General browsing PC - spec inside - change anything?

Tea_Bag

€600 is the limit here, of which €45 is going to W7 64bit and €30 on delivery.
this will be used for general browsing and light photo editing. lots of storage for photo's and videos.
note this includes a monitor, and i need to buy a KB and mouse somewhere.

the friend specified i3 (or i5 but not a hope in this budget) because he's succumb to intels marketing and believes it to be the absolute best bar nothing, even i3 VS AMDx4...



is there anything you'd change? ive done the nasty and got a cheap dirty PSU. will it be ok?

i know nothing about the Mobo...

the RAM is the cheapest 2x2gb available!:eek:

anyone care to spec an AMD build that would thrash this in the same price bracket, and give me an idea on how to convince him??

Thanks for any advice.

Tea

EDIT:

would getting an i3 -2100 sandy with a H67 class mobo offer more CPU and GPU grunt?
i didnt bother trying to spec cause i figured it was going to be way over budget and its late and ive to sleep:0


interesting note, it doesnt allow you to put the asgaurd 3 in for a case in HWVS's pc configurator...?

Jonny7

Go on, stick a x4 phenom in there, and don't tell him

After a few months when he tells you how delighted he is with it, tell him its running on a dirty cheap AMD chip

PyeContinental

If this really is only going to be for general web browsing, is a full PC really needed? Why not get a nettop such as an Acer Revo?

There are many variants of them, with correspondingly varying prices, but here is one with W7 Premium already installed:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004G4PHJA

tman

PyeContinental wrote: »

If this really is only going to be for general web browsing, is a full PC really needed? Why not get a nettop such as an Acer Revo?

There are many variants of them, with correspondingly varying prices, but here is one with W7 Premium already installed:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004G4PHJA

Why not spend an extra €100 or so and get something that can be upgraded later on down the line if needed, rather than being stuck with some stupid monolithic looking thing...
If that was a hundred quid cheaper I'd say go for it, but that's a shocking amount of money for something that's just a glorified netbook without a screen!

PyeContinental

tman wrote: »

Why not spend an extra €100 or so and get something that can be upgraded later on down the line if needed, rather than being stuck with some stupid monolithic looking thing...
If that was a hundred quid cheaper I'd say go for it, but that's a shocking amount of money for something that's just a glorified netbook without a screen!

Which is why I asked the question "Is it really only going to be for general web browsing?" - because if it's not, and upgrading is important, then a nettop might not suit - especially if it might actually be for gaming as well. If that's the case, then the OP needs to redefine the requirements of the system.

Here is one for £100 less, if Windows 7 preinstalled is not a requirement.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004CQ460S
If web browsing is really all that it will be used for, that can be done just as well and as easily through a browser on a Linux-based OS.

Effluo

I'd agree with Pye Continental, fact of the matter is whether he gets an i3 or an Phenom x4 he probably won't notice any speed difference if indeed all he'll be doing is web browsing and writing documents.

I probably wouldn't get a net-top though, I'd be more inclined to go for a normal sized PC. Netbooks have the highest failure rate out of ny machine and it's probably something to do with all the components being crammed into such a small space.

For reliability I'd probably get a full sized desktop.


Something else to note for T-bags own sake is not to get overly involved in the process of building and choosing the PC. There's a reason why people charge money for the service and that's because when/if something goes wrong you'll be the first person they go to.
Friendly advice now could end up being several 1 hours phone calls for years to come xD

Tea_Bag

While i respect that the Revo has its market, i was contemplating buying one for a long time (to put behind my TV) i just realised thats its a really expensive media portal that doesnt do anything particularly well. tiny HDD by todays standards, which will need upgrading unless you want a bulky external attached 24/7. opening it up voids the warranty. and zero upgradability really. while the ion2 graphics can do 1080p, all reviews say it can just do 1080p "ok". what that means is that you're never really going to be properly happy with it. its going to be slow and often laggy. noone wants that from €300 new rig + a monitor. and it'll only ever just manage todays stuff. no gaming or option to do something processor intensive for the future.

you basically throw it away in 3 to 4 years time and start from scratch.

the requirements for this will be: general browing/music. photo display and light video editing and photoshop. no studio standards of editing but a little. but i dont want it to ever have a problem cause ill inevitably be the "tech repair guy thats free of charge" once anything goes wrong.
also, maybe some very light gaming in the future, but nothing serious.



this is what i came up with for the AMD rig. its not really suitable as i went way over budget with the Mobo and i could (should) cut down to a Phenom X4 840 or an Athlon X4. (which seem to be the same thing as the 840 has no L3 cache? and they're the same price), but i was getting bored and wanted to see what gaming rig you could do for €600 with a monitor. pretty impressive, though the GPU is unsuitable for gaming really.

PyeContinental

Effluo wrote: »

Friendly advice now could end up being several 1 hours phone calls for years to come xD

I can certainly attest to that!

Regarding the nettop option, I am not an evangelist for them. I bought an R3610 about a year ago, played around with it for a bit, but it's not my main PC. I won't get into it in great detail, but I think that the option of one is food for thought when the computing requirements of a PC are minimal. It is not in doubt that the upgrading abilities are limited, but it might be easier and cheaper in the long run (especially that its maximum power draw is 40W) to buy the replacement model in 3-4 years' time than it would be to upgrade motherboard/cpu/graphics/memory in a desktop pc in 3 to 4 years.

Anyway, the question has been asked and answered so that's the last I'll say on it. [EDIT] Also, I see that Adobe Photoshop has been mentioned, which some people would consider would require a workstation of considerable computing power, both in CPU and GPU, and a significant amount of RAM.

