Some advice on a new build pelase

Wheety

The GF's parents want a new pc for their house. I've built my own so will put it together for them. But I have been out of the loop for a while and not sure what I need to buy or where.

Anyway

What is your budget? I had told them that a new pc would be €300-€400.

What will be the main purpose of the computer? Just a general family pc for Internet, possibly Office, storing photos (don't think they will be doing much image editing though). However the GF's brother wants to be able to pay some games. He hasn't told me what games but I think he plays the likes of Civilisation games and similar turn based war games.

Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

Can you use any parts from an old computer? It's an old HP pc. Not sure of the model but could find out if that's important. They will keep the monitor, probably the keyboard and mouse too. I'm not sure if the case can be reused. From what I've read, proprietary cases may not be suitable for a build. Sure cases are cheap enough anyway.

I am looking at an i3 processor. Will also need new mobo, memory, 1TB hard drive (don't think they will need an SSD) and PSU. I told the brother that the i3 has a gpu built in and if he wants a discrete gpu he could update in future.

With Windows costing around €100, I think I may have underestimated the budget I told them.

Can it be done within budget? Any tips, recommended sites?

SterlingArcher

Wheety wrote: »

The GF's parents want a new pc for their house. I've built my own so will put it together for them. But I have been out of the loop for a while and not sure what I need to buy or where.

Anyway

What is your budget? I had told them that a new pc would be €300-€400.

What will be the main purpose of the computer? Just a general family pc for Internet, possibly Office, storing photos (don't think they will be doing much image editing though). However the GF's brother wants to be able to pay some games. He hasn't told me what games but I think he plays the likes of Civilisation games and similar turn based war games.

Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

Can you use any parts from an old computer? It's an old HP pc. Not sure of the model but could find out if that's important. They will keep the monitor, probably the keyboard and mouse too. I'm not sure if the case can be reused. From what I've read, proprietary cases may not be suitable for a build. Sure cases are cheap enough anyway.

I am looking at an i3 processor. Will also need new mobo, memory, 1TB hard drive (don't think they will need an SSD) and PSU. I told the brother that the i3 has a gpu built in and if he wants a discrete gpu he could update in future.

With Windows costing around €100, I think I may have underestimated the budget I told them.

Can it be done within budget? Any tips, recommended sites?

Geizhals.de discount site for parts and use hardwareversand.de

Get windows on reddit. 20 euro.

dazza216

Would you be willing to stretch your budget to around 450? That way I could recommend a decent all-rounder with a good cpu and descreet gpu, otherwise I'll have to go down the APU road. The GPU in the i3 isn't worth talking about for even the least demanding games. And I agree with the previous poster to use Hardwareversand.de and geizhals for roughly a 5-10% discount. Much cheaper than Irish sites. I've had to skimp on some areas such as Ram and mobo but made sure I included a good quality Psu. All of the parts are good quality though.

Build:
CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K Black Edition (95W), 4x 3.70GHz, boxed - 69.13
GPU: XFX Radeon R7 260X Aluminium Edition, 1GB GDDR5 - 108.44
RAM: 4GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3 PC3-12800 1600, CL9 - 30.86
MOBO: ASRock FM2A78M-DG3+, FM2+, mATX - 45.67
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB Sata-3 6GB/s - 54.89
PSU: XFX PRO450W Core Edition Full Wired - 46.73
Case: Cooler Master N300, ATX-Midi-Tower - 35.44
Delivery: - 11.99

Total (without OS): 403.15

Windows 7 can be found for as little as 20 on reddit to 80 (roughly) on retail sites.

Total (with OS) 423-483 (Roughly)

If you can't stretch your budget then I'll give you another build

Wheety

Thanks for that

Will have a look at your build and see if they'll stretch to the extra. What site did you use for prices?

Could I get cheaper if I shopped around for the individual parts?

dazza216

I used hardwareversand.de for the prices with a discount using geizhals.de. I doubt you'll get them cheaper by shopping around for individual parts, as the separate postage costs would be pretty hefty. I don't think you'll get them cheaper anywhere else. Maybe ebay?

Wheety

dazza216 wrote: »

I used hardwareversand.de for the prices with a discount using geizhals.de. I doubt you'll get them cheaper by shopping around for individual parts, as the separate postage costs would be pretty hefty. I don't think you'll get them cheaper anywhere else. Maybe ebay?

So do I use geizhals.de and hardwareversand.de together? Are they not different sites?

TetraxShard

Go to HE, get the product code, run it through geizhals.de, click the HE link on the list it gives you (the list is in German but it is clearly marked), add to basket.

Wheety

Thank you. Will look into this.