£300 PC challange (with tft)!

Around christmas i saw a number of decent(ish) spec dell machines coming in at the £300 mark inc monitor.

I have been comissioned by a family member to buy a pc with a budget of £300, and after days of searching i cant seem to find any good deals.

The best i can find at the moment is this Dell:
PROCESSOR Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Business
HARDWARE SUPPORT Base Warranty - 1 Year Business Hardware Support
MONITOR Dell™ 17" Black Wide Flat Panel (E178WFP) - UK/Irish
MEMORY 1024MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x512]
HARD DRIVE 250GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache
GRAPHICS CARD Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD +/- RW Drive
KEYBOARD Dell™ Entry Quietkey USB Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)
MOUSE Dell 2 Button USB Optical Mouse

Can anyone spec anything better within a £300 budget.

I am happy to self build and have a spare core2duo compatible motherboard with intergrated graphics i could use.

i would be most greatful! :)

Well lets say £100 for the TFT.

So build the PC for £200.

Decent case + PSU
Antec NSK 4480 Mini Tower Case (Silver) - 380W Earth Watts PSU

£55

E2140 - £40
2GB PC5300 - £25
160GB HDD - £30
DVD writer - £15

£165 + your motherboard (but scan today only would normally save about £5 off this)

OEM Vista £50 so £205

Find a monitor for £100 and you would be about there.
Extra Value MA9JB 19" TFT Monitor Widescreen 1440x900 500:1 8ms Black VGA 3 Years Warranty - Ebuyer

Tbh though if you can get the dell for £300 it's probably the best bet.

I would go for the Dell too as it would be difficult to build anything better for the price IMHO!!

If you can build for about the same price, and you're happy to maintain it, then I would because:

1. Dell OS installs tend to suck IMHO: not configured properly and cluttered with shareware trials. I recently 'upgraded' a new Dell laptop to a stock Vista Home Premium install (from the supplied discs but not the Dell system image) and you wouldn't believe the improvement in performance.

2. I don't think Dell have switched over to using 100% stock components yet (though I could be wrong here) so it could be easier to fix/upgrade a custom PC.

Don't get me wrong: I think Dell produce decent machines, and recommend them if I don't have time to build a PC for people, but most of the time custom is better.

P.S. Stick a Linux distro on and save the cost of Vista. Dell supply it too. :)

I think you might as well go with Dell, you'll get something similar and you won't have to do tech support. On the other hand, building PCs is fun.

Running Vista on 1GB...!

Monitor, DABS Value, £92.82 inc. VAT (widescreen 19", DVI)
dabs.com - Dabs Value 19" Widescreen DVI 8ms TFT and a 3 Year Warranty (L-1931WS)

Just noticed that the new Celeron Dual Core processors have been released:

Intel Celeron Dual Core E1200 Socket 775 (1.60GHz) 800FSB 512KB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £34.84 £29.65 £34.84 £29.65
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic x32Bit OEM 1PK DVD £51.00 £43.40 £51.00 £43.40
Antec NSK4480 Black & Silver Mini-Tower ATX Case - With 380W EarthWatts PSU £50.72 £43.16 £50.72 £43.16
Corsair 2GB DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5400 Memory CL5 Lifetime Warranty £25.98 £22.11 £25.98 £22.11
Extra Value 19" TFT Monitor 1440x900 1000:1 450cd/m2 8ms Black £92.83 £79.00 £92.83 £79.00
LiteOn DH-20A4P-21C 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM Black Bare Drive - OEM £15.13 £12.87 £15.13 £12.87
Western Digital WD1600AAJS 160GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 8MB Cache - OEM £31.66 £26.94 £31.66 £26.94
Cart total inc vat: £302.16

Free Shipping has been applied to this order

*FREE SHIPPING ON THIS ORDER» Shipping Charge:
Subtotal:
VAT:
Total:

£0.00 £0.00
£257.13
£45.03
£302.16

I thought pentium meant celeron these days :laugh:

Any reviews for them?