Tea_Bag

thanks PyeContinental. as i said any input/advice is much appreciated!

speaking of power draw, anyone got any thoughts or feelings about the PSU i selected?
the 5570 max powerdraw is 50W, and usually no higher than 37W at full draw, but is the 400W PSU i selected able to maintain, say a steady 200W if this thing had all the bags and whissles pulling at it? i cant find any reviews on it?

Lu Tze

Tea_Bag wrote: »

thanks PyeContinental. as i said any input/advice is much appreciated!

speaking of power draw, anyone got any thoughts or feelings about the PSU i selected?
the 5570 max powerdraw is 50W, and usually no higher than 37W at full draw, but is the 400W PSU i selected able to maintain, say a steady 200W if this thing had all the bags and whissles pulling at it? i cant find any reviews on it?

No idea - soltaire is your man for that. There is an 80+ one for €45 though if you are concerned.

Monotype

I was just about to bring up the PSU. Don't be so mean with spreading the budget towards it.

Superflower amazon 450W €40.87.

There's plenty of variations of DDR3 in stock now if that was an issue earlier.

marco_polo

Do you really need the discrete GPU? On such a tight budget the €53 for the 5570 is far better spent elsewhere for the time being IMO, perhaps adding in something down the line if needs be.

BTW you're far too nice, if somebody asked me to construct an uber budget rig with a 'no AMD' proviso I'd tell them where to go, if you are such an expert do it yourself .

Tea_Bag

marco_polo wrote: »

Do you really need the discrete GPU? On such a tight budget the €53 for the 5570 is far better spent elsewhere for the time being IMO, perhaps adding in something down the line if needs be.

BTW you're far too nice, if somebody asked me to construct an uber budget rig with a 'no AMD' proviso I'd tell them where to go, if you are such an expert do it yourself .

i was wondering the same. he asked for a discreet GPU (for obvious reasons that the onboard GPU is usually kak, and thats all he knows to be good. i could reccomend a HD4430 and he'd take it as the business) any mobo you can reccomend with a good onboard chip? (for AM3 and 1156 if you dont mind )

how would a sandy i3-2100 and a H67 mobo compare to the i3-540 with HD5570?

the i3-2100 + MSI PH67A-C43 (B3) comes in @ €34 more expensive than i3-540 with its mobo, but i could save €25 with not getthing the 5570, which can be spend on other things?

thoughts?

Monotype

I have the 4250 onboard in an 880G board which is actually not that bad. It runs HD videos well and older games, e.g., HL2 engine at 720p very smoothly. The 4290 in the 890GX boards is a bit better. Apparently you can overclock the 4250 faster than the 4290, but I haven't tried.

If gaming is just a maybe, perhaps leave it until later. Tomorrow's budget cards will beat what's on offer today. A good 450W PSU should handle any midrange card if the need arises.

marco_polo

Tea_Bag wrote: »

i was wondering the same. he asked for a discreet GPU (for obvious reasons that the onboard GPU is usually kak, and thats all he knows to be good. i could reccomend a HD4430 and he'd take it as the business) any mobo you can reccomend with a good onboard chip? (for AM3 and 1156 if you dont mind )

how would a sandy i3-2100 and a H67 mobo compare to the i3-540 with HD5570?

the i3-2100 + MSI PH67A-C43 (B3) comes in @ €34 more expensive than i3-540 with its mobo, but i could save €25 with not getthing the 5570, which can be spend on other things?

thoughts?

I was thinking along the lines of Monotype with a 880G/890GX or something like that.

The 5570 is obviously a bit better than the other options but since you are getting him a 22" monitor it will be pretty worthless for gaming on anyway.

Interesting comparison here all are pretty well rubbish at anything except HD playback.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/11

Were it me I'd throw him together a rig with a 60 odd euro 880G motherboard like this, an Athlon X3 for about the same price and put an Intel sticker on the case. The fact that you have saved him 60 quid over the sandybridge i3 alternative should help ease the guilt about lying :pac:

PyeContinental

marco_polo wrote: »

Do you really need the discrete GPU? On such a tight budget the €53 for the 5570 is far better spent elsewhere for the time being IMO, perhaps adding in something down the line if needs be.

This sounds like a good idea to me.
If you could save the €50 on the price of the video card, and put it towards a better CPU, that gives you a budget of €140. If you could get him to stretch his budget by about another €40 in that direction, you could afford the Intel Core i5-2500k, which is very popular as it's supposed to overclock very well. http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=41224&agid=1617

A fast CPU will be very noticeable when doing video editing (specifically when re-encoding edited video). However, I understand though that you might not want to get into overclocking with an "end user" that you will have to provide a certain amount of ongoing support for. It could be though, that as his knowledge and confidence increase, he could choose to get into overclocking it himself at a later stage.

At some point down the line, a decent video card can be added to replace the onboard one - the lack of which won't be noticed I would say, if gaming is not a requirement. A GPU can also speed up some tasks in photo and video editing/encoding.

By the way, can I ask where you are getting the Windows 7 from? I bought a couple of Home Premium versions on Amazon on pre-release for about £60 each I think, but I see that it's now £100.

mcgovern

PyeContinental wrote: »

By the way, can I ask where you are getting the Windows 7 from? I bought a couple of Home Premium versions on Amazon on pre-release for about £60 each I think, but I see that it's now £100.

Here I'd guess.
I had my gf order one for me before she finished college, perfectly legit.
I've also *heard* they don't actually check you are a student at all so....

PyeContinental

Thanks McGovern. I remember reading of those before. I remember there was discussion as to whether these upgrade versions could in fact be used on a clean install, or whether they had to be installed on top of an existing Windows OS. I don't want to derail this thread though. If you have a link to a thread regarding the cheapest Win7 OS availability where this has been discussed before, I will check that out.