My cousin is building his first budget rig. Need advices

[ithehappy]

Well my cousin is building his first rig, and asked me to help. His budget is pretty low, and honestly I don't follow the entry level stuffs, so please give me some advice, what will be a VFM rig.

Budget: INR 25000 (~400 USD)

Usage: Normal usage. Browsing, see one or two movies, MS office etc. No CPU heavy task. No gaming of any sort at all.

Monitor preference: 22", full hd.

GPU: Not needed. On board graphic should suffice

RAM: 4 GB should be enough.

PSU: I guess some entry level Seasonic might be a good idea?

No speaker system is needed, nor any printer.

Thanks,
Saurav.

 

[Blain]

For such minor usage, I'd consider a refurb PC from Dell, Lenovo, etc.

 

[ithehappy]

No thanks.

 

[mnewsham]

Check out AMD APUs if you want decent graphic performance without a dedicated GPU

 

[Charlie98]

I built a budget general purpose PC for my inlaws for Christmas, it had a budget of $400. I added an SSD, which blew the budget a bit, but remove the SSD, add an HDD and you are basically right there again.

Using generalities the basic components would be:

Intel Pentium G3220 CPU,
ASRock H81M-HDS mATX mobo,
Corsair CX430w PSU,
G.Skill Ripjaws 2x 2GB 1333 RAM,
Generic HDD of whatever size is required,
mATX case like the Antec VSK-3000 or Fractal Core 1000,
Generic CD/DVD drive,
Windows 8.1

That puts it just at $400 US, YMMV. I picked my parts up as they came on sale, if you have that option you can save a little money. Mnewsham is correct, you can also save a little money by going with an AMD processor, I just don't know the in's and out's of AMD and don't normally recommend them anyway.

I also agree with Blain that the smart choice would be to buy a prebuilt at that price point, but if you are opposed to that, and it looks like you are, that would be my suggestion.

 

[rituraj]

I think he is including the monitor in the budget. Any decent 20-22 in full hd will take away at least Rs:8000 to 9000 ($140) AFAIK in India and there goes your budget for "original" windows licence.

As for the psu and case, you can get a cheap ass case like from Intex or iball for about 3000rs ($50)which comes with a 500 watt psu included. I have one at my home for a year and a half without any problem. They are stupidly designed without even a hint of cable management, but I don't think your cousin would care.

If a slight stretch is possible you can get an i3 with a better iGPU that will be suited for fullhd videos but I think intel hd graphics in a pentium would suffice.

 

[Charlie98]

I think he is including the monitor in the budget. Any decent 20-22 in full hd will take away at least Rs:8000 to 9000 ($140) AFAIK in India and there goes your budget for "original" windows licence.

As for the psu and case, you can get a cheap ass case like from Intex or iball for about 3000rs ($50)which comes with a 500 watt psu included. I have one at my home for a year and a half without any problem. They are stupidly designed without even a hint of cable management, but I don't think your cousin would care.

If a slight stretch is possible you can get an i3 with a better iGPU that will be suited for fullhd videos but I think intel hd graphics in a pentium would suffice.

I don't know that I could trust a PSU supplied in a 'cheap ass case.' It's cheap for a reason.

Yes, the iGPU in the Pentium is adequate... I used my G620's iGPU to run my HTPC until I added a GPU (which didn't fix the Netflix streaming problems, so the Intel HD graphics were not to blame.) For that matter, a Celeron would probably be fine for the OP's purpose, but for just a few dollars more I think it's worth getting the Pentium.

OP, do you need a monitor, too? :\ That DOES blow the budget...

 

[JumBie]

I think he is including the monitor in the budget. Any decent 20-22 in full hd will take away at least Rs:8000 to 9000 ($140) AFAIK in India and there goes your budget for "original" windows licence.

As for the psu and case, you can get a cheap ass case like from Intex or iball for about 3000rs ($50)which comes with a 500 watt psu included. I have one at my home for a year and a half without any problem. They are stupidly designed without even a hint of cable management, but I don't think your cousin would care.

If a slight stretch is possible you can get an i3 with a better iGPU that will be suited for fullhd videos but I think intel hd graphics in a pentium would suffice.

Oh, I think I know what you were hinting with the "original" Windows License reference.

 

[VirtualLarry]

OP, do you need a monitor, too? :\ That DOES blow the budget...

Yeah, I don't think that's doable, building a complete budget PC for $400, including a 22" LCD screen and Windows license, unless you purchase used / refurb.

Might as well go for a refurb pre-built, that comes with an OS license.

 

[mfenn]

Yeah, I don't think that's doable, building a complete budget PC for $400, including a 22" LCD screen and Windows license, unless you purchase used / refurb.

Might as well go for a refurb pre-built, that comes with an OS license.

OP, can you clarify these two points? I.e., do you need a Windows license and monitor included in the Rs. 25000 budget?