£500 Budget
Case:
In most circumstances, you can use any case on the market, but it is a good idea to buy a decent case from a respected manufacturer. In this instance, the Antec Two Hundred is a decent case that comes from Antec, who make some of the best cases on the market. The Two Hundred comes with two 120mm, twin-speed fans and a unique hot-swap HDD slot on the front. Although it is not that much of a looker to some people, I find the futuristic front panel to be quite nice.
Cheapest online store: Ebuyer
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168615
Power Supply:
A good quality power supply (or PSU) is neccessary for anything with large, dedicated graphics cards or quad-core processors. It is more important to get a good quality power supply rather than a bad one with a high rated wattage, and if you are not doing anything along the lines of SLI or CrossFire or any overclocking, a high power output is not necessary. OCZ do an ideal power supply, the OCZ 400W StealthXStream Power Supply. Despite being a 400W PSU, it has 80+ certification and is from a trusted manufacturer.
Cheapest online store: Ebuyer
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152505
Processor:
In the processor space, you either have the choice of Intel or AMD. Within AMD, almost every one of their processors can fit in every one of AMD's sockets. Within Intel, however, there are three sockets: LGA775 (used for Core 2, Celeron and Pentium), LGA1156 (used for Core i5 and some Core i7) and LGA1366 (used for higher-end and original i7 and Nehalem Xeon). Generally, Intel have higher prices but have features that AMD don't, such as HyperThreading on i7 that allows one physical core to act as two logical cores, and more instruction set compatibility. All processors now have 64-bit capability, and all should have Intel-VT or AMD-V which allows for use of advanced virtualisation features and XP Mode on Windows 7. Due to a constrained budget, the computer we are building will be AMD-based, having an AMD Phenom II X2 545 running at 3GHz with 6MB L3 cache and a 45nm CMOS. Although there are quad-core processors available, very few games benefit right now from two additional cores, so a dual-cre is sufficient.
Cheapest online store: Lambda-Tek
http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase12.3&prodID=B242880
Motherboard:
Since we chose an AM3 processor, we have two choices: go for an AM2+ motherboard and use DDR2 memory, or use an AM3 motherboard and use DDR3. In this case, an AM2+ motherboard will suffice, partly due to the increased availability of them and partly due to the still expensive costs of DDR3. For this computer, an MSI 770T-C45 is ideal. It is an ATX motherboard with one PCIe x16 slot, two PCIe x1 slots and three legacy PCI slots, six USB ports on the back panel, six SATA-3Gb/s ports and one IDE port.
Cheapest online store: Ebuyer
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/175765
RAM:
Every computer that is worth building now must have at least 3GB of RAM. For this build, it is a no-brainer to have 4GB of RAM, and it running at 800MHz. Although possible, there is no real benefit to having 6GB or 8GB of RAM at this point due to the lack of need for most people and due to the fact that some of the most RAM-intensive applications only run in 32-bit mode (Adobe Flash Player, you are a culprit here...). Just as long as you buy RAM that is from a decent manufacturer with a proper support structure, it doesn't matter that much who makes it. This build will use a 4GB (2x2GB) kit from Corsair.
Cheapest online store: Ebuyer
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166785
Graphics:
If you have been watching the prices of the various components up to now, then you would have noticed that there is still a lot of room left in the £500 budget. Whereas a faster processor may not provide that much of a gaming and performance boost, a great graphics card will cause a fantastic boost in everything, from gaming to video playback. As the chipset and processor are AMD, an ATi graphics card is reasonable to add. Also, ATi has just released their new 5000-series of cards with native DirectX 11 support, such as the card this build will use: the Gigabyte HD 5770. The card features 1GB of GDDR5 memory, twin DVI-I (dual link), HDMI and DisplayPort.
Cheapest online store: saverstore.com
http://www.saverstore.com/product/20039572/7725665/Gigabyte-GV-R577D5-1GD-B-Radeon-HD-5770-1GB-HDMI-Graphics-Card
Optical storage:
For the majority of people a Blu-Ray drive is unnecessary, and all DVD-RW drives are in essence the same so the cheapest will suffice.
Cheapest online store: Ebuyer
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/170014
Hard drives:
Again, due to this being a budget computer there is little need for expensive (albeit supercrazyfast) Solid State Drives or a RAID solution, so a 750GB HDD will suffice. From Seagate, this drive spins at 7200RPM and has 16MB cache.
Cheapest online store: Ebuyer
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/113436
Miscellaneous:
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM - If you want to game on a PC, then you need (this is coming from a Mac & Linux-loving author) a version of Windows, and 7 is the best of them all. OEM versions of the OS can cost a lot less, and the OEM pricing is used here, but be warned since the OEM licence is completely non-transferable (i.e. if you build a new computer then you need a new licence). - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791
Price total as of 16:36, December 13 2009 is £439, so you can have some pocket money left over for saving up for your next computer upgrade!
-- to be continued --
2 comments:
I like the idea of building a pc, but would rather that someone built it for me if i gave them the bits.
@1 Some local computer shops may be able to do it for you, but they may charge quite a hefty fee. Some companies buy components like these and build them for you, and the prices can be lower since they don't design the computers themselves. There isn't that much to go wrong with building a computer, since it really is just slotting together various parts. Additionally, you still get a warranty but instead of it being for the entire computer it is for each individual part so you don't need to worry about voiding it when you replace or swap components.
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