I've been asked by a friend to piece together a system around the £350 mark. Usage will mostly be Internet/E-mail usage but "with a fair bit of power" so a bit of gaming on the side. Going to £400 is fine but try to keep it down. I've been looking at the E6300 or the E6320 as a core or something around that price. Again, none of the components need to be blazing fast as long as they do the job and can be upgraded in the furure. Thanks Guys.
If you want a cheap system, then an E4400 or E2160/2180 would be better choices for the CPU, as they are cheaper and still perform quite well.
Hows this... Cpu - C2D E4400 Mainboard - Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Memmory - Corsair XMS2 1GB PC2-5400 Graphics - XFX Geforce 8600 HDD - (I'll decide later depending on how much money I will have left) Stuff like CD drives arent important right now.
Not quite E4400 P35-DS3R (It's p35 chipset, vs p965) 2gb ram (It helps a lot more) 7900GS or X1950Pro (Faster than the 8600, cheaper) Corsair VX 450
Ok, based on that, I came up with this. CPU - C2D 4400 Mainboard - GigaByte GA-P35-DS3R Memmory - Geil Ultra 2GB Graphics - Sapphire Radeon X1950 Looking pretty solid to me. Again, I will probaly just choose the bigest capacity HDD I can afford so it's not important.
Looks like a solid system, even good for overclocking if you are so inclined to tinker around with settings. Even if not, it's a good build, having 2GB of ram, an E4400 and a similar performing video card, I can say you will not be disappointed by the performance.
If you were looking to do it even cheaper, this motherboard is very good for the price, and usually turns up in scans today only offers at least once a week for £45 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=594521 Plus this rams a steal at the moment http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(14777)Geil-Ultra-DDR2-20GB-PC6400-Dual-Channel.aspx
Another thing I just rembered, A PSU. I thought I had two in my scrap heap that could power it but I found I gave them away and only have a generic 350W one left. That may get it off the ground but I wouldent want to keep it there for long. Whats the lowest voltage that could comfortably power this system?