£400 Budget PC

[22point8]

Replacing a Packard Bell iMedia 5096 from 2003, P4 Northwood 2.66ghz, 1gb DDR1, 60gb 5400rpm HDD, Nvidia FX5200. Right, thats dying, probably the hard disk, it takes an age to do anything, hangs when booting up, reinstalled XP several times to no avail, not worth putting another penny into. I'm guessing its the HDD dying and the motherboards caps look a big bulged, the DVD drive is broken too, it has a DVDR but thats 'well used' too.

So, I'm just looking for a general purpose system, don't care about gaming.

Heres what I have in mind, with a budget of around £400:

Athlon 2 X4 620 (2.6ghz)
Windows Home Premium x64 Retail
Corsiar 400w PSU (CX400)
2gb Corsair DDR3 (buy more later when prices drop)
Samsung 500gb F3 (single platter)
Silverstone SG02-F (fits 12" cards)(mum thinks the current matx tower is too big)
ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO
Samsung DVDR

Might buy a Coolermaster GeminiiS or Scythe Big Shuriken later if necessary (stick to budget right now, and I remember when my AC Freezer 7 was £9 new, now its like £20 ), seeing as the case is small. I know a modular PSU would better suit the case but not really willing to spend more than £40 on a PSU, it seems manufacturers are only interested in making 650-1200W gaming PSUs that make more profits. As explained above the ram price is a bit high right now. If I went Intel I'd have to get dedicated graphics so that would make the whole thing too expensive, Core2 is a dead upgrade path and the newer (and even older stuff like 8800GT) GPUs are expensive because availability is so low.

Any thoughts? Could I get a better deal?

[Terbinator]

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...budget-pc.html

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would look at getting:

SST-SG02B-F ~ £44

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Silve...finish-w-o-PSU

350W Silverstone ST35F~ £33

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/350W-...ATA-80plus-Eff

IIRC,this has shorter cables and is meant for use with the Silverstone mATX SFF cases.

MSI 785GM-E51 ~ £55

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-7...Board-Graphics

4GB DDR3 RAM ~ £82

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...L9D-4GBRL.html

You can get cashback from Quidco and TopCashBack on purchases from Novatech.

Samsung F3 500GB ~ £38

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500Gb...-Cache-8ms-OEM

AMD Athlon II X3 425~ £54

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176042

I would make sure that the stock Athlon II cooler is under 78MM tall otherwise it won't fit in the case.

Sony SATA DVD rewriter ~ £17

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164449

Windows 7 retail ~ £92

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Micro...-32-and-64-Bit

[22point8]

Theres some preorder Corsair Ram @ scan for ~£35, so even 2 of those is cheaper than the ram from novatech. I saw that PSU but thought for £5 more I'd get the corsair which seems a bit more futureproof with the 4+4 cpu power and a PCI-E, I don't think thats the short cable version either, I think thats a 500W or theres a set of shorter cables for modulars. The cheaper X3 is a bit tempting but I think I save on delivery if I just use one retailer, plus free shipping from Hexus @ Scan when I get 20 posts and at Scan the price difference isn't that much, so I'd rather get the Quad. I looked into that MSI board and it hasn't got all solid caps like the Asus, plus the q connectors or whatever their called look good (so its easy to fit the usb and case power). I was going to get the Sony drive but the price at Scan went up and I don't think there are 24X DVDRs available anyway.

Sorry I didn't see that other topic, but having just looked at it his circumstances are a little different and I wouldn't want to hijack his topic.

I'm set on a 785g board so I was wondering if anyone knew about the ahci, would I have to set the bios to ahci and then when installing windows provide the driver? Are there any crazy issues like using ahci means the computer wont wake up from sleep (my board does that )? Do the Catalyst drivers include the chipset drivers?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Theres some preorder Corsair Ram @ scan for ~£35, so even 2 of those is cheaper than the ram from novatech. I saw that PSU but thought for £5 more I'd get the corsair which seems a bit more futureproof with the 4+4 cpu power and a PCI-E, I don't think thats the short cable version either, I think thats a 500W or theres a set of shorter cables for modulars. The cheaper X3 is a bit tempting but I think I save on delivery if I just use one retailer, plus free shipping from Hexus @ Scan when I get 20 posts and at Scan the price difference isn't that much, so I'd rather get the Quad. I looked into that MSI board and it hasn't got all solid caps like the Asus, plus the q connectors or whatever their called look good (so its easy to fit the usb and case power). I was going to get the Sony drive but the price at Scan went up and I don't think there are 24X DVDRs available anyway.

Sorry I didn't see that other topic, but having just looked at it his circumstances are a little different and I wouldn't want to hijack his topic.

I'm set on a 785g board so I was wondering if anyone knew about the ahci, would I have to set the bios to ahci and then when installing windows provide the driver? Are there any crazy issues like using ahci means the computer wont wake up from sleep (my board does that )? Do the Catalyst drivers include the chipset drivers?

A pre-order may arrive in one day or months so don't hold your breath for one. The RAM has been overdue for well over a month.

Ebuyer and Novatech have free postage anyway. Also the OCZ Stealthxstream 400W is a better PSU than the CX400 from what I read and can deliver its full rating upto 47C. Novatech have them in stock for around £39 IIRC and in stock.

The Silverstone ST35F tends to come with short cables anyway if you look at any reviews of it.

Anyway from my experience with working with SFF PCs having shorter cables or modular unit makes life far more easier.

The Corsair RAM you are looking at is a single DIMM!! Hence you are not running the RAM in dual channel which is going to lead to a performance drop. Also the memory you have looked at has very high latency. The integrated memory controller in the AMD Athlon CPUs is very latency dependent unlike the Core2 processors which had the memory controller on the motherboard. The optimal memory settings for the Phenom II and Athlon II are DDR3 1333MHZ at 7-7-7-20. The RAM I linked to is capable of this AFAIK.

Also the Samsung drive is more expensive than the Sony drive I linked to.

[22point8]

Just read a review of the OCZ PSU, I like the look of the 14cm fan and its about the same price, and you said novatech have free delivery so I'll probably go for that seeing as its in stock. Good call on the preorder wait times aswell, reason I picked a single stick was that I'd probably get more ram later on and I'd heard dual channel was only a few percent difference, but maybe that was intel as you said. I'll do more hunting around for ram.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Just read a review of the OCZ PSU, I like the look of the 14cm fan and its about the same price, and you said novatech have free delivery so I'll probably go for that seeing as its in stock. Good call on the preorder wait times aswell, reason I picked a single stick was that I'd probably get more ram later on and I'd heard dual channel was only a few percent difference, but maybe that was intel as you said. I'll do more hunting around for ram.

I would have a look around for the RAM TBH as prices are quite high ATM.It is probably worth looking on Ebay for some new DDR3 too as it maybe cheaper. The Phenom II and Athlon II will also run the older higher voltage DDR3 RAM so you maybe able to get some of this cheaper as the newer Intel CPUs need low voltage DDR3 RAM which the Phenom II and Athlon II can use too.