Sub €500 i5 build.

CompuFreak

Just wondering, can it be done? Everything is needed except OS and might as well exclude keyboard and mouse! if a 22inch monitor can be had and keeping it close to 500 too then i'd like to know! Also, I'm aware that the DDR3 will be putting pressure on the budget, so 2GB suffice for the purpose of this excercise.

Does anybody have and help/advice? I'm unfamiler with the online retailers.

Mister Man

Edited I didn't know i5's needed DDR3, and didn't read the mainboards spec, now stop getting thick about it **cough** Venom **cough**

Venom

Mister Man wrote: »

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=492762 theres you Core i5
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=312054 DDR2 i know, mix it up yo
if it cant be used
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=451108 Motherboard(Again mix it up
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=404885 PSU (Good PSU)
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=331024 HDD (personly id just rip your old one out of your PC same asyour DVD, But will list everythin)
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=498976 DVD/rw
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=572609 Case (Might not suit you, have a look yourself)

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=573129 Monitor

Now i didnt price that at all, but i dont think it when over 500,If it did just change a few things around

Dont offer advice if you havent a clue what you doing :rolleyes:

The motherboard you listed is for intel 775 chips not i5 and the ram is DDR2 not DDR3 which i5's need.

OP I dont believe you can build a whole i5 system for €500 without keeping some of your old hardware and OS.

CompuFreak

Venom wrote: »

Dont offer advice if you havent a clue what you doing :rolleyes:

+1.
@ Mister Man: What was that about?

Venom wrote: »

OP I dont believe you can build a whole i5 system for €500.

Not up for the challenge?

marco_polo

If you want the i5 for non gaming purposes and will get by with onboard graphics then I would say probably.

EDIT: Oh with a monitor? Hmm...

Venom

CompuFreak wrote: »

+1.
@ Mister Man: What was that about?


Not up for the challenge?

Well even with the cheapest chip, mobo and ram you gonna be hitting the best part of 400 notes. If you can reuse existing case, PSU, GPU, HD and DVD drives along with your OS we can get you a running system. Or maybe have a think about an AMD system?

CompuFreak

Also I didn't mention graphics requirements. Perhaps something suited to the following: 1080p playback, encoding, 3D graphics rendering, movie making, light gaming.

CompuFreak

Venom wrote: »

Well even with the cheapest chip, mobo and ram you gonna be hitting the best part of 400 notes.

Thought with e-tailers and 2GB ram (as it's v expensive at the mo) that those could be had for 300?

lmimmfn

Venom wrote: »

Dont offer advice if you havent a clue what you doing :rolleyes:

The motherboard you listed is for intel 775 chips not i5 and the ram is DDR2 not DDR3 which i5's need.

OP I dont believe you can build a whole i5 system for €500 without keeping some of your old hardware and OS.

lol,agreed on the mobo.
I agree, min for i5 would be ~700euro

cpu + ram + mobo will be ~370Euro, no way youll get a gfx card + case + psu + dvd drive + hard drive + delivery for 130euro

Solitaire

€500 would be tight, and wholly relies on the premise that the 22" monitor is purchased at the rate of a "five-fingered discount"

With said monitor it just ain't happening

Insane guesstimate with HWVS/eBuyer cheese factor turned up to Maximum

i5 - €160
Mobo - €80
DDR3 - €40 for a single 2GB stick
Graphics - €25
HDD - €35+
PSU - €30 for a ~300W Antec Basiq
Case - €30
Monitor - €130+
P&P - €20-30

Subtotal - €550 not including even a DVD burner!

EDIT: Close enough You could cut a couple more corners - 80GB HDD, HD3450 graphics, and a cack-but-pretty JCP tower case containing a 500W PSU (of dubious vintage) puts HWVS at €525 for what is all things considered a pretty desperate machine And the RAM prices have just gone up AGAIN!! :mad: HWVS are looking for €50 for a single 2GB stick of bog-standard DDR3-1333 :eek:

CompuFreak

Solitaire wrote: »

€500 would be tight, and wholly relies on the premise that the 22" monitor is purchased at the rate of a "five-fingered discount"

With said monitor it just ain't happening

Insane guesstimate with HWVS/eBuyer cheese factor turned up to Maximum

i5 - €160
Mobo - €80+
DDR3 - €40+ for a single 2GB stick
Graphics - €25
HDD - €35+
PSU - €30 for a ~300W Antec Basiq
Case - €30
Monitor - €130+
P&P - €20-30

Subtotal - €550 not including even a DVD burner!

