability.

[kungpo]

I wonder what the new Dell offers will be. The Vostro I suggested is Pentium Dual Core (2160), 2GB ram, 160GB HD, 19" wide screen monitor, DVDRW etc. Fantastic value for money!

[Dreaming]

My girlfriend is in need of a new PC, but she doesnt have a very big budget, so the cheaper the better. She uses her PC for films, internet, MSN & very limited gaming (sims, guild wars & counter strike) so it doesnt need to be anything impressive spec wise.

Ideally £200-300(again, cheaper the better). She has a 300watt PSU,case, CD/DVD drives, screen, keyboard etc so doesnt require any of them, just a mobo, CPU(duel core ideally), ram and graphics card.

Cheers guys

Have you checked out BigPockets refurbished systems?

Untitled-2

a full system with monitor for £179.99. For sims throw in more ram (it's so cheap these days though) and it'll be a nice little rig.

eta: could also buy something like a 7600 - cheap as chis these days (in fact, isnt the 7950 £50? - thatll do css at full spec)

[staffsMike]

Dear lord.. if you're going for one of those dells, make sure the "refurb" included a new PSU, they go pop quite easily in my expereince. Had about 10 - 15 go last year at work, and one cpu fuse itself to the cooler.