Cheap Ass PC

tba

While browsing today I began thinking

"look at all these build questions, such blinding components and varying prices"

Then I thought I wonder how low you can go (in terms of price) before the PC you have built is unworkable, in that it cannot run what alot people really use it for. ie. the net and letters and printing and simple tasks like that (not a super mega ultra rigged neon blue custom gaming machine in the least).

So I decided I would look at some prices. After some consideration I decided that I would only check first hand components as second hand ones would be unreliable an that I would leave out the monitor as alot of people have a spare CRT lying around someplace and if not you can always find someone who will give you one for €4.99 now they have their shiny new TFT.

I figured a common linux distro would be a good (free) OS so I decided to base my specs on Fedora 4, which comes bundled with openoffice, firefox and the gimp, so it provides the bare software essentials.

I used pixmania cause it seems to have a cheaper selection

Pixmania p&p €13 (It says)
ATX PC Case and 400w PSU
€35
Socket A Motherboard
€47
Sempron 2400+ 1.6ghz Socket A with Stock H/Sink and Fan
€64
256mb 2100 SDRRAM
€23
80gig HD 7200rpm
€49
Scroll mouse
€3
Qwerty Keyboard
€12

Total €246

Does anybody else think that that is a complete rip off? I mean I priced similar stuff from as close as England and ended up under €150 but they dont ship. And the states has even lower prices but cripple you on the p&p. Can anybody beat my pathetic €246?

KdjaCL

No dvd drive.





kdjac

tba

doh

smeggle

or floppy - or is that included with the case?

duridian

Floppy drive is no longer considered a standard feature in a pc. If you don't believe me have a look at Dell's site; love 'em or hate 'em, I think they would be considered the best representative of the 'average pc':
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Note how none have a floppy as standard, but rather as an addon if required.

KdjaCL

tba wrote:

Pixmania p&p €13 (It says)
ATX PC Case and 400w PSU
€35
Socket A Motherboard
€47
Sempron 2400+ 1.6ghz Socket A with Stock H/Sink and Fan
€64
256mb 2100 SDRRAM
€23
80gig HD 7200rpm
€49
Scroll mouse
€3
Qwerty Keyboard
€12
16X DVDRW/CDRW
€49

Total €295

Not a bad pc for bottom line cash price.

duridian

Still need a graphics card lads, that MSI board doesn't seem to have integrated video.

Rollo Tamasi

so your looking at about 370euro with a cdrw and a 64mb graphics card. Does the price include VAT? it would probably be around the 450euro mark so after tax / P&P

smeggle

duridian wrote:

Floppy drive is no longer considered a standard feature in a pc. If you don't believe me have a look at Dell's site; love 'em or hate 'em, I think they would be considered the best representative of the 'average pc':
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Note how none have a floppy as standard, but rather as an addon if required.

well thats just daft - the floppy is probably the best tool you have when a pc borks even today. The boot from cd can be a pain in the neck unless you know how to enter your bios and set the machine to boot from the cd-rom only. I would never exclude it myself but yeah it is becoming more of an add on option as you say.
Daft so it is IMO

steveland?

I built my PC with all second hand parts off here (I know it's not the same) but it's fairly much very, very fast...

Case -
- Standard Grey ATX, 300W PSU €10
DVD-RW -
- RICOH DVD+-RW €30
Motherboard -
- Abit MAX2 AT7 bought with processor
Processor -
- AMD Athlon XP 2800+ €100 with MoBo
RAM -
- 1GB (2x512MB) PC2800 €80
GFX -
- nVidia GeForce FX5200 128MB €40
HDD -
- 80GB Maxtor (not sure of speed) €45
Total - €305

raxall

haha pretty cheap pc!

Laguna

tba wrote:

Can anybody beat my pathetic €246?

Ew, I don't want to man. That PC smells!

tba

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

so your looking at about 370euro with a cdrw and a 64mb graphics card. Does the price include VAT? it would probably be around the 450euro mark so after tax / P&P

all those prices included vat and p&p from pixmania was €13

Khannie

smeggle wrote:

well thats just daft - the floppy is probably the best tool you have when a pc borks even today.

I haven't had a floppy drive for the last 3 years.

USB keys and bootable cd's are the way forward (if your bios supports it). 1.44MB Floppy is a 20 year old technology. :eek:

Gurgle

^^ What he said

Rollo Tamasi

tba wrote:

all those prices included vat and p&p from pixmania was €13

dang, thats a cheap ass PC!

Rollo Tamasi

I'll attempt to better your deal tba::::>>>>

TR02085 Samsung CD ReWriter CDRW 52x32x52 SW-252FEAB Black OEM 21.50 1.50kgs
21.50
TR01556 Q-Tec PSU 400W Dual Fan Gold 15.30 1.75kgs
15.30
TR02634 CF-5219GS Black/Silver ATX Case - NO PSU 17.50 9.70kgs
17.50
TR02761 ASUS 128MB AGP ATI Radeon 9200SE 8X AGP + TV Out 41.20 1.00kgs
41.20
TR02881 Ntech Black/Silver Keyboard, Optical Mouse & Speaker Set 12.30 3.00kgs
12.30
TR02213 Maxtor 80GB Hard Drive 7200rpm ATA 133 48.50 1.50kgs
48.50
TR02884 Foxconn K7S741MG-6L Socket A SIS741 Motherboard With Sound/VGA & LAN 32.00 2.00kgs
32.00
TR01649 256MB DDR PC-2700 SDRAM 24.00 0.10kgs
24.00
TR02463 AMD K7 Sempron 2500+ CPU (333FSB) Retail Boxed with Heatsink & Fan 65.50 0.15kgs
65.50
Total Weight 20.70kgs Carriage 12.50
Sub Total 290.30
Vat 60.96
Grand Total €351.26

Erm, €351, not bad....all from www.pcscience.com

//does anyone want to check out the cheapest on offer from komplett?

smeggle

Khannie wrote:

I haven't had a floppy drive for the last 3 years.

USB keys and bootable cd's are the way forward (if your bios supports it). 1.44MB Floppy is a 20 year old technology. :eek:

yeah but when all else fails you just stick good old reliable windows 98 start up disc in/boot/f disk/format/ Never fails.

I generally use the cd but on odd occasions you'll get a machine that just won't boot properly. Even after going into the bios and setting it to cd-rom only disabling all other options. I had one the other week that would get through the first part of install (New Installation - XPpro) and at reboot just hang repeating 'Press any key to boot from cd-rom. It should have gone to boot from ide. (You re-enable on first reboot).

That thing had no floppy in it. Chucked my own in and had the machine back up and running in a couple of hrs.

As you say though it is becoming the norm over the last couple of years. Used to hate backing up a file to floppy for another comp only to get the 'The disc is Not Formatted etc' when you try accessing it again (:Screams very loudly: LOL) - use to drive me nuts that one