Been out of PC market for a few years. £600 to spend?

[Nick F]

Hi, been a long while since I've posted here on HeXus but I need some help.

A friend of mine is buying a new PC and has £600 to spend just on the base unit. They have a monitor etc. It needs to be nice and fast and have lots of storage. They don't play games at all some only a normal graphics card is needed.

I'm not sure of the latest kit, what should I be looking at?

[dirky]

Whats his typical use? just browsing / office work?

[Nick F]

Whats his typical use? just browsing / office work?

Yes typical browsing, building websites and playing media. No hardcore processing like rendering big pictures etc.

[dirky]

Does he have any components to build on at the moment (other than monitor)?

He could probably go for a cheap and cheerful AMD build

[Nick F]

Does he have any components to build on at the moment (other than monitor)?

He could probably go for a cheap and cheerful AMD build

A few but they are all 5+ years old. I'd start again including a new case.

[Hoonigan]

I imagine the "lots of storage" bit will be the biggest problem here.. HDDs are very expensive at the moment because of the flooding in Asia.

[Nick F]

I imagine the "lots of storage" bit will be the biggest problem here.. HDDs are very expensive at the moment because of the flooding in Asia.

Thats fine. Around 1TB should be enough.

[shaithis]

Something like the following should be sufficient for the tasks you've highlighted:

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Do the older PCs have an Athlon X2??

It might be worth looking at a cheaper SSD and a 2TB storage drive. The 2TB storage drives are around £85 to £100 and will be slower than the 1TB OS drives.

Regarding the PSU I would go for the following ones:

http://www.dabs.com/category/compone...59?q=XFX%20450

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/400w-...et-fan-atx-v23

They are both Seasonic units and use ball bearing fans. Cheaper units tend to use sleeve bearing fans which tend to wear out quicker.

[Pob255]

I'd swap the arc mini for the core 1000 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/fract...e-case-w-o-psu if you want mATX it does lack hard drive space but you don't really need the extra width and size of the arc mini if you're not sticking high end hardware.

That motherboard is ATX not mATX

For ATX how about the new NZXT source 210 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/nzxt-...usb-30-w-o-psu

I'd agree with CAT, with this budget it should be easy to add in an SSD and a 2tb drive for a data store
Having now played around with a crucial M4 64gb I can safely say it's lovely

[shaithis]

That motherboard is ATX not mATX

Damn, good spot thanks! Just as I was starting to think all FM1 boards were going to be mATX/ITX...