Hi, everyone. My father´s birthday is getting closer and I wanted to reuse an old mini-ITX with a custom alu/wood/veneer case, but I had to cancell that plan because of lack of time so I´ll step up a bit the budget and buy him a new PC. He has now a P4 ¿2GHz? with an ancient 5400rpm 20GB HD that takes more than 5 minutes to start so anything it´s going to look fast for him xD I´m thinking about an atom mini-itx with 4GB DDR3 and a 128 GB SSD but it has been a loooong time since I´ve built my last PC and I´m a bit lost. My budget it´s about 200€ - 180£ (probably it´s going to need a bit more) including motherboard, psu, case, RAM and SSD. He only uses his computer to browse internet and sort his compact camera´s photos without editing in a 17" 1280 x 1024 monitor so I think that configuration is going to be fast and silent. Any advices, specially in the motherboard-case-psu combination? Thanks to everyone and excuse me for my bad english wich is getting rustier and rustier..
An Atom based machine will be pretty slow. I'd go for the cheapest AMD APU instead - it's about £32 and includes Sim City (which you can sell for £15 or so if you want). There are a few cheap FM2 motherboards, you'd pay around £50 for a micro-atx/mini-itx one. On such a low budget you may want to go for a case that includes a PSU (<£40 total). It won't be pretty, but otherwise you're looking at probably £60+ for decent ones. Amazon has 2x2GB RAM for about £23, and 4gb is more than enough for what he wants. (These are all UK prices, but it shouldn't vary much in the rest of Europe) Example - this would perform well for a very low cost. SSD changed to a hybrid drive to save costs.
I'd agree with the poster above's build in everything except the PSU. Never skimp on the PSU, ever. That thing is garbage. Get a reputable brand like corsair, be Quiet!, enermax or seasonic. For £200 you're not going to get an SSD man; it realistically isn't happening. Get a decent, modern Hard drive. Western digital's green or blue caviar drives are fantastic and reliable. The Seagate barracuda drives are good too.
Yup, I'm very unhappy with that PSU but it's hard to keep the costs down. You have to spend about £40 before you get to the decent ones. Since the system will be drawing so little power, I thought a cheap one might be ok. That drive I suggested is a hybrid, which I think is best for a budget build where you don't need a huge amount of space but want a fast boot up. There's a more recent version available, but it costs more. Edit: Actually, I think that is just a regular hard drive. This is the better choice: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500g...ve-sshd-slim-7mm-sata-6gbs-5400rpm-64mb-cache
Teppic is right, although you wouldn't put that power supply in a proper gaming rig, it will be fine for the components listed, due to the low power needs, it will be of a similar quality as the ones OEMs use , and I've seen them last 10years or more.
I've built a low-budget system similar to that with an AMD APU for someone. It runs very nicely with everyday tasks, and will probably be stunning to someone who is used to a very outdated cluttered system. I'd tentatively 2nd the advice about the cheap PSU. I'd never put it in a system that needs anywhere near the rated power, but for a low powered system they're fine in my experience. Or at least fine enough to not warrant spending a higher proportion of the build cost on a better one. It might be worth finding out what sort of disk space is likely to be used. Some people won't put a dent in a 500GB drive, so for not much more money a budget 120GB SDD may be sufficient storage while bringing all the big everyday performance advantages of an SSD.
If 120gb is enough, I think the budget SSDs start around £65. Since he's coming from a 20 (!) GB HDD, that may well be fine, but it would push the price up. I'm assuming he was using Windows XP. I'd give Linux Mint a try, to give something a bit more modern without any additional cost. If you don't want to bother with Sim City, you could instead get an Intel Celeron G1610 (about the same price as the AMD APU), and a cheap B75 motherboard. It'd outperform the AMD system in benchmarks, but for the kind of tasks he wants, you'd probably not notice the difference between them.
Hi, thank you for your time and answers He will want to continue using XP, doesn´t like changes too much but I´ll get 4GB of RAM anyway given the cost. The SSD part is a must, it will be silent, fast and way too spacious for him taking in acount the use it´s going to get. Mini-ITX is something that I had in my mind from the beginning and I want to keep I´m keeping the purchase in only one store to keep things simple and I come to this config: 79.95€ http://www.pccomponentes.com/sandisk_ssd_128gb_sata3.html 39€ http://www.pccomponentes.com/corsair_value_select_ddr3_1333_4gb_2x2gb_cl9.html 39€ http://www.pccomponentes.com/intel_celeron_g1610_2_6ghz_box.html 51€ http://www.pccomponentes.com/asrock_h61mv_itx.html 44€ http://www.pccomponentes.com/tacens_ixion_mini_itx.html That makes 252.95€ (£217.82 aprox), wich is a little more than the original budget. 15 euros more will get a G2020, but this should be more than enough. A prettier case (bitfenix, lianli) will be great too, but this one includes a 300W PSU that cuts the budget down a lot ¿How do you see it?
You won't need anything more than the Celeron for him. A basic dual core processor like that is adequate for browsing, loading photos, etc. You could possibly get a 64gb SSD to save a bit more.
I would heavily recommend against XP, remember it is out of support next year so no new updates to fix issues with the Operating system. I would suggest a linux variety as well as if all he uses is Internet Explorer get him use to firefox then replace his machine with the new one and he will know firefox so it is no real issue?
