Design me a spec- Family PC for £650

[999tigger]

Hi have lost track of the exact value for money parts to buy of late.
Would some of you have a go at speccing a machine for me from Scan for about £700 to include monitor, board mouse etc. Family pc, some photoshop, bit of gaming nothing special.

Case
Mboard
CPU
Fan
Graphics
H Drive
Optical Drive
Sound- if needed.

K Board
Mouse
Monitor

Many thanks for those of you that have a go.

[ajones]

I'd refer to CATs spec in this llink;

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ild-400-a.html

And just outfit yourself with the monitor/mouse/keyboard for the extra 250 suids

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'd refer to CATs spec in this llink;

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ild-400-a.html

And just outfit yourself with the monitor/mouse/keyboard for the extra 250 suids

The OP will need to include a copy of an OS too unless they have one already.

[MSIC]

I can't fault CAT's spec, but i could give an alternative.

You mentioned that you want 'a bit of gaming', so we could re-distribute things as follows:

Case: Casecom MATX £16.99
PSU: Corsair 400W £37.54
Motherboard: Gigabyte G31 mATX £33.02
CPU: Intel Pentium E5300 £49.74
RAM: 4 GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800Mhz £42.99
Graphics: AMD 4670 IceQ 1GB £53.88
Hard Drive: Western Dig 500GB Caviar Blue £37.47
Optical Drive: LG Black Dual Layer DVD £15.99
O.S.: Win Vista Home Premium, with Win7 Upgrade OEM £85.14

Subtotal = £372.76

Monitor: BenQ 22" 1920 x 1080 resolution, 3 yr warranty £116.25
Mouse & keyboard: Logitech Cordless Rechargeable Desktop 1500 £33.78
Speakers: Creative T10 2.0 £30.32

Total = £553.11

Well within budget, and plenty of scope to change items if you see fit. Personally i'd seriously consider more money on a better case
The advantage of my spec is that it's physically smaller than the first suggestion. That does, however, make it a little more awkward to build in the first place, but given that none of the components will run that hot (and the graphics card will vent air out of the back anyway) it wouldn't need lots of space inside.

Edit: PS I realise that you asked for Scan, however Ebuyer is giving slightly better value for money these days. The same components from Scan will run for not much more though, perhaps around £15 or so total.
Edit 2: Oh, and it goes without saying that i'd really really, really wait until Win7 is released. You could argue the toss over Vista vs Win7, however if you buy Vista with the upgrade, you're better off simply not installing Vista in the first place and saving yourself a headache. October 22nd i think.

[Pob255]

Personally while the BenQ monitors I've used have been nice, I'd only get a 16:10 1680x1050.
The higher res 16:9 is nice for watching movies, however it's that little bit shorter and a good jump in res, the extra width isn't great for web browsing (hight is better) and the higher res means graphics demand for gaming is a step up, esp for a 4670

I'd probably just go for the viewsonic http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142697#

I'm no audiophile so I'd probably go for a cheap 2.1 or 5.1 speaker set

And CAT's build unless the cost has greatly changed.

[laywill]

This is a bit over £650 but has a much higher spec than others, and is all inclusive:

Case CiT 2003 Black Midi ATX Case Inc 450W PSU £21.17
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/CiT-2...e-Inc-450W-PSU

Case Fans 2 X 120mm AKASA AK-191SM Silent smokey grey £8.02
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/120mm...value-case-fan

CPU AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0GHz Socket AM3 6MB L3 Cache Retail £129.81
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172684

Motherboard Asus M4A785TD-V EVO, AMD 785G, AM3, DDR3 1800 VGA £70.14
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...-SATA-RAID-VGA

RAM Crucial 2x2GB DDR3 1333MHz Ballistix Memory Kit CL6 1.8V £58.00
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166996

Graphics XFX HD 4870 1GB DDR5 Dual DVI HDTV £118.06
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169208

PSU Inc with case £0.00

HDD Hitachi 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM £37.41
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139257

Optical Drive LG, 22x DVD±R, 16xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6, 12xRAM SATA £16.66
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/LG-GH...SATA-Black-OEM

OS Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail £65.21
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Micro...lease-22-10-09

Base Unit Total £524.48

Keyboard Logitech Comfort Desktop EX110 Cordless Keyboard, PS2/USB 1/2.0, + 800dpi Optical Mouse, Black £22.20
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Logit...al-Mouse-Black

Mouse inc with keyboard

Monitor ViewSonic VA2226W 22" TFT Monitor 1680x1050 DVI-D VGA £109.99
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142697

Final Total £656.67

This is obviously a more powerful system than the one proposed by CAT, but it is totally ALL INCLUSIVE and so will end up about the same price as the others but with a good chunk more performance thrown in. To keep price down I had to go to both Scan and Ebuyer, but you can get free shipping from both, with Scan2Hexus and Ebuyer's free shipping promotion.

