Spending 300 Bucks On Budget Build....Need Advice

[marcdisa]

All I need is a processor, motherboard, RAM, hard drive, case and psu.

I was thinking of going with an AMD Regor Dual Core 2.8Ghz processor, Biostar socket AM3 micro atx motherboard, 2GB of DDR3 1066, 250GB Hard Drive and a cheap case psu combo. Trying to get the most bang for the buck. Any advice would be much appreciated! I'll be using the system for internet, music and photos, and some occasional gaming. I'm not worried about a vid card at the moment. I'll roll with integrated for a couple months and then throw a vid card in....

 

[mpilchfamily]

PSUs that come in most mid range case combos are crap. They will either not support your system or they will die within months possibly destroying other components. The case is the one item you can actually go very cheap on but the PSU is the last thing you want to go cheap on.

My advice would be adding another $100 or more to the budget so you can build a decent PC.

 

[Mundos]

i agree. $300 isn't enough for a decent new computer. the quality you're sacrificing to save a few $$ will just bite you in the ass. Get an asus p5kpl-cm, e5200, crappy case, whatever ram is on sale, 500gb seagate or western digital and at least a mid range psu like a coolermaster extreme power or something. i get about 1/3 as many mid range psus coming in dead and about 1/10 as many high end ones at my computer store.

if you really need something for $300 and dont need walloping performance, id suggest scoring an offlease dell optiplex or something. they're generally good quality... if you're not worrying about a video card and gaming at this point. internet an music aren't very intense and photo editing (unless you're a graphics designer) can be done on any decent computer. with the leftover money you can buy yourself a lottery ticket or something, instead of chancing it on the crappy psu.

 

[bobross419]

i get about 1/3 as many mid range psus coming in dead and about 1/10 as many high end ones at my computer store.

This is a bit misleading... just like anything else... I would expect there to be more of the lowend model out there than mid range and more mid range than high end. Your saying that you see fewer could easily just be the result of fewer people having the mid and high range installed.

 

[marcdisa]

Basically the deal is for Christmas my mother says she will buy 300 bucks worth of stuff off of New Egg for me. So I can also put some money in myself to buy some components if needed but I'm trying to keep that to a minimum. My sister has already bought me the HP 2159M 21.5" monitor from Best Buy has my Christmas so I will def have a nice monitor for the build.

I think what I will do is have her but the processor, motherboard, ram, harddrive and an inexpensive case and I will put out money for a better psu.

What is everyone's thoughts on the AMD Regor 240s? 60 bucks on new egg....or I could do a tri-core for 76 bucks or even go AMD Propus Quad for 99. Is DDR3 worth it over DDR2 being a little cheaper?

 

[Terzo]

I think the 240 will be fine for most of your needs, although I'm sure if you intend to do "heavy" gaming people will suggest a tri-core.

Are you intent on biostar and ddr3? Right now there's a good combo deal on newegg which nets you a x2 245 and 785 gigabyte matx for about $130. You'll have to use ddr2, but I haven't seen any other combos come close to this. Both items are eligible for free shipping as well.
If you can look order from other sites, amazon has the antec 300 for $50 shipped. Pick up this 500 gig wd for $50.00. Add in this 400 watt corsair for $40 AR plus shipping. This leaves you with roughly $30 for ram. You'd pretty much be forced to go with 2 gigs, or if you spend money out of pocket you can go up to 4.

A few other things:
Black friday/cyber monday are approaching and you may be able to find better deals.
Do you have a dvd drive already? I noticed you didn't list one as needed.
You can find a case with power supply for cheaper than ordering them separately, but I don't know which cases comes with good psus. But if you can find one you like that will probably shave another 20 or 30 bucks off your costs.

*edit*
Was looking through more closely and found another combo which has a raidmax case with 450 watt power supply, the same gigabyte mobo, 2 gigs ddr2, and an oem (you'll need a cooler) x2 240 for 190 shipped after rebate. That would leave you with $100 to spend on a hard drive, cpu cooler, and maybe more ram or buying a better psu.

 

[happy medium]

buy used....check my system in signiture!

Thats 385$ for the entire system.

The video card,Tuniq cooler and 1 hard drive cost 150$
You don't need those. So 235$ is the price I paid for the rest.