Not bad. 550 is quite good for a relatively new platform. (3/4 months?)
A similar Dell/OEM would be 700++ i can imagine

marco_polo

Is it AMD time yet?

Mister Man

Venom wrote: »

Dont offer advice if you havent a clue what you doing :rolleyes:

The motherboard you listed is for intel 775 chips not i5 and the ram is DDR2 not DDR3 which i5's need.

OP I dont believe you can build a whole i5 system for €500 without keeping some of your old hardware and OS.

Don't start, Didn't know i5's need DDR3, and didn't readthe spec of motherboard.. I could throw a smart comment at you, but i'll raise above it....Unlike you clearly...I'm a AMDman anyway

CompuFreak

marco_polo wrote: »

Is it AMD time yet?

Not yet. We all know this IS amd's turf.

Venom

Mister Man wrote: »

Don't start, Didn't know i5's need DDR3, and didn't readthe spec of motherboard.. I could throw a smart comment at you, but i'll raise above it....Unlike you clearly...I'm a AMDman anyway

Yeah offering advice on system builds without reading the required spec :rolleyes: Ya dont happen to work for Foxconn do you?

Mister Man

you can build a good AMD quad core for 500

lmimmfn

Mister Man wrote: »

Don't start, Didn't know i5's need DDR3, and didn't readthe spec of motherboard.. I could throw a smart comment at you, but i'll raise above it....Unlike you clearly...I'm a AMDman anyway

yeah but cmon, if he'd ordered that stuff it would be useless.

Venom

CompuFreak wrote: »

Not bad. 550 is quite good for a relatively new platform. (3/4 months?)
A similar Dell/OEM would be 700++ i can imagine

The spec Sol gave would give pretty craptastic performance tho.

CompuFreak

lmimmfn wrote: »

cpu + ram + mobo will be ~370Euro, no way youll get a gfx card + case + psu + dvd drive + hard drive + delivery for 130euro

Ye have little faith.

• i5-750 - 185
• Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2, P55, Socket-1156 - 87.50 (m-ATX)
• Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 2GB, CL9, - 42

Comes to 314.50. Dunno if the board is any good mind. 2 GB RAM to keep costs down. Is Komplett the cheapest? (free pickup too!)

lmimmfn

Venom wrote: »

The spec Sol gave would give pretty craptastic performance tho.

agreed, and better off not skimping on PSU/case for the simple fact that it wont have to be replaced for the next build.

CompuFreak wrote: »

Ye have little faith.

• i5-750 - 185
• Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2, P55, Socket-1156 - 87.50 (m-ATX)
• Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 2GB, CL9, - 42

Comes to 314.50. Dunno if the board is any good mind. 2 GB RAM to keep costs down. Is Komplett the cheapest?

Its a mini ATX mobo, useless for expansion, good if youre building a media rig using it in a small case.
Also that doesnt include postage

Nah, Komplett arent the cheapest, i use overclockers.co.uk as their postage is cheap to ireland( 20euro ) and only takes a day and a half, but im sure theres cheaper again.

Is upto you,but i wouldnt advise getting a cheapy mobo or 2Gig ram.

Mister Man

Venom wrote: »

Yeah offering advice on system builds without reading the required spec :rolleyes: Ya dont happen to work for Foxconn do you?

Anymore smart comments? or are you all out?? As i said didn't read the spec of the motherboard, so what??? Shoot me for it!!!! and as said didn't know i5's need DDR3, Just trying to help.... Im going to leave it there, fell free to get the last word and a smart comment it, but i won't let you raise me....Have a nice day now Venom

Mister Man

lmimmfn wrote: »

yeah but cmon, if he'd ordered that stuff it would be useless.