Here is one:

X-bit labs - Celeron E1200: Dual-Core Processor Almost for Free

The AMD X2 processors are faster but then the Celeron is the cheapest dual core processor with included heatsink and fan though.

lots of people are happy to use linux, i see, since they aren't including the price of windows

It depends if the user is happy with using Linux. Many people have learnt or been taught to use XP and using something else unfamiliar maybe not worth the bother for them unless it had exactly the same type of GUI.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

It depends if the user is happy with using Linux. Many people have learnt or been taught to use XP and using something else unfamiliar maybe not worth the bother for them unless it had exactly the same type of GUI.

---

then they should be including the price of windows in their £300 challenge pc!

Of course!! Since the OP already has a suitable motherboard with integrated graphics it is possible to meet the budget.

Hex, as I read it Mike and Cat (the only two to post full systems) have both included a copy of Vista in the total price.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

Just noticed that the new Celeron Dual Core processors have been released:

Intel Celeron Dual Core E1200 Socket 775 (1.60GHz) 800FSB 512KB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £34.84 £29.65 £34.84 £29.65
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic x32Bit OEM 1PK DVD £51.00 £43.40 £51.00 £43.40
Antec NSK4480 Black & Silver Mini-Tower ATX Case - With 380W EarthWatts PSU £50.72 £43.16 £50.72 £43.16
Corsair 2GB DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5400 Memory CL5 Lifetime Warranty £25.98 £22.11 £25.98 £22.11
Extra Value 19" TFT Monitor 1440x900 1000:1 450cd/m2 8ms Black £92.83 £79.00 £92.83 £79.00
LiteOn DH-20A4P-21C 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM Black Bare Drive - OEM £15.13 £12.87 £15.13 £12.87
Western Digital WD1600AAJS 160GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 8MB Cache - OEM £31.66 £26.94 £31.66 £26.94
Cart total inc vat: £302.16

Free Shipping has been applied to this order

*FREE SHIPPING ON THIS ORDER» Shipping Charge:
Subtotal:
VAT:
Total:

£0.00 £0.00
£257.13
£45.03
£302.16

---

There doesnt seem to be a motherboard with this setup. A bit busy to have a look myself but in general I find that budget systems are much better value when bought as a complete system.

The OP already says he has a spare Core2 compatiable motherboard with integrated graphics which he can use for the build.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by colincliff

Around christmas i saw a number of decent(ish) spec dell machines coming in at the £300 mark inc monitor.

I have been comissioned by a family member to buy a pc with a budget of £300, and after days of searching i cant seem to find any good deals.

The best i can find at the moment is this Dell:
PROCESSOR Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Business
HARDWARE SUPPORT Base Warranty - 1 Year Business Hardware Support
MONITOR Dell™ 17" Black Wide Flat Panel (E178WFP) - UK/Irish
MEMORY 1024MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x512]
HARD DRIVE 250GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache
GRAPHICS CARD Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD +/- RW Drive
KEYBOARD Dell™ Entry Quietkey USB Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)
MOUSE Dell 2 Button USB Optical Mouse

Can anyone spec anything better within a £300 budget.

I am happy to self build and have a spare core2duo compatible motherboard with intergrated graphics i could use.

i would be most greatful! :)

---

with it having Windows Vista® Business does the £300 Include Vat + Delivery ?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

The OP already says he has a spare Core2 compatiable motherboard with integrated graphics which he can use for the build.

---

And you've already mentioned that once.
Please people read the WHOLE thread before posting. :stupid:


back to the topic, I'd pritty much agree with the builds both mike and cat have posted, yes you can build a basic pc for £300 if you have a spare motherboard with vga (note I don't think I saw keyboard &mouse on thoes builds but that's only £10 extra)

Saying that, at the really low budget end it's very hard to beat dell, although be prepaired to remove a metric-s**t-load of pointless resource chewing software that dell hard drives come pre-smeard in.

One intresting thing to note is that I do believe that dell are now 100% stock, the inspron 530 is deffinately a stock atx case and components

If the OP is a vostro they are shipped with pretty much no rubbish you don't need installed so that shouldn't factor into your decision.

I havn't actually had a vostro desktop but based on the vostro laptops and the latitude desktops it won't have any rubbish on it.

Well the latitude laptops we had did have crud on them, but as we just ghosted them all with our own image it wasn't a problem ;)

norton trial, 4 internet sign up exe's and a most annoying adobe image browser

strange. I got the new 630 and 830 laptops in and they were clean .. but I did insist to my account manager they came that way.