Advice on budget PC for basic needs

samsamson

Hey guys,

I'm looking to get a desktop PC primarily for using Google Chrome for web browsing, iTunes, watching videos (streaming and downloaded, sometimes in HD), and using the SPSS statistics software programme.

My family has had a PC with a Core2Duo E4500 at 2.20Ghz with 2GB of Ram running windows XP for a few years. It does the job fine, so comparable or better performance than this would be great. It can be a bit noisy watching streamed videos for some reason though, which I assume is the fans.

I'm looking to stay below €300 if possible (not including a monitor obviously), and if I could get something around the €150 - €200 mark it'd be great.

Does anywhere sell new PC's that would provide comparable/slightly better performance or would I only be looking at second hand in this price range?

Cheers

Fluffy88

If you fancy building a pc then at the €300 mark you should be able to get a good pc. I don't think you will get anything off the shelves that would be worth buying for that price. You might find something on adverts.ie second hand within budget.

But I would recommend going over to the PC Building & Upgrading thread and asking the same questions as building a pc is far far cheaper than buying a prebuild pc from any shop or website. And if your worried that you wouldn't be able to build it, some of the sites will do it for a small charge or there is people in the forum that will do it for free if you live close to them.


I am not recommending this build, but just to show you what you could get for €300
Total build cost: €312.38 + €30 shipping
Samsung SH-222AB bare schwarz SATA €17.49
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit (SB-Version) €73.47
Palit GeForce 8400GS Super heatsink version, 512MB, PCI-Express €21.51
Antec Basiq 350W €29.46
AMD Athlon II X2 255 Box, Sockel AM3 €47.69
ASRock M3A UCC, Sockel AM3, ATX €41.81
Xigmatek Asgard, ATX, ohne Netzteil, schwarz €31.61
Samsung SpinPoint F3 250GB, SATA II (HD253GJ) €28.95
2GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333 CL9 €20.39

And if you have a student in the family you can save €30 on buying windows 7.

samsamson

Thanks for the response!

I quite like the idea of having a 1 year warranty for an off-the-shelf PC just in case something is wrong with the machine when it arrives. I would be a little reluctant to go down the building route (even by someone else) for that reason.

Would something like the Inspiron 570 for €309 be a reasonable option?

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-570/pd#TechSpec

AMD Athlon™ II X2 245 (2.9GHz, 1MB Cache)
2GB3 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066Mhz
320GB SATA hard drive

marco_polo

samsamson wrote: »

Thanks for the response!

I quite like the idea of having a 1 year warranty for an off-the-shelf PC just in case something is wrong with the machine when it arrives. I would be a little reluctant to go down the building route (even by someone else) for that reason.

Would something like the Inspiron 570 for €309 be a reasonable option?

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-570/pd#TechSpec

AMD Athlon™ II X2 245 (2.9GHz, 1MB Cache)
2GB3 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066Mhz
320GB SATA hard drive

I'd say it is perfect for what you have stated and is fairly similar in specs to what Fluffy88 suggested (In terms of RAM,CPU). In the < 300 euro segment there is really not much to be gained by building it yourself TBH, especially if it is unlikely you will be upgrading it in the future to a gaming grade PC.