300 GBP system for general home use

[Taz]

This is mainly for anyone looking to build a home PC for general use for themselves or friends/family on a very low budget.

I've just built a new PC for about 300 GBP and it runs much faster and quieter than I expected it to. I did already have a couple of parts so the 300 GBP price doesn't include those.

Here's the spec and prices (all sourced from Scan earlier this week):

• CPU: Intel Pentium G4600 Kaby Lake - £79.99
• Motherboard: Gigabyte H110M-S2H - £50.28
• CPU Cooler - ARCTIC Freezer i11 - £0.00
• Memory: Corsair 8GB DDR4 Vengeance LPX 2133MHz - £69.46
• Graphics card: <None> - £0.00
• PSU: Corsair 450 Watt VS450 Refurbished - £24.98
• HDD 1: 1TB SanDisk Ultra II SSD - £0.00
• Case: Silverstone PS11B-Q Precision Quiet Black Mid Tower - £39.98
• OS: Windows 10 - £0.00
• Keyboard/Mouse: Cherry DC 2000 Wired USB Office Keyboard+Mouse - £15.98
• TOTAL: £280.67

I already had a decent CPU cooler lying around, an Arctic i11 Freezer, although the Pentium comes with a stock cooler anyway as it's a retail boxed Pentium so no extra cost would be involved. I also already had a Windows 10 license and a 1TB drive, plus a syringe of Arctic MX-4 thermal paste. Hence, the £280.67 price doesn't include the cost of Windows 10 or a hard drive/SSD.

The case is a lovely budget case to work with. It has a bit of foam padding in the side and top panels to reduce noise. It comes with a 120mm front intake fan but I had a couple of better 120mm fans that I added to it. The case is mostly tool-less. The 2.5-inch SSD trays are awful though! It was really difficult to orient the SATA power and data cables to fit properly into the SSD slot. The reason for this is that the panel overhangs the slot/enclosure so the SATA cables are hard to bend enough to fit. The rest of the case is good. Having said that, there is plenty of space in the case and some okay cable management.

The PSU was refurbished. It's fine for the requirement but the leads are very short. The motherboard is micro-ATX and very good - specifically chose this budget board as it had an HDMI connector on the back panel. It's a budget board so only one fan header, for example. The RAM and CPU are great bang-for-the-buck components. I chose the CPU as it had onboard Intel HD Graphics 630, which is fine for everyday use at 1080p and for very light gaming.

Another surprise for me was how good the Cherry keyboard/mouse combo is. The keyboard is a delight to use. The mouse is very light and responsive.

Here's a few pictures during the build from last night.

[DanceswithUnix]

Nice, though if you included the cost of the SSD you happened to have sitting around then the system cost almost doubles

[Taz]

Aye, I sneaked that one in. Although I think the system would operate fine with a normal cheap HDD too.

[Saracen]

It's an interesting perspective, because it shows that the basis of a decent non-gaming (*) system for a pretty modest price, especially if you can cannibalise a few parts from elsewhere. It makes a nice change from the hairy-chested, muscle-bound systems we normally see discussed.



(*) Yes, this machine will play some games perfectly, and many more if you turn graphics settings down a bit, but for the pedantically-minded, by "non-gaming" I mean it's not a spec suited to a dedicated gamer.

[Taz]

Aye, Saracen. I really like the little system. The speed is outstanding for general home use and it's virtually a silent PC. The case is a little wide because of the foam padding in the side panels. I am going to give my dad one of my Samsung 1TB external hard drives for backups as I've taken out the SanDisk 1TB SSD from my own newly-built PC to use as the drive in this new PC, and my tale of woe of another SanDisk Ultra II (500GB model that was in my Mac mini) has already been discussed on here!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Nice and neat build.

It's an interesting perspective, because it shows that the basis of a decent non-gaming (*) system for a pretty modest price, especially if you can cannibalise a few parts from elsewhere. It makes a nice change from the hairy-chested, muscle-bound systems we normally see discussed.



(*) Yes, this machine will play some games perfectly, and many more if you turn graphics settings down a bit, but for the pedantically-minded, by "non-gaming" I mean it's not a spec suited to a dedicated gamer.

If you playing any kind of more modernish(is that a word?) games TBF,you would be looking at one of the AM4 APUs,even if you lose in ultimate CPU performance the IGPs are much faster than most Intel CPUs.

Edit!!

A great channel to follow:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV_...z4KHNzMlmYO04A

Chap tests lower end Intel and AMD CPUs running games on the IGP or lower end cards. I do wish more review sites tested cheapo hardware like in the past.

[MrJim]

Did the case come with both fans? If so, that's quite unusual at such a low price point. Nice build! (although my OCD would make me do a slightly better cable-routing job!)

[Taz]

Did the case come with both fans? If so, that's quite unusual at such a low price point. Nice build! (although my OCD would make me do a slightly better cable-routing job!)

Case came with one 120mm fan mounted on one of the front two fan mounting points. I had a couple of fans from my NZXT S340 case which I had taken out of that case and installed those instead. They seemed to be higher quality and slightly quieter fans, with a lower current draw. So, basically you get one reasonable 120mm fan included with the case.

Cabling was a bit awkward with this case. The micro-ATX motherboard meant that some of the cables had to be routed across it. Also, the PSU cables for the motherboard power were very short so I couldn't route those from the other side of the case.

[Spreadie]

Don't you just hate those great big hulking USB3.0 header plugs? Great big heefing thing like that held in place by an incredibly delicate looking quarter inch deep socket and a prayer to all mighty jeebus.

[Taz]

Aye, those USB 3.0 headers are a nightmare. Completely unwieldy, inflexible and ugly!