True and i would take the blame for the stupid post of mine, but stil even if he hit order he could ahve cancelled it

CompuFreak

Solitaire wrote: »

€500 would be tight, and wholly relies on the premise that the 22" monitor is purchased at the rate of a "five-fingered discount"

With said monitor it just ain't happening

Insane guesstimate with HWVS/eBuyer cheese factor turned up to Maximum

i5 - €160
Mobo - €80
DDR3 - €40 for a single 2GB stick
Graphics - €25
HDD - €35+
PSU - €30 for a ~300W Antec Basiq
Case - €30
Monitor - €130+
P&P - €20-30

Subtotal - €550 not including even a DVD burner!

EDIT: Close enough You could cut a couple more corners - 80GB HDD, HD3450 graphics, and a cack-but-pretty JCP tower case containing a 500W PSU (of dubious vintage) puts HWVS at €525 for what is all things considered a pretty desperate machine And the RAM prices have just gone up AGAIN!! :mad: HWVS are looking for €50 for a single 2GB stick of bog-standard DDR3-1333 :eek:

I'll be honest. I was really pushing it, dare i say, extracting the proverbial when i said I'd like it to include a monitor. I need a monitor. However. I wouldn't expect any decent rig to come with a decent monitor AND make it under 500.

So what sort of system could be had for 500 ex. monitor and OS?

Solitaire

DID IT! €479 for a dung-heap eBuyer system that may or may not work! With cutting-edge GeForce 7200LE graphics, 2Gb slow-ass DDR3-1066 and an awesome 80GB HDD! Just mind you don't vomit on the Casecom case, tempting though it may be!*

*DVD Writer sold seperately

Mister Man

Do you mind me asking why you only want a i5 ?

lmimmfn

Solitaire wrote: »

DID IT! €479 for a dung-heap eBuyer system that may or may not work! With cutting-edge GeForce 7200LE graphics, 2Gb slow-ass DDR3-1066 and an awesome 80GB HDD! Just mind you don't vomit on the Casecom case, tempting though it may be!*

*DVD Writer sold seperately

lol, thats good going, would be a $hit rig though lol

Leman_Russ

Mister Man wrote: »

Do you mind me asking why you only want a i5 ?

Because it's the best price/performance around?

CompuFreak

Solitaire wrote: »

DID IT! €479 for a dung-heap eBuyer system that may or may not work! With cutting-edge GeForce 7200LE graphics, 2Gb slow-ass DDR3-1066 and an awesome 80GB HDD! Just mind you don't vomit on the Casecom case, tempting though it may be!*

*DVD Writer sold seperately

Kudos man. Seriously. But would that be in anyway upgradeble for the future?

lmimmfn

Leman_Russ wrote: »

Because it's the best price/performance around?

not if you stick a 285 in it

marco_polo

Leman_Russ wrote: »

Because it's the best price/performance around?

But the i5 price/performance ratio is zero on a budget of 500 Euro

lmimmfn

CompuFreak wrote: »

Kudos man. Seriously. But would that be in anyway upgradeble for the future?

yep, just replace gfx card, psu, case, ram and hard drive and youll have great rig.

Solitaire

CompuFreak wrote: »

Kudos man. Seriously. But would that be in anyway upgradeble for the future?

Sweet [CENSORED] no. You'd be stark raving not to spec it with a more suitable HDD and RAM in the first place - and that's the HWVS build I'm talking about!

Bottom line: You could build an i5 for under €500 with a 22" monitor, but since it'd get free admission to the PC equivalent of the Darwin Awards you probably shouldn't. €500 not including monitor is more realistic for a non-gaming build, and €600 a bare minimum for an i5 that could game to some extent.

Mister Man

Solitaire wrote: »

Sweet [CENSORED] no. You'd be stark raving not to spec it with a more suitable HDD and RAM in the first place - and that's the HWVS build I'm talking about!

Bottom line: You could build an i5 for under €500 with a 22" monitor, but since it'd get free admission to the PC equivalent of the Darwin Awards you probably shouldn't. €500 not including monitor is more realistic for a non-gaming build, and €600 a bare minimum for an i5 that could game to some extent.

Don't some of the Motherboards come with a decent (by decent i mean passable) Onboard graphics to play some games which can get you buy till you spring for a fancy one?

