A budget build for £250

[Behemoth]

A friend of mine has just asked me to help spec him a new budget build, when I asked him how much he wants to spend he said no more than £250.

He uses his PC for some very light gaming (he mostly plays GTA 4 and its addons) He also does alot of web development (he runs a web design business) He currently runs an intel E2140 CPU, some really cheap mobo with 2 gig of ram, a 500 gig hard drive he just recently bought a GeForce 9600 GT or it could have been a GSO.

I said he's better off going with an AMD build if he wants to keep the costs down which he seems to be happy with my suggestion so nothing to worry about there.

What he needs :

CPU
Mobo
Case
RAM (He'd like 4 gig)

He doesn't need :

Power Supply (but I've feeling he's got a cheap and cheerful 400 watt ebuyer job currently)
Hard Drive
Optical Drive
Graphics Card
Operating system (he has a retail copy of Windows 7)

Would prefer to get all the kit from one place if possible.

Case wise I'm going to suggest to him a Coolermaster 330, he said to me about getting something for £15 Will need to persuade him otherwise.

[Rob_B]

I saw several reasonable cases for under £20 (w/o PSU) when I looked recently, sounds like he doesn't need anything fancy case-wise with a budget like that?
Is his budget including selling his old stuff?

Assume he's got DDR2? Why not buy an AM2+ board with a compatible AM3 CPU and another 2gig of it to save on cost?

[Behemoth]

He has got 2 gig DDR2 but he wants to keep that in the old PC I think and use it for something else, think he plans to use it as a server or something.

[DavidM]

This is similar to my own recent build:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/2GB(2...9-9-24-DHX-15V

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-A...che-65W-Retail

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

Which at current pricing is : £183.23 inc (minus delivery of course )

Possible to get a decent case for only about 20-24 pounds.

The on-board graphics are reasonable for a starter - although obviously if he wants 4gb - it'd cost a bit more.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Do the drives use SATA and is the graphics card PCI-E?

Edit!!

Moose! Of course the graphics card is PCI-E if it a 9600GSO or 9600GT!

BTW,what motherboard does the computer have?? An upgrade to a Core2 quad core,some more RAM, a new case and a new PSU will be a better use of the £250 budget IMHO.

[Blaineoliver]

9600Gt will be pci-e.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

9600Gt will be pci-e.

I just realised that!

I would suggest looking at the following parts:

AMD Athlon II X3 435 ~ £61

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176043

MSI 770-C45 ~ £47

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/165438

1333MHZ low latency DDR3 RAM ~ £91

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179278

OCZ StealthXStream 400W ~ £33

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152505

Casecom 6788 Black Mid Tower Case ~ £30

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172779

The total comes to around £262 including free postage.

If you are lucky you maybe able to unlock the Athlon II X3 to an Athlon II X4 or Phenom II X4.

[Behemoth]

Ideal, will tell him later when he's online.