new PC

[TuShan]

planning on building a decent PC got about £200-£300 to spend. could anyone recomend any decent components?

[Axion]

need a monitor?

what do you plan on doing with it?

[WoLFe]

You will have trouble building a gaming machine on that budget....no doom 3 for you

[TuShan]

dont need a monitor. and its not a gaming system. its for my brother mainly for internet and email

[WoLFe]

http://www.savastore.com/pc/amd/

they look fairly alright for the money, with a 6 year warrenty and a full office suite.

[Ravens Nest]

DDR PC2700 CL=2.5 Unbuffered Non-parity 6ns 2.5V 32Meg x 64
2 Qty of 256MB DDR RAM (so you get dual channel) £72.82
From www.crucial.com/uk


LG 16x48 IDE Internal DVD Drive - OEM £20.05

King Case K2-215D-MG ATX Mid Tower Case 300w PSU Metallic Grey £17.13

Sony 3.5 Floppy Drive - OEM £4.65

IBM / Hitachi 180GXP 60Gb 7200rpm ATA100 2mb Cache Hard Drive - OEM £37.84

Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical 2 Button Usb Win 32bit £14.20

MSI K7N2G-L SKT A Intergrated MX440 GeForce 4 8x AGP 6ch Sound Motherboard £69.28

AMD ATHLON XP1700+ 266MHz FSB - Thoroughbred - OEM £31.00

Coolermaster DP5-6I11A Socket A Cooler upto 1.4GHz Athlon & XP 1800+ £2.91

Logitech S2-40 1w RMS Speakers White OEM £6.27

Memorex MX5300 105 Key PS/2 Deluxe Office Keyboard £5.70


Cart Total: £209.03
Delivery charge £4.99
VAT £37.45

Total £251.47

From www.ebuyer.com

Full total of ebuyer & crucial = £324.29
I know the total is above what you wanted but couldnt squeeze it much more with losing the Nforce2 motherboard and GF4 MX440..

You could replace the Nforce2 motherboard with a cheaper KT400 motherboard and separate GF4 MX440..

ECS L7VTA KT400 8xAGP DDR Audio/Lan USB2 Duron/Athlon XP CPU up to 3000+ Motherboard
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=46219
for £38.91

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=50131
For £28.02

Total for those is £66.93 versus the nforce 2 with integrated gf4mx £81.41

£14.48 saving..
not much of a saving though, especially when the nforce 2 is better than kt400

(Edited as i forgot the heatsink & fan, doh!)

[Austin]

Nice spec Ravens Nest but didn't see a monitor there (was that just me?). I'd steer clear of Ebuyer myself and go for www.dabs.com or www.komplett.co.uk .

I would say that any TbredB is what you want if you don't mind o/c'ing a little as ALL (even XP1700+ if TbredB) should easily run at 2.0ghz which is above XP2400+ if you use 333FSB+. XP1700+ - XP2000+ are so cheap now it doesn't make sense to get a Duron even though they're still very capable. Rem a HSF, Volcano 9 or 11 are excellent value for money and you can adjust the fan speed to compromise between a fast o/c and noise. 256MB is more than fine for Internet, email and even gaming so no need for 512MB. PC3200 hardly costs more and is wise but PC2700 is probably more than you need anyway.

As for mobo choices chipset is the most important thing. nForce2 are great but SiS746FX or KT400 are great budget options though those are 'only' 333FSB and unlikely to be tweakable (poorer o/c'ing support). SiS748 and KT600 are the next step up offering 400FSB and the KT600 should be tweakable too. nForce2 are available in a few diff forms now, if you go IGP it's wise to get one with Dual Channel support and use 2 RAM sticks as it seriously boosts the gfx power. If you don't go nForce2+IGP then a seperate add-in gfx card like £30-40 GF4MX, GF-FX5200 or any Radeon are fine for your uses.

[Ravens Nest]

Nice spec Ravens Nest but didn't see a monitor there (was that just me?). I'd steer clear of Ebuyer myself and go for www.dabs.com or www.komplett.co.uk .
Thanks austin, yeah i know ebuyer can be a little troublesome sometimes (But cheap!)

Also he didnt want a monitor

[Ravens Nest]

TuShan, what parts have you already got m8?

[Axion]

i wouldnt bother with dual channel for a non-gaming unit... for his needs 1x stick of 256mb would cut it

[Austin]

Originally posted by Ravens Nest
Also he didnt want a monitor

Doh! I knew I'd overlooked something ...

[Austin]

Actually just recently (mid July) I built a base unit for £300 although gaming was more of a priority (gaming on a budget of course LOL).

TbredB XP1700+ @ XP2600+ 333FSB 1.55v (very cool running) £36.50
512MB DDR RAM £47.00
SktA Asus A7V8X-X KT400 5.1 sound & LAN/NIC £49.00
128MB GeForceFX5200 £52.29
60GB ATA100 HD £48.50
LiteOn 40x40x24 £25ish
300W MidiTower Case £19.50
MMKeybd £6.00
wheel mouse £5.87
Already had floppy drive (£5), speakers (£5-10) & 14" monitor (17" refurb £60 inc P&P).
TOTAL £289.66 but not inc P&P (£7ish IIRC).

That was from www.dabs.com and www.refreshcomputers.com . The RAM is basicly generic but known to be good, Crucial is worth the extra but not if it means sacrificing other important parts of the system. 256MB (as already said) is more than fine but I ideally wanted to ensure they had 512MB, 60-80GB HD and 128MB AGP8x gfx card partly because some snotty self appointed 'expert' is likely to go by these things and partly because they know nothing about PCs and these would be the things they'd compare with other PC's. I obviously pointed out that the CPU was running above it's rated speed and that they were only paying for XP1700+ @ 1.47ghz but getting the benefits of an XP2600+. I confirmed 100% it could easily do XP2600+ rock stable, heck it could easily get to 2.2ghz and 400FSB. Going from a P200 16MB 2GB 2MB non3D gfx this was like heaven for them!

So anyway adding £12 for the speakers and floppy drive it comes to £308.66 but then you should find prices are now slightly lower and could easily substitute the 512MB DDR or else the FX5200. The total simply dropping the FX would only be £256.37 and Rad7000 32MB £23 or GF4MX440-8X 64MB £32.50 (both Dabs) probably allowing you to grab some Crucial too.

[Ravens Nest]

Nice specs austin , only the cheap mouse and keyboard let it down really m8.

Tushan where are you?

[Austin]

Heck the keyb and mouse are cheap but that's good when the budget's so tight AND when I actually saw and used these particular 'cheap' keyb & mice I found them practically as good as my Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard and Intellimouse! Great bargain when both come in for under £12 (Dabs BTW)!

[fondie]

i'd go for 512mb of ram, even *just* for a mainly internet pc.

i've got a brown boxed Logitech oem keyboard from ebuyer for about £3, it's doesn't have lots of fancy buttons like my microsoft office one does (which i rarely use anyway, the buttons that is) but there is nothing wrong with it, and i like the feel of the keys.

[bsodmike]

save your self money and skip the floppy, ...waste of time!