Yet another 'spec me a build for a friend' thread...!

[Rob_B]

billy - Yeah I'm not building it for him He may bring the parts into work & we'll build it up in here, gives me something to take my mind off redundancy!

MSIC - Very true, although if I was spending over £800 to be fair I'd want more than a measly i3!

CAT - I looked at the benchies when that chip was first mentioned. I looked at the Phenom 955 & took off approx 10% for gaming. Still good in comparison.

I think the spec is settled on (at least he's happy)

Case + PSU £58
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coole...elite-500w-psu

Motherboard £72 (mATX in case he wants to get a smaller case in the future)
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-raid-matx-vga

Quad core 3.2Ghz CPU £79
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-p...mhz-95w-retail

4GB RAM £35
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-(...-9-9-9-24-150v

1TB HDD £40
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/ss1tb...-89-ms-ncq-oem

Blu Ray reader - £39
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/liteo...m-inc-software

Win7 64bit OEM - £75
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/micro...tem-single-oem

= £398

A couple of things have been seen cheaper ie the case for £50 on ebuyer, 2GB sticks for £15 on Play.com so it will probably end up being less than £398. Also probably an ATX mobo so another £10-£15 knocked off that price. Possibly a blu ray drive wity DVDRW which adds another £10

It's not going to be overclocked to hell nor even have a GFX card for the moment so I reckon this will suit him.

[ik9000]

Like I said, fish around for specials like the Scan TodayOnly offers and you'll get it for much cheaper.

If you'd looked at the Today Only offers on Monday 14th Feb - the day you posted the query - you could have got most of the components I listed in the No-Brainer special for under £300 including case and 450W PSU and easily done the whole system for under £600 by adding the following.

BR reader £40
GPU £150
OS £75

Hope the build goes well whatever you choose.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would still get a better PSU. The Elite Power 500W has a passive PFC.

This PSU is made by Seasonic and looks to be the same as the Corsair CX400W:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/400w-...mm-fan-atx-12v

This PSU is slightly lower quality but is still a decent PSU for the price:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/530w-...ail-atx12v-v23

The Asus M4A88T-M/USB3 still uses the older SB710 southbridge so I would go for one of the following motherboards which use the SB850 southbridge which has SATA3.0:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...sata-raid-matx

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-8...sata-raid-uatx

This motherboard is also worth considering as it uses the faster HD4290 IGP:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/255177

[Rob_B]

PSU - Tricky to push it upto the price of the current case/PSU (you all know the drill there!)

As for mobo, to be fair anything will probably do, looking at the £40 AM3 boards on ebuyer/Scan they'd do as long as they have onboard video with HDMI out

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you want to save some money I would look at the following motherboards:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/244433

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/255178

These both have the HD4250 IGP which has UVD2. The 760G motherboards have the HD3000 IGP which lacks UVD or UVD2 meaning it has poorer video abilities.

Regarding the PSU, getting a cheap one now is just a short term saving IMHO.

You can get one of the following cases and one of the PSUs I listed for around £71 to £73:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/239240

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/239238

The Casecom cases tend to better quality than the lower end Coolermaster cases,are better designed and have a pair of fans included too.

[Rob_B]

Cheers Cat, I'll pass the message on but it's not my money so he might just go for cheapness

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also make sure that you check the Scan Today Only and Shop Offers web pages too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx

http://www.scan.co.uk/shopoffers/index.aspx