Hey forumites, One of my old friends from uni is looking at getting a new PC. He has a £400 budget and this must include a monitor. He is wanting it for office/internet/media + what he says light gaming (I've asked for him to clarify what he wants to be playing) He showed my some stuff but it's last gen Core i's, some core duo's too. He can get better than that. I was thinking of suggesting he goes barebones and then orders graphics and monitor seperately. He's not an idiot and could fit a graphics card by himself but I don't think he'd want to do a complete system build. I have looked around novatech at their barebones systems and have this one on my list at the moment: http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/barebones/bb-i52314.html Seems to have a relatively decent spec. Where else are good places to go for barebones systems? and what would your suggestions be for a build like this? Cheers
If you get the above make shure you do the right thing rip out that shamefull psu get yourself 1 of these at least: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/430w-psu-corsair-builder-series-cmpsu-430cx-80-eff-uncertified-quiet-fan-atx-v23
Tell us about the "light" gaming. Just one question, does he have an HDD, because today it will be just to include a high cap HDD with £400 budget (screen included). On your link, I cannot see any HDD included.
Balls! Forgot about the HDD + the Windows license (these things I always forget as I have plenty of HDDs and always have a Windows disk) Finding it hard to get what he wants in a desktop for under £400 inc monitor. So any complete systems you guys can recommend for that price would be great. (yet to hear back from him regarding gaming but assume medium settings for now) Would I get better value if I look for laptops around the £400 mark instead? EDIT: Well this should help the budget. His gaming requirements on the PC are "old stuff + the latest football managers" He has a PS3 so not essential to be top line gaming!
No, far worse. You could get one for £400 but you wouldn't be able to do any kind of gaming at all on them. I've built gaming PCs inc a monitor for £400 but you are going to have to a) delve into the second hand market and B) build it yourself. Something like this would be good Athlon X3 445 - £35 - ebay 4GB DDR3 Ram - £15 - ebuyer Mobo - Something like this £37 HD - Something cheap - second hand, maybe you could sell him one of yours since they are so expensive at the moment - £20 PSU - Something like this 450w Antec - £35 GTX 460 - £90 Coolermaster Elite 342 - £29 = £261 23" Monitor - £125 Total cost = £386 - leaving £14 for extra fans/PCIe adaptor/delivery etc. Edit, you could drop the GPU if all he wants to play if Football manager, and get something super cheap. Edit - just read he doesn't want to self build - in that case ignore above, I will refer other people that ask this question to it though!