CompuFreak

Solitaire wrote: »

Sweet [CENSORED] no. You'd be stark raving not to spec it with a more suitable HDD and RAM in the first place - and that's the HWVS build I'm talking about!

Bottom line: You could build an i5 for under €500 with a 22" monitor, but since it'd get free admission to the PC equivalent of the Darwin Awards you probably shouldn't. €500 not including monitor is more realistic for a non-gaming build, and €600 a bare minimum for an i5 that could game to some extent.

Thought so.
So what sort of i5 system could be had for ~500 ex. monitor and OS?

lmimmfn

Mister Man wrote: »

Don't some of the Motherboards come with a decent (by decent i mean passable) Onboard graphics to play some games which can get you buy till you spring for a fancy one?

god no, theyre totally crap, good for 5+ year old games if lucky.

Would be fine for playing old arcade games with Mame also.

CompuFreak wrote: »

Thought so.
So what sort of system could be had for ~500 ex. monitor and OS?

A decent AMD setup or Core 2.

marco_polo

Attempt number 1 @ 501 Euro if you ignore the 30 delivery charge. Not exactly great by any means. Some trimming potential for cheaper PSU and/or smaller HDD (Or ditch the DVD)

CompuFreak

Thanks for that marco! The passive GFX is a big plus!
But what's not great about it?

Solitaire

Here's an attempt for €500 (well, €503) inc. delivery:



I wouldn't be trying to upgrade to a HD5770 on that PSU, but otherwise its okay(ish).

lmimmfn

Solitaire wrote: »

I wouldn't be trying to upgrade to a HD5770 on that PSU, but otherwise its okay(ish).

you picked out some decent enough components for the max range, that psu will eat everything if it blows lol.

CompuFreak

Solitaire wrote: »

Here's an attempt for €500 (well, €503) inc. delivery:



I wouldn't be trying to upgrade to a HD5770 on that PSU, but otherwise its okay(ish).

How does the 4350 fair against onboard graphics? i.e. what can i not do with it. Besides gaming.

marco_polo

Sorry I didn't reply earlier I nipped out on the town for, oh about 5 hours or so

When I say could be better, I think the components I have picked out are decent and at least as good an OEM PC. Perhaps I have a slight enthusiast mindset on but what I really mean is that the RAM/Board/Graphics are fine and will service the average non-gaming / non-overclocking user pretty well nothing more, nothing less. PSU is excellent/ case ok once you don't intend on making a major gaming level graphics upgrade. Would have stuck in a bigger hard drive as well with a slightly larger budget.

As for the HD4350 vs onboard graphics, for regular PC usage (Internet/Office etc) onboard graphics will do a grand job. But if near flawless HDMI / Blu-Ray playback experience (or some light gaming) is, or will be a requirement, then a dedicated graphics card is recommended. If that is not an issue then you should have no fear of onboard option (Warning - I am pretty sure that the board I selected has no onboard GPU so that would need to be revised. As I recall in general it is mostly mATX boards, rather than ATX boards that have the onboard option.)

LOL When trying to figure out how solitare undercut me by 30 euro I noticed I picked out a 1gb HD4350, blowing about 10 euro of the budget on 512MB of extra memory that is as useless as tits on a bull.

CompuFreak

marco_polo wrote: »

Sorry I didn't reply earlier I nipped out on the town for, oh about 5 hours or so

When I say could be better, I think the components I have picked out are decent and at least as good an OEM PC. Perhaps I have a slight enthusiast mindset on but what I really mean is that the RAM/Board/Graphics are fine and will service the average non-gaming / non-overclocking user pretty well nothing more, nothing less. PSU is excellent/ case ok once you don't intend on making a major gaming level graphics upgrade. Would have stuck in a bigger hard drive as well with a slightly larger budget.

As for the HD4350 vs onboard graphics, for regular PC usage (Internet/Office etc) onboard graphics will do a grand job. But if near flawless HDMI / Blu-Ray playback experience (or some light gaming) is, or will be a requirement, then a dedicated graphics card is recommended. If that is not an issue then you should have no fear of onboard option (Warning - I am pretty sure that the board I selected has no onboard GPU so that would need to be revised. As I recall in general it is mostly mATX boards, rather than ATX boards that have the onboard option.)

