300 quid PC... any help?

OKay, Ive agreed to build a PC for my mate, as he keeps bugging me. Hes only got 300 quid for Hardware, but doesnt need any peripherals or monitor.

Im gonna go for a 2500 Barton, as its a sensible choice, I think 512Meg PC2700 ram will be on the books too, with a extreme-cheapo case with PSU. Need a CD-RW, 40Gig or more HDD (I'll just get the cheapest), and a rad8500 ish level card minimum.

I need a motherboard, Ive got a NF7-S myself, but I think Im gonna have to cut corners here, as thats probably too big a chunk of the budget. Would like to have an nforce2 board tho, but thats not set in stone if theres a great VIA I havent looked at


All my friend really wants to do is be able to play games like call of duty, and use photoshop and other graphics tools, as we are design students.


Anyone fancy giving me some tips, as Ive got too much work on to go through all info on my own

(any builds you could come up with would be mucho appreciated :D)


Cheers

Why dont u go for a shuttle, The SN41G2 has onboard graphics ( gf4mx400 I think ) just get yer memory and processor and all the other bit u mentioned, jobs a good un. Im sure youll be able to build it for less than 300 quid

Budget of £300 is really hard to get a 1/2 decent PC..tell him to save up a couple more weeks, at the £400 range is much easier to play around with. Example

Abit NF7-2 £66 cpucity
Barton 2500 retail - £55 most places
Geil 512 DDR 400 - £45 Microdirect special weekend offers
Ati 9200 128mb - £45 Komplett
Maxtor 160GB 8mb - £70 Microdirect special weekend offer
CD-RW - £20/£30 ebuyer/most places
Case - £20/£?? ebuyer do cheap cases but let your friend pick one he likes
Delivery £25 or less if you manage to shop from less places


with all that just overclock the barton to reasonable 200fsb speed 2ghz-2.2ghz which makes use of the DDR400 and you have a pretty sweet system on a tight budget.

I have just built a very similar setup for a friend of mine as well..plays everything great and benches around 7.5k on 3dMark2001

If you friend doesn't need tonnes of room for cd-rw's dvd's or HD's then like Skeps says a Shuttle system would be great. I own a couple of these and they is really kewl PC's. You can buy the whole setup from MD at the weekend. Here's a pos solution,

SN45G - £130
Barton - £55
Maxtor HD 160GB - £70
Ram - £45
Samsung Combo cd-rw/dvd £40
GPU - £50/??
Delivery - £7-10

Ok not £300 but its worth every penny :D as its a good spec system which should last your friend ages.

Everything else is onboard so you don't need to worry, just install the drivers and thats it. Recent problems with the SN45G V2.0 means that you can't play around with the Ram voltage...as long as you remember that you can't go wrong.

hope it all goes well,

Ady

i think ^ he has a point

SN41G2 - £140
Barton - £55
Maxtor HD 120GB - £50
Ram - £45
52X CDRW - £20
GPU - Onboard GF4 :)
Delivery - £7-10

slightly over 300 there, but for 300, a really great PC

Onboard NForce2 GFX is very average and might play a few games now but give it like 5mnths and that'll be it.

I'd go with Swafes spec although save a few £££ on the HDD and get smaller, and save a few more £££s by getting the cheapest NF2 shuttle wo/ onboard GFX, then spend it on a Ti4200 or that 9500 from the bargin hunt.

you could go for a 40 or 80 gb hard drive to save you a bit more, but TBH i dont think its worth it, cheapest 40gigs are ~35, 60gbs ~35, 80gbs ~40 i think its best value to go with a cheap 120 for 50, but if you want a 40 as its all your ever goin to need then thatll save you more, but again its down to you :)

You can save a few quid buying second hand

There is no point getting pc2700, when pc3200 is pretty much the same price and will give considerable performance. And you can normally find it one the for sale forum easily...

Good choice with the Barton, you getting Retail to save on HSF?
You can get NF7-S's for £52.88 on www.aria.co.uk bargin basement - they are from RMA's etc, so may have something missing...
40gb would be sufficent.
Get a ti4200 from For sale forum's for £30-£50. The card normally clocks well too.

So thats:
Barton = £55
NF7-S = £52
Ti4200 = £45
=====================
Scan have - CWT 450watt = £35
Aria - Sony 52x52x24 = £30
Aria - 40gb Maxtor IDE = £36//80gb Maxtor SATA = £51
Aria - Generic 256mb pc3200 = £27
=====================
Total = £280 excluding PP (thatll cost a lot)

Also, you would have to find a cheapo case.

Best place to look for stuff is forums, or bargin/B-grade/daily offers. I got an Abit KG7-RAID (supports pc1600/pc2100) for £13, as the dude had fried his athlon in. I got the athlon too, which didnt work,but the mobo did :) cracking deal. Friend got a KD7-RAID (via kt400) for £15 as some guy had spilt tea on it....just look :)

Hope thats helpful, sorry for limited websites...coudl only be bother with one.

Will

Also - email the company, and ask if they can put certian things on their bargin sections....i did that with aria. they put a PC-61 on for me with about £20 the day after i had emailed them :)
Will

no offence to blockers but i think youd be better off with a shuttle - if you like them

NF7-S = £52
Ti4200 = £45
CWT 450watt = £35

thats 129 quid - you could get a shuttle for that, ok the gfx wouldnt be as good, and the psu, but its smaller, about the same price and you wouldnt need to fork out for another case, which would put the total to ~150 ex pnp

People have thier own preference i suppose....they still come in about the same price

Interesting.. I have been working the exact same budget for a friend of mine...

Why is everyone so hung up about nForce2 dual channel? Single channel isn't that bad, and you can save a packet by going the KT600 or nForce2 400 way. You can get a good KT600 board for the price of a budget nForce2 one, and lose very little performance, while having loads of features. Unless your friend is fussy about sound, not having Soundstorm shouldn't be an issue.

This guy wants to play Call of Duty - onboard GeForce4 MX won't cut it!

How about:
Athlon 2500+ retail £55
Abit KV7 £50
512Mb GeiL DDR400 £54
80Gb Seagate 7200rpm £45
Samsung 52x32x52x CD-RW £20 (oem, but inc software)
Cheap Case with 300W PSU £20
That leaves £60 for the graphics card.
*EDIT*: [[["Make that an Asus 9600SE 128Mb."]]] <---- This was a STUPID comment - I wasn't thinking.

I meant "Make that an Sparkle GeForceFX 5600XT 128Mb" - yeah, stretch for that extra £10 at least. You won't regret it...

Also, why do you all talk of overclocking - a guy with a £300 budget can't afford to mess with overclocking...

Anyway, all prices from http://www.microdirect.co.uk.