Hope this has helped in some way.
Please feel free to question decisions etc.

[Pob255]

Case looks ok for an el-cheapo, but I'd not trust that PSU esp with a x4 cpu and 4870
A 4850 512mb will be fine for the majority of games on 1680x1050

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is a bit over £650 but has a much higher spec than others, and is all inclusive:

Case CiT 2003 Black Midi ATX Case Inc 450W PSU £21.17
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/CiT-2...e-Inc-450W-PSU

Case Fans 2 X 120mm AKASA AK-191SM Silent smokey grey £8.02
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/120mm...value-case-fan

CPU AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0GHz Socket AM3 6MB L3 Cache Retail £129.81
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172684

Motherboard Asus M4A785TD-V EVO, AMD 785G, AM3, DDR3 1800 VGA £70.14
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...-SATA-RAID-VGA

RAM Crucial 2x2GB DDR3 1333MHz Ballistix Memory Kit CL6 1.8V £58.00
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166996

Graphics XFX HD 4870 1GB DDR5 Dual DVI HDTV £118.06
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169208

PSU Inc with case £0.00

HDD Hitachi 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM £37.41
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139257

Optical Drive LG, 22x DVD±R, 16xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6, 12xRAM SATA £16.66
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/LG-GH...SATA-Black-OEM

OS Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail £65.21
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Micro...lease-22-10-09

Base Unit Total £524.48

Keyboard Logitech Comfort Desktop EX110 Cordless Keyboard, PS2/USB 1/2.0, + 800dpi Optical Mouse, Black £22.20
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Logit...al-Mouse-Black

Mouse inc with keyboard

Monitor ViewSonic VA2226W 22" TFT Monitor 1680x1050 DVI-D VGA £109.99
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142697

Final Total £656.67

This is obviously a more powerful system than the one proposed by CAT, but it is totally ALL INCLUSIVE and so will end up about the same price as the others but with a good chunk more performance thrown in. To keep price down I had to go to both Scan and Ebuyer, but you can get free shipping from both, with Scan2Hexus and Ebuyer's free shipping promotion.

Hope this has helped in some way.
Please feel free to question decisions etc.

Faults with build:

1.)Rubbish el-cheapo PSU. Even Dell use better FSP power supplies which cost more than the entire case and PSU combo you have specced.
2.)Cheapo case.
3.)Slower hard drive. The Samsung I specced is a single platter job.

Taking the £408 build as a basis you could add a DVD writer for around £20,a copy of an OS for around £70,a 22" LCD monitor with DVI and a keyboard and mouse within the £650 budget.

[MSIC]

The higher res 16:9 is nice for watching movies, however it's that little bit shorter and a good jump in res, the extra width isn't great for web browsing (hight is better) and the higher res means graphics demand for gaming is a step up, esp for a 4670

Both fair points there, however regarding the gaming, it's actually simply a choice of selecting a lower res in the game to play - my ATI 3870 runs Batman A.A. demo great at 1680 x something, and i don't see any weird pixelations or anything. So overall, i'd argue that it's better to have the higher resolution and scale down, than to have a lower resolution and be stuck with it.
Oh, and then you have the higher res for sharper detail in everything else, and Windows 7 seems to do a really nice job of making icons scale nicely, from what i can tell with the R.C.

I'm no audiophile so I'd probably go for a cheap 2.1 or 5.1 speaker set

I currently have a 2.1 setup and it does sound good, however truth be told the sub is nothing but a pain in the backside to have by your feet. If you have space for it, fine, but these 2.0 speakers are really worth it otherwise. T.R. review here.
That said, if you really do like a large and nice sound, the 'Gigaworks' versions are really worth a look here.

[MSIC]

By the way it'd be stupid to buy Win Vista plus upgrade for over £80, when Amazon are selling Win7 Home Premium (Full Version) for £65.

[nickp8]

Ignore didnt realsie offers ended.

[woody_294]

Just a quick one, please to note you'll need your OS to be 64 bit with 4.5GB of system memory

[Pob255]

Win7 Home Premium is both 32bit and 64bit, it detects which is best when installing and uses that version (in theory)