Cheapest possible Mobo+CPU recommendation

[Andaho]

A friend's mum's PC has died and it points towards being the mobo or the CPU (tested other components in another PC)...

She only uses it for email and ms office.

I'm having trouble finding a really cheap replacement mobo and cpu - he has 1gb of ddr2 533mhz spare from when he upgraded his ram...

He wants to do this as cheap as possible and asked me to find something for him :S

Anyone know where I can get something cheap? ebuyer for example has a £30 AM2 mobo, but the cheapest AM2 processor is £40... they want to do it cheaper than that... I'm not really a fan of old ebay crap though... would fear most of the time it's broken already! lol.

Oh, another question... would DDR 533Mhz work in a board that specifies 667, 800 etc... none of them seem to mention 400 or 533mhz anymore?

[shaithis]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigab...SATA-RAID-mATX

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-S...MHz-45W-Retail

Can't imagine it getting any cheaper new.

[scaryjim]

The exact same components are each £2 cheaper at ebuyer: Sempron 140 and Gigbyte Mobo. However this ASROCK Mobo, @ £30, has the Sempron 140 listed in the CPU support list. The only downside is that it doesn't support full-speed HT3, but frankly for office work that's not going to hold it back. That's the cheapest AMD option.

The cheapest intel options are both ~ £2 more expensive: A Celeron 430 and a G31-based Gigbayte motherboard. Frankly, the AMD setup is almost certainly better value for money...

[rushholme]

Bear in mind that an extra £12 will get you a dual-core chip in either Intel or AMD flavours..

[mikerr]

Atom is slightly cheaper, but obviously less powerful:

Atom 230 inc mobo: £49.35
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/147622

or this for £40.86
ECS GS7610 Ultra with Athlon Socket 754 3200+ Processor
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/170173

RAM would cost a fair bit for the 2nd one though