Bare bones system

[bobble]

Hi,

I'm looking at getting a bare bones system to replace my home pc, the motherboard has had it. its quite an old pc, uses DDR1 ram etc. Not looking to spend too much, perhaps £150.

I have looked on Novatech and there are a few on there at about the £110-£130 mark. I believe I would just need graphics card and I could continue with current hard drive (80 gig) and CD/DVD drive from my old rig and perhaps upgrade them once ive got a bit more cash handy.

I have a couple of guys who I work with who know what they are doing with PC's but want to find out some more information myself.

Any suggestions, pointers, etc, would be great.

Thanks in advance

[vicar]

It will help to know what you want to use the computer for.

[bobble]

sorry about that,

mainly net browsing, word processing with some light gaming, nothing too intensive. Eve capable not a lot more than that.

Depending on prices really. If I can pay an extra £10-£20 for a better rig then I probably would go for it.

I'm six months into married life and buying my first house so money is a factor.

thanks again

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A lot of the cheap barebones Pcs on Novatech come with dreadful el cheapo PSUs and are not worth the money unless you want them to go bang in the future!!

I would go with an Asus barebones as they have good quality components!!

This is what I would go for:

Asus V3-M3N8200 AM2 Barebone ~ £101

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151171

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=j0IIjVXR09eXVbWC

It comes with a card reader too!

2gb DDR2 ~ £19

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142380

X2 4850e ~ £50

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144638

The total comes to around £170.

The motherboard has Nvidia 8200 integrated graphics.

Here is what framerates you could expect with newer games:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...t,1972-19.html

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/mainbo...force8200.html

If graphics performance is not important then go for this barebones instead:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146254

http://www.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_I...specifications

It has much slower integrated graphics(around half the speed of the Nvidia 8200) and no card reader much is much cheaper.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Alternatively you could do your own build!!

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146338

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152777

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142380

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135662

With the free Supersaver postage option from Ebuyer the total comes to £161.12.

The motherboard has similar integrated graphics to the cheaper barebones in my previous post. However this build will have much better upgrade path as you can go with a better graphics card in the future when the need arises.

[Flibb]

I work with CHris so can help with a build, even have some spare arctic silver laying about
Unfortunately I am still running 939 so a bit behind the times .

[peterb]

nother vote for the Asus systems - I've built a few of them, and they are quite good value for money. The PSU's aren't the greatest - I had one fail (safely) and replaced it with an FSP unit. An early one I made had a non-standard form PSU which tended to overheat - but 5 years on it is still working OK!
The other limitation can be lack of expansion, but if you want a pretty standard computer for basic office type tasks - they are good (my five year old one does good service as a file and web server)

[bobble]

I think I'm going to go for this. wanted to check before I went ahead with it.

Asus V3-M2NC61P AM2 Barebone 146254
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Socket AM2 2.7GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB) Retail Boxed Processor 135662
OCZ 2GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 5-6-6-15 Value Series Memory with Lifetime Warranty 142376
Cart total ex vat: £152.13

Gratefull for your help

[PeterStoba]

I think I'm going to go for this. wanted to check before I went ahead with it.

Asus V3-M2NC61P AM2 Barebone 146254
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Socket AM2 2.7GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB) Retail Boxed Processor 135662
OCZ 2GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 5-6-6-15 Value Series Memory with Lifetime Warranty 142376
Cart total ex vat: £152.13

Gratefull for your help

Good choice Stick around, get 20 useful posts and more, and you get free delivery from Scan

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think I'm going to go for this. wanted to check before I went ahead with it.

Asus V3-M2NC61P AM2 Barebone 146254
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Socket AM2 2.7GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB) Retail Boxed Processor 135662
OCZ 2GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 5-6-6-15 Value Series Memory with Lifetime Warranty 142376
Cart total ex vat: £152.13

Gratefull for your help

Get this RAM instead:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139662

Having one stick of RAM will mean it will run in single channel mode meaning lower memory performance. Using dual 1gb sticks is far better.

Also I would go for the X2 5050e as it has lower power consumption and will run cooler as a result:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149212