Basic newbuild advice

[Whelkmaster]

Evening all

Was just wondering if you could help me out a little, I have been asked by a friend to build a basic(ish) machine in order to allow him to use the net (Email banking etc) and also to do his taxes etc.

Now I was tempted to make a ludicrously basic system that I could throw together for a pittance, but I have a budget of £400 (this must however include a monitor) and would like to give him the best I can build for his money.

I am slightly limited by which suppliers I may use as I live in the UK and only trust a couple of companies. So I have managed to compile the items listed below in what I belive to be a decent system with the possibility of upgrading slightly if he decided to spread his wings a bit in the future.

Anyway here is the proposed build

Case. Scan.co.uk: CiT 2016B Black Midi Tower Case - 2016b £16.74

PSU.Scan.co.uk: Storm Black Edition STORM-600W 600W Power Supply (PSU) £20.38

CPU: Scan.co.uk: AMD CPU Athlon II 255 Dual Core Processor - ADX255OCGQBOX £45.06

Motherboard: Scan.co.uk: Gigabyte GA-MA78LMT-US2H AMD 760G AM3 Motherboard £49.91

RAM(4GB) Scan.co.uk: Corsair Memory XMS3 Classic 4GB DDR3 1333 Mhz CAS 9 Dual Channel Desktop - TW3X4G1333C9A £25.69

HDD Scan.co.uk: Samsung Spinpoint M7 500GB 2.5" Notebook Hard Drive - HM500JI £38.21

DVD writer Scan.co.uk: SATA 22x DVD Writer SAMSUNG SH-S222AB/BEBE £15.00


Monitor Scan.co.uk: AOC Maskk N941SW 18.5" LCD Monitor Black 59.98

Cheers for any feedback, Im pretty new to all this so if Ive made any jawdropping mistakes then please be gentle.

My thanks

Whelk

 

[Yami]

Use this link and you'll save a whopping £1 on the CPU
https://secure.scan.co.uk/aspnet/Shop/AddToBasket.aspx?WebProductId=1568732

Edit: Oh wow, in the past 1 minute since I got that link, Scan has gone gone down for half an hour's site maintenance.

 

[Whelkmaster]

Thanks for that, any saving is a good saving

Shame about the site being off, would love to hear if thats a viable build or if it could be easily improved on

 

[Yami]

It's certainly viable, though your friend may want to go for a larger monitor, and use a desktop hard drive instead of a laptop one. Plus it would be a good idea to go with a weaker but higher-quality power supply (he won't even need 400W for a basic build like this)- I wouldn't trust the Storm to last very long, and since the PSU (Power Supply Unit) is what powers all the components, if it dies then there is a chance it can take other components with it. It's worth investing in a good-quality power supply to prevent this.

When the site's back up I'll see what I can put together and compare it to your choices.

 

[Whelkmaster]

Ha darn I linked a laptop one, shows how late its getting. I based the monitor on the size im currently using as I fair pretty well with it, but yes I will talk over his options. It is simply a rough draft at the moment.

The reason for the perhaps oversized PSU was to