building a new systerm for the wife

[lee_uk]

i am looking to send about £250 - 300. any ideas?

[Scarlet Infidel]

(you mean system) I assume its just for web browsing and word precessing etc? Any dvd reuirements, cd writing or anything like that?

A setup based around around this kind of spec would probably be ok
2500+ sempron (~£46)
Any motherboard with onboard sound and graphics (~25-30)
512mb ddr400 ram (run at 333) (~25)
Cheapish case and 400w PSU (~20-25)
80gb 8mb cache hard drive (~35-40)
17" monitor (~60)
Basic mouse and keyboard (~10-15)
CD-RW (~16)

With postage and other bits and pieces that will be about £250 i think, could be a bit less if you get everything form one place. Of course most things can be upgraded for a little extra or downgraded to save a little. But these are fairly good value in terms of a basic pc.

Lets see if someone else disagrees.

[RDL]

Is this inclusive of peripherals?

[lee_uk]

she wants to play a few games (sims 2) she does not need a dvd writer. i have a graphics card and a monitor.

[Scarlet Infidel]

well then you dont need to choose a motherbaord with onboard graphics. You could always swap to dual channel, 2 x 256mb or 2x 512mb. Do you plan to run it at stock speeds?

Taking off the price of a monitor will save a lot obviously. Allowing a better spec overall. For example a 2800+ sempron or a good old barton of some sort will be about £10 more, not sure of the performance benefits though.

[lee_uk]

i dont plan to do any overclocking. is there a big performance difference between amd 64 and a sempron?

[Scarlet Infidel]

Yes, thers a big difference, especially with games. But the price increase is significant, especially when it comes to a 64 bit motherboard. The sempron i was referring to was for socket A. I think its about
£80 for a s754 3000+ and £40+ for a motherboard
or
£100 for the futureproof s939 version of the 3000+ and abot £50+ for the motherboard

These are probably best case prices, i havent looked into it. After all, i own a pentium 4 and dont game. This might help, it only has the sempron 2800+ and 3000+ but the athlon XPs are of similar speeds to the various semprons now (not with the same rated names ie 2600+ xp barton beats a 2600+ sempron).

http://www23.tomshardware.com/index....el2=64&chart=1

Hope i havent just confused you.

oh yes, what graphics card will you use?

[lee_uk]

the graphics card will be ati 9600 pro

[Firelord]

For £320 I have managed to piece together a A64 system

• BioStar 210P SFF (nForce3 250GB)
• Athlon 64 2800+
• 512MB DDR400
• Combi CDRW/DVD
• 80GB SATA HDD

Have built quite a few systems like this for clients and they really like them. I built exactly the same (with a 160GB and 256MB Radeon 9600 Pro) overclocked to 2GHz nicely (9*223) with the elxir RAM at 3-3-3-8 and scored 14k 3D'01

[Zak33]

while its nice to go 64bit...for the Simms and some surfing, it may be a tad overkill

Put it this way...a 2600 Sempron, on an Nofrce2 board, with 2 sticks of 256ram, a good 80 gig hdd, a nice case with PSU, a £15 Liteon CD burner, and your own 9600 Pro and you are FLYING

[Zak33]

If you want ready made....
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=86864

£235 inc XP Home...has an AGP slot for your card.

Just need another 256mb stick of ram to get it fast enough for gaming

[Firelord]

Whats the point in going SoA when its being phased out? Least with s754 it will give an upgrade route. I would personally go for s754 system with either a sempron or A64 because it will be quicker even without the dual channel.

The BioStars are very quick and very well put together/