LOL When trying to figure out how solitare undercut me by 30 euro I noticed I picked out a 1gb HD4350, blowing about 10 euro of the budget on 512MB of extra memory that is as useless as tits on a bull.

Great advice. Would that gfx card be up to some HD encoding? And Rendering with some 3d modelling software?

marco_polo

CompuFreak wrote: »

Great advice. Would that gfx card be up to some HD encoding? And Rendering with some 3d modelling software?

It supports H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 hardware decode acceleration.

As for 3D modeling that would depend on whether the particular software does most processing on the CPU or GPU. If it is heavily CPU based then the card ability really doesn't come into it, if the software is heavily GPU based then the limitations of a 30 Euro card will be exposed (Why you pay big money for graphics cards for is not the bread and butter stuff like HDMI and HD acceleration, but for the extra processing power).

EDIT: Have to backtrack here a little bit it *seems* that the ATI Avivo Video Converter, for converting files between formats) only supports the 4600 ond 4800 series GPUs. So the 4350 only supports realtime playback hardware acceleration, but not file conversion.

jonny72

Leman_Russ wrote: »

Because it's the best price/performance around?

Think the AMD 620 has it beat on price/performance - i5 is double the price, but not quite double the performance (although close)

http://www.techspot.com/review/197-amd-athlon2-x4-620/

Solitaire

Hang on... I thought P55 lacked any graphics! If it ain't a G-class chipset, you're gonna need some kind of discrete GPU to even hook up to the monitor! :eek:

If you wanted basic modelling and Avivo then at least a HD4650 is advisable. Real-time hardware (i.e. GPU-based) rendering needs a GPU suitable for the monitor; for heavy-duty stuff on a 1080p screen you'd need at least a HD5770 like you would if you were 3D gaming.

mgadget

Custom PC magazine have an article on building a sub £500(close enough?) PC this month (Jan 10 edition).
To hit that mark for gaming, they've gone with an AMD build. For media/editing they've built an i5 rig. Both builds included an OS Windows 7(£83), and are for the box only with no monitor, mouse or keyboard included.

I've cut and pasted their i5 build here, the use Scan.co.uk as their reference.
I made two changes to their build - I removed the OS and doubled the RAM from 2GB to 4GB instead.

Shipping to Ireland is about £25 more so it looks like around €580 all in. Cut the memory back to 2GB and you're at €530ish. That build sourced from somewhere like Hardwareversand.de could be cheaper again.



The gaming build was based around an Athlon II x2 240 and a GTX 260 graphics card.

On hardwareversand it came to €493 + delivery, so €523. Mainboard is a slight upgrade from the Scan build. Take the CPU cooler out of the list and you are down to near enough €500, but the build is designed for some overclocking so it is recommended to keep it.

Komplett: Marc

Amazing topic, love the ingenuity in getting together a build like this on a shoestring, and the comment on it being a PC build Darwin Award contestant

At the same time, there's a part of me that can't help but be totally fascinated. I may see if I can persuade one of our RMA team to put together his own little €500 Frankenstein... it's always fun to give people a task you know they'll frown the whole way through but secretly enjoy

Edit: Oh yeah, and I'd second/third/fourth the comment on going AMD if you wanted to game at that price. It makes a lot more sense.

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

I think i can feel a nice dose of h1n1 coming on

cherryghost

Effluo

Yeah the case is a bit scary, with strangely good reviews...

Decent psu, onboard graphics 22" monitor, 250gig hard-drive...

Not the worst build, not exactly sure why you'd bother though... ?

You could save on the psu, take a chance, get a smaller monitor and then a gpu and you could actually play games on it then!

CompuFreak

Effluo wrote: »

Yeah the case is a bit scary, with strangely good reviews...

Decent psu, onboard graphics 22" monitor, 250gig hard-drive...

Not the worst build, not exactly sure why you'd bother though... ?

You could save on the psu, take a chance, get a smaller monitor and then a gpu and you could actually play games on it then!

LOL everyone on here is obsessed with gaming. Better value buying a PS3, at least then one doesn't need to upgrade year on year it to play new (more demanding$ games at perfection!