A friend at work wants me to upgrade her PC for £250 max for her grandson. She only uses it for Office and web browsing but wants it for her grandson to play games on. I told her it would be difficult for that kind of price but I would give it a go. She has given me her Dell Dimension E520 to upgrade or sell on ebay to put towards a new build. Was looking to build a i3 based system but its looking tough at that price. Also, not quite sure what condition this Dell is in yet and whether anything is salvageable. Basically wondering if anyone out there could recommend a possible build for me? £250 has to include postage from Scan.
Would be looking at used parts with that budget if the old system cant be upgraded. PSU will be crap for a start.
HDD is busted apparently. Not got my hands on the PC yet so dunno for definite. She doesnt need a monitor. I can use anything theyve given me so drives and stuff yes.
This is a good start. People will tell you to go for the i3, but its not necessary. Still needs a hard drive though. What cpu does the Dell Dimension have?
true, they seem to be 300w ; but for your list your missing a hdd as well (op said it was busted) so thats another £40 on top , so that £250 machine is kncking on 300
Yeah I got the list together before I saw the "hdd is busted" part. But if he sells the parts from the Dell Dimension, he should be able to afford a new HDD, hopefully. It depends what cpu that system has. He can sell a core 2 duo quite easily, but Pentium 4's are worth nothing these days.
Decent question that from modd1uk if it has no operating system this budget is way too small. Borderline impossible tbh. Depends totally whats in the dell dimension as there will be no OS disk. If the HD is busted theres £40 that you have to find also. If it has a core 2 duo he could use it instead of buying a cpu its still a more than capable gaming cpu. You may be better off heading the AMD route with there intergrated graphics been good enough for most basic games assuming the resolution is not pushed too high.
What about ditching the gpu and use trinity e.g. A10 5700, it won't be an incredible gaming machine but judging by op, gaming is the 2nd purpose.
Depends a lot on how old is the grandson, and what do they mean by games. Stuff like plants vs zombies or BF3... if the former it's quite easy, if the latter forget it. That budget is too small to have a good expierience with much beyond casual unless you get a lot of luck in the used market. Even still its a stretch and if you need a legit Windows, it's impossible as it's what a 1/3 the budget?
Too much negativity here lol. He can do it! More info would be great though, such as monitor resolution, games list (as mentioned before), and Windows version. Also, can you buy second hand?
Now im not much of a console fan, but if your looking at "proper" games then its the best (and easiest) option. http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/sony-s...81d5-a25372d2e3d7&istItemId=atraprxp&istBid=t
