Christmas Prezzy 2

[Attila the Bun]

This one is for my brother who wants a new computer. And I'm going to build it for him as i had so much fun building the last one.

He doesn't play games other than some of the online flash stuff so a discrete GPU is not essential.

He does download lots of films and has a seriously large music collection on there so a decent sound card and a large amount of storage seems to be a good idea. The other usual stuff applies, surfing, emails, word processing and spreadsheets. And he has a couple of large apps that are to do with room layout design and are probably CPU intensive.

His top budget is £300 for the base unit only as he has all the peripherals and OS.

Any advice on this would be gratefully received.

[scaryjim]

TBH onboard sound is good enough nowadays that you don't see significant benefit from discreet soundcards until you start spending fairly big money: just because he has a big music collection doesn't mean he's a big audiophile! If he has decent speakers then - with a £300 budget at least - I wouldn't bother with a discrete soundcard.

In which case, a decent 880G motherboard and a Phenom II 955 BE, 4GB of good branded DDR3, then as much storage as you can afford It might be worth having one moderate-sized SSD (e.g. 320 - 500GB) for OS + programs, and a big (1 - 2TB) hard drive for his music and video collection - that way if he wants to nuke his OS or has problems he won't have to worry about his media.

[redddraggon]

It might be worth having one moderate-sized SSD (e.g. 320 - 500GB) for OS + programs

I reckon a 320-500GB SSD will easily wipe out the £300 budget

[Attila the Bun]

He has good speakers but he isn't precious about the sound quality. So soundcard ditched.

Would a quad-core be overkill I wonder. The apps are big but he doesn't use them that much. I will have a chat and find out what the usage level is and how it works on his current rig, I might be able to look at a 2 or 3 core instead.

[scaryjim]

oops You know what I meant

That said, you might be able to squeeze a 60GB SSD boot drive in if you bunch up some of the rest of the spec - you'd have to ask him whether 60GB would be big enough for OS + programs...

EDIT: OK, I just tried this and even with a cheaper 785G mobo, Athlon II X3 and the Kingston 64GB V-Series I don't think you could do it for £300. But the very fact that I'm able to think about putting a 64GB SSD in a £300 build shows you how far we've come

[Attila the Bun]

oops You know what I meant

That said, you might be able to squeeze a 60GB SSD boot drive in if you bunch up some of the rest of the spec - you'd have to ask him whether 60GB would be big enough for OS + programs...

EDIT: OK, I just tried this and even with a cheaper 785G mobo, Athlon II X3 and the Kingston 64GB V-Series I don't think you could do it for £300. But the very fact that I'm able to think about putting a 64GB SSD in a £300 build shows you how far we've come

I reckon by xmas the 60gbs will be below £80 as they seem to lose about a £1 a week

[Pob255]

EDIT: OK, I just tried this and even with a cheaper 785G mobo, Athlon II X3 and the Kingston 64GB V-Series I don't think you could do it for £300. But the very fact that I'm able to think about putting a 64GB SSD in a £300 build shows you how far we've come

actually no, we're still a ways off for an ssd in a budget build.
A 60ish gb SSD is around £80-90 which is still double what you'd need for a cheapo build

esp as a 250-500gb HDD is around £25-30


As to quad vs Dual core, depends on the software (it's not how big the software is but it's cpu utilisation and ability to take advantage of muiltcores
A phenomII 955 is an excellent choise as a general use cpu.

[scaryjim]

Depends on the purpose of the build, and what you mean by cheap! A 64GB drive is large enough for an install of an OS, some office programs, and a small amount of storage, so for an office PC I'd seriously consider whether the SSD, at about £50 more than an entry level HDD, was a better upgrade than, say, extra ram, a faster processor, or better graphics. Obviously you wouldn't do it for a dirt cheap build: you'd go for a 160GB / 250GB mechanical for < £30: but when someone's using their PC 40 hours a week and their productivity depends on system response times, it might be worth considering a 64GB SSD in a £350 office base unit.

EDIT: anyway, this has gone a little off topic, sorry The bottom line is that you can't currently fit an SSD into a £300 base unit. A quad core may be overkill, and it'd make the budget tight for the case and PSU too. Here's a quick basket from ebuyer that currently sits at £225, and basically only *needs* a case and PSU: make of this what you will...


ASUS M4A785T-M 785G Socket AM3 DVI VGA HDMI Out 8 Channel Audio MATX Motherboard £56.41
AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1 GHz - Socket AM3 1.5 MB cache Retail Box Processor £62.04
Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz Dominator Memory Kit CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.5V £64.99
Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 5400rpm 64MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green £42.00

[Sputnik]

but when someone's using their PC 40 hours a week and their productivity depends on system response times, it might be worth considering a 64GB SSD in a £350 office base unit.

Once the PC is up and running an SSD doesn't make that much difference really. I only really notice the boot up time and a tiny increase in using the machine in general. Unless your installing programs.

[c.ruel]

I am gonna break the mould here and suggest a pentium G6950. So here is what i would do with a £300 budget.

G6950 £65 overclockers uk

Asus P7H55-M £65 scan uk

OCZ 1333mhz cas9 2x2gb aria uk £59

Corsair CX430 PSU £37 scan uk

Coolermaster Elite 430 ATX case £38 (not really my taste but seems to be popular, picking case is hard because i don't really know what you are after on that front) scan uk

1tb samsung F3 £42 scan uk

CPU cooler, CM 212 plus £17 scan uk

Total price is £324 excluding shipping (but most of the stuff is on scan and you should have free shipping from there )

you could easily get the price below £300 by getting a 500gb hard drive rather than a 1tb and a cheaper case. I went for a terabyte because you said storage was important. Furthermore if you know you will not get a discrete graphics card in the future you could also consider an antec basiq 350w psu to lower the price even further (although I would play it safe and stick with the corsair one since I suggest overclocking). If you did those changes you could easily get it round the 275 mark.

The reason I suggest getting a aftermarket cooler for the cpu is because that cpu is amazingly overclockable and there in lies it's value. At stock speeds it should perform similarly to an athlon II x3 but when overclocked and you should be able to accomplish 4ghz pretty easily, then it will blow an athlon II out of the water and challenge some of the lower clocked phenom IIs as well. If you're not comfortable overclocking then there is not much difference between an athlon II build and the pentium build I suggest. However go for a pentium build and spend 20 quid for a budget cooler and you will get much better performance than an athlon II build. The pentium also has a gpu on die so don't worry about graphics.

[kurosagi01]

Heres build i putted together:
AMD:

Intel(lots of goodies from scan today lol):

[jonny440]

Attila, I've just built a micro atx machine that came to £386 with W7. If you already have the os, then that would be £310. Spec is in my other post here.

It's small, looks good and is VERY quiet. It has sound and graphics on the mother board. The onboard graphics is a HD4200, with VGA, DVI and HDMI connectors, so could be hooked up to a TV which may be handy if your bro likes watching movies through a pc.

[Attila the Bun]

I've had a really bonkers day today...I've covered about a 120 miles in short 10 mile-ish bursts looking at 9 different houses with 8 different estate agents (alternative 12 days of christmas or what).

I come on here for a break from "good size room" and "you could go up in the loft" to find that the lovely people from hexusland have been busy spec-ing my bro's xmas present.

Thanks very much all of you...I'm going to have a work through all the different suggestions and see what looks good.

The SSD won't be necessary, nice as this idea is (well it is to me ), as boot times are not an issue.

In fact, after a chat today I reckon storage is the main thing, a couple of 1tb's in raid would do it. The apps are really low importance now as he's finished all the design work he's doing for now but he would like to keep them for future use.

He does want to link to his television so he can download and watch directly so I'm not sure if a GPU is a requirement now or whether a good MB with HDMI is a better option.

Again..thanks all.
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P.S.

Jim...I like off topic...it teaches me stuff : )

[Attila the Bun]

Attila, I've just built a micro atx machine that came to £386 with W7. If you already have the os, then that would be £310. Spec is in my other post here.

It's small, looks good and is VERY quiet. It has sound and graphics on the mother board. The onboard graphics is a HD4200, with VGA, DVI and HDMI connectors, so could be hooked up to a TV which may be handy if your bro likes watching movies through a pc.

Do you have a picture of said rig Jonny