My dads old dell is dying. I think his graphics card has packed up as he has a lot of flickering across the screen, such that it is impossible to use. (the same affect happens with different monitors). In any case it is getting a bit long in the tooth, it is at least 7 years old and hence it is time for a replacement. Budget: ~£500 - could easily pay more, but for intended usage its prob not spending too much Main uses of intended build: Using Microsoft office and internet Parts required: needs everything barring keyboard, mouse & monitor Monitor resolution: dont know, 6yrs old. Storage requirements: minimal, he has a brand new 500gb hd in his dead pc. I am thinking that should be sufficient for storage and thus i am considering suggesting a ssd for the os and office. Will you be overclocking: no Other considerations: want a small quiet case. I have a fractal design r2 and i think that is too big. Therefore i prob need to look at some smaller motherboards Was considering putting a half decent graphics card in because i think my brother will be at home for a few months and it would be nice for him to be able to do a little bit of gaming.
What's the Newegg of the UK? I'd make a quick build right now, but it'd be in U.S. dollars. CPU: Maybe an AMD Athlon II X2? RAM: 2GB DDR3 GPU: G210 or maybe HD4350? Just enough for hardware-accelerated Flash and Aero and some light gaming. SSD: Intel X25-V 40GB. Install Win 7 on it. Your dad will love not having much loading time. Motherboard: Something reliable but not really feature-filled.
Get our Affordable All-Rounder from our buyers guide, but replace the MSI 770-C45 with an ASUS 785G micro-ATX You'll also need to find a micro-ATX case to fit your budget then too If he doesn't game just leave out the graphics card and use the onboard graphics from 785G - that'll give you more cash to spend on CPU or case!
Antec do the P180 mini, which is a mATX case and is very similar to the Fractal R2 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Ante...ey-Micro-ATX-8-drive-bays-200mmplus120mm-fans
thanks for the suggestion davemon, it looks like a nice case, but could you think of a something similar that is a little shorter?
Coolermaster Elite 341, Black, micro-ATX Case w/o PSU - £30.49 Antec NSK-4000B II mini tower case black-ATX-8 drive bays-120mm fan-no PSU - £38.21 Silverstone SG02B-F Evolution MicroATX SFF Case, Acrylic/glossy finish w/o PSU - £46.38
Comp Spec for my dad would have to include A4 pad..Lined paper.B Bic Biro. Backup.. second Bic Biro (or and pencil) and second pad A4 lined or other.
I am looking at whether it is worth building a pc for my dad or if i should just suggest getting one from dell. I was looking at a pc from dell that would include the following: Included in your system: StudioXPS 8100 - Intel Core i3 Processor 540 (3.06GHz, 4MB) Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit- English OS Windows® Recovery Media Not included English Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2010 ( Word, Excel, Powerpoint, One Note) 1 year of coverage included with your PC McAfee® Security Centre - 15 Month Protection - English 4096MB 1333 MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [4x1024] 1TB Serial ATA (7200RPM) Hard Drive 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5450 graphics card DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD) with Roxio Easy CD and DVD Burn software Dell™ USB Entry Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY) Dell 2 Button USB Optical Mouse No Speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital Audio Services & Software DataSafe Online Backup 2GB 1 year English - Documentation with UK/Ire Power cord D05X8102 Studio XPS 8100 DT Order - UK Datasafe Local 2.0 Basic 1 year Next Business Day Hardware Support included with your PC 65W Processor Heatsink One free Dell Expert call to help with your PC queries within 60 days of purchase Studio XPS 8100 Resource DVD based on the affordable all rounder (and adding in the price of windows and office), i could build a pc for my dad for £620, or around £720 with an SSD. ( I have minused the cost of the heatsinks (wont be overclocking) and the hard drive (he already has a one) from the affordable all rounder build - making it £380 in my estimates) So i am wondering whether for the benefit of roughly £50 if it is worth the bother? Anyone else built a system for family? i guess the problem is that if something goes wrong I will be called not Dell!
Just makes me wonder what's wrong with Atom? Mini-itx board with Atom would be small, quiet and easily more powerful than the 7 year old Dell and also all you'll need for Office. If that's out of question then what Bindi said. The Dells are tempting with the great short-term warranty, but how's the warranty after the first year?
Atom :-S Seriously, an Athlon II X2 costs not much more and provides waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more power. Get the Dell if you don't want to be tech support
This. You don't realize just how terrible of a deal the Atoms are in every way until you assess all your choices. (the same applies to high-end netbooks vs. CULV notebooks)
Ofcourse you get better performance with Athlons/i3, but so what? You also get larger size, higher power consumption and more noise. If the use if office/web browsing, the performance just doesn't seem like a factor to me.
True. I suppose it's about one's priorities. I'm a bit biased against Atom processors after seeing what seems to be massively ripping people off at the "high-end netbook" level, where Atom-based EEE PC 1201N has a barely 4-hour battery life, and for $60 more, the CULV-based UL20A is the same size, gets a full 8 hours, and scores twice as much in CPU benchmarks. Yes, the CULV CPUs consume more power, but the manufacturers compensate by fitting higher-capacity batteries, and in the end, you'll get the same battery life and general portability, if not more (like in this case). Also, while the GPU is weaker, the CPU is much stronger and is able to perform many tasks that the Atom could never try without aid from ION. Though since we're talking about desktops, then this is a different scenario and I've gone off-topic.
It's really not. You can buy mini-ITX AM3 boards and Athlon IIs are very cool running. Whatever hard drive you choose will vibrate more than an air cooler. Having "enough" performance for things like Flash without having to worry about GPU acceleration is much better for any parent who doesn't know not to use internet explorer. They will sooner complain they cannot do something rather than "I can hear it a bit". Also the latest Atoms can only power a screen res of something like 13x7 iirc (could be wrong), which = **** for desktop. CULV GPU is pretty much on part with the Ion one, except for gaming. It'll still accelerate stuff like h.264. Not sure about Flash 10.1 though.
I did some testing and found that the Intel GMA4500MHD was able to play 240p, 480p, and 720p Youtube perfectly. 1080p became somewhat choppy and played at around 10-15fps. Hulu was not great (~20fps) at normal resolution, and somewhat choppy (~15fps) at 480p. I'm glad I chose the model with the hybrid nVidia 210 under the hood. I switched to that, and everything worked swimmingly (obviously).
Yea well I don't have much experience with flash HD-videos, I only really thought about the office use.
I feel like it depends on what kind of office work it's being used for. When I'm doing work and it involves having 20+ tabs open and various Office 07 apps running, a surprising amount of CPU is utilized. It all depends on what you do, of course. 20 Google Docs tabs is a lot heavier than each one for e-mail or news articles.
