• Hardware Buyers Guide: Late September 2012


    Ideal for family members doing no design work, gaming, or other demanding tasks.
    This PC is oriented fully around function over form, and has nothing but the best value low end hardware.
    Expect a low price and a cheap feel to the case.

    Hardware Item Price
    Case CIT 2036 Black £20.89
    CPU AMD A4 3300 x2 £35.98
    Motherboard MSI A55M-P33 £36.66
    RAM 4GB x1 Corsair Value £14.88
    GPU Onboard CPU £0
    PSU 450W inc with case £0
    Cooler Stock £0
    Hard Drive None £0
    Optical Drive Samung DVD-RW £12.95
    SSD Sandisk 64GB £41.57
    Total £162.93

    The case I picked I have used to build this kind of system for a good couple of years. It's pretty flimsy, but at a little over £20 including a PSU you cant really complain!

    This build will use next to no power so I have no grovels about using the bundled PSU either, as I said I've built several in this case over the years, and have yet to hear of 1 failure.

    AMD?!?!? I hear you cry. I recommend an AMD system as their CPU's aren't bad at all for the price, they just don't perform as well as the Intel ones. For this environment its not worth the extra few pounds to get an i3.

    Also, should you ever need it, the onboard AMD GPU is actually pretty damn respectable. This means you wont load up the CPU playing HD content.

    The Motherboard is nothing special at all, but its very cheap. Note it does not support SATA3. This means your SSD will run slower than it could do, but ill explain my reasoning later. Also with a PCI-e 16x slot, if you needed to upgrade to a dedicated GPU in the future, the option is there.

    The RAM is a single stick, so if you decided you needed more, you can double up very easily.

    Finally "Why have you put an SSD in an office system? And if your bothering with that then why in gods name have you only picked a SATA2 board?".
    Let me answer these for you.
    1. In the environment this system is designed for, 64GB is plenty. With office and windows installed you will still have over 45GB free. Millions of documents.
    2. It costs the same as a cheap hard disk.
    3. To get SATA3 doubles the motherboard cost - it's just not worth it for this system!
    4. You don't need SATA3 to get the benefit that would be apparent in office use. Your random reads and writes will still be through the roof, and most of the system boot time is scanning devices anyway, which an SSD doesn't speed up. Using an SSD here will mean documents open in a flash and no time is wasted logging on or opening your favorite programs.


    So what you have here is a decently spec'd office machine that will be lightning fast to use, all for under £170. Not too shabby.
    Comments 7 Comments
    1. jakebd's Avatar
      jakebd -
      nice, but what would you recommend as a modular power supply 750 watt or is that one a modular.
    1. Colonel Mitch's Avatar
      Colonel Mitch -
      The Antec True Power 750W One I recommended is Semi-Modular.

      It has the motherboard cables directly attached, but the drives and the pci-e are modular
    1. jakebd's Avatar
      jakebd -
      hmm seems legit, thats kind of what iam thinking but i was thinking fully modular because i'm thinking of going for a full tower and i wanted the wires to look neat.
    1. Colonel Mitch's Avatar
      Colonel Mitch -
      I personally have a Thermaltake Toughpower which is a good PSU. Its the same as the antec one being semi modular.

      At the end of the day you have to have the motherboard / cpu power in your PC either way so it didn't concern me that all cables weren't modular. If you want one fully modular there are a fair bit more expensive, but they have the nice novelty of being able to position without any cables being in the way.
    1. jakebd's Avatar
      jakebd -
      ye thanks for this, but tbh with you i think iam gonna take your advice and go for one thats a mixture, but iam looking for a cheap one.
    1. Target's Avatar
      Target -
      Could there be a request section to these guides, for instance a specific price tag for pc or set of components?

      Otherwise, its a great thread
    1. Colonel Mitch's Avatar
      Colonel Mitch -
      Sure Target, thats a good idea.

      A day before I post the next one, I'll make a thread asking what people want advice on, and add that to the build guide.
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