Talked to my mate at work who wants a new computer for his dad. This guy is in his late 60's, retired, and although has "a computer" it's old and on a dial-up connection. Not that his dad even uses it for surfing, as apparently he goes to the library to use the internet!
Anyway, my mate is trying to encourage his dad to use it more, particularly now that the grandchildren are going around and wanted to do stuff ("including some basic games").
This ties up nicely with the fact that i have some old parts to shift, which I have been up front about and my mate is fine with this. He has no exact budget, but under £300 is attractive, the closer to £200 the better.
I have currently a P4 2.6 ('C', 800fsb) with a Zalman h/s & fan, on an MSI 865PE motherboard. All good and stable, so i have no qualms about passing this on.
I also have a spare Western Dig 80GB hard drive, however even though it is fully working i will not be giving him this as it's at least 3 years old and been in nearly 24/7 operation, so cannot be sure how much longer it'll hold out.
They are also keeping the current monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and re-using the OS and applications, so what i need, for under £200, are the following:
Case & PSU; RAM; Graphics Card; Hard Drive; DVD writer.
I have specced up a system myself of the following, but wonder if anyone can suggest any improvements?
Scan '3xs' case & 400W. £24.28
2 x 512 MB Corsair Value Select. £56.27
Asus Geforce 6200 AGP 128MB £32.54
Hitachi 80GB SATA Hard Disk £36.66
NEC 4550A DVD writer £27
Total = £176.75 inc VAT & free scan delivery
If i built & installed it all, do you reckon £250 is a fair price (including my old components)?
Thanks for any help, changes or suggestions in advance.