Budget build [£250]

[Caat]

Hey Guys,

A friend of mine is looking to build a new PC but she has a very limited budget.

USE: General office tasks, youtube, iPlayer, some heavier image manipulation and PDF work related to the completion of a PhD – i.e. creation of a complex word document with large images rather than the data analysis itself (her actual work involves very large CT scans!)

BUDGET: £250

Probably going to buy most things from Dabs.com as they are one of the cheaper places in the UK and I’ve used them before. No brand preferences but at this budget I would think AMD is the best option. My friend would be using this machine to replace an aging Dell Dimension 2400 and so apart from maybe reusing the optical drive with a PATA to SATA adaptor (and maybe the HDD) we’re probably looking at scratch building. Monitor, keyboard etc would be as was with the Dell due to budget constraints.

This is the basic breakdown of what I’m looking at:

AMD A6-6400K - £57
- Best processor at this price point when balancing GPU and CPU? I’m unfamiliar with Intel at this price. Would have helped a lot had Intel released it’s dual core Haswells by now.
8Gb of DDR3 1600 - £50
- 8Gb would be useful given large image files and multiple windows, word docs etc. Esp. with an iGPU
mATX motherboard - £42
- Basic desire would be for USB 3.0 as my friend’s PhD produces a LOT of data and although I don’t expect to be able to process CT scans on a budget machine like this (by any stretch!) being able to shunt the data around and manage it on the machine would be useful. Otherwise fancy features not necessary – PCIE x16 slot good for future possible discrete graphics upgrade.
OCZ 500W PSU - £32
- Cheapest reliable name PSU I could fine. I know that 500W is overkill for this machine
Zalman mATX case - £19
- Decent looking cheap mATX case
Windows 7 OEM - £70
- Necessary

So a touch above budget at £270. It’s hard to see where we could come in cheaper without a compromise too far. Does anyone have any suggestions of possible improvements? As I said I don’t know much about Intel’s current offerings at this level. I would love to add an SSD system disk but that would be budget blowing seeing as we’re already a bit over – a 32Gb one just for Windows 7 would make a big difference to general performance.

Thanks for any comments/suggestions in advance.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I'm not sure I'd recommend an AMD CPU for that kind of work. The IGP is unimportant for non-gaming use. Its also not fast enough to run never titles at 720p anyway. I'd properly look at something like a Pentium G2020/G2120 and a decent B75 mainboard. That gives you a good deal more CPU performance at the same price. For AMD to make sense, you really need to get a dual module/4 thread chip, like the A8 and above. The A8-6600K (essentially 5800K level CPU performance with a slightly cut down IGP) is a good bet if you can afford it.

If you're unfamiliar with Intel offerings at this price point, Xbitlabs did a nice little comparison a while back. It doesn't include Richland APUs unfortunately, but you can extrapolate their performance from their specs...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/trinity-vs-ivy-bridge.html

 

[Caat]

I'm not sure I'd recommend an AMD CPU for that kind of work. The IGP is unimportant for non-gaming use. Its also not fast enough to run never titles at 720p anyway. I'd properly look at something like a Pentium G2020/G2120 and a decent B75 mainboard. That gives you a good deal more CPU performance at the same price. For AMD to make sense, you really need to get a dual module/4 thread chip, like the A8 and above. The A8-6600K (essentially 5800K level CPU performance with a slightly cut down IGP) is a good bet if you can afford it.

If you're unfamiliar with Intel offerings at this price point, Xbitlabs did a nice little comparison a while back. It doesn't include Richland APUs unfortunately, but you can extrapolate their performance from their specs...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/trinity-vs-ivy-bridge.html

Thanks, that's really helpful. I hadn't appreciated that the performance gap was that extreme on Richland dual cores.

 

[mfenn]

Is the existing HDD SATA or PATA? If it's PATA, I'd highly recommend figuring out some way to get a SATA HDD. PATA drives are just plain slow at this point.

Have you considered buying a used OEM machine? You can probably get more bang for your buck by getting an off-lease Dell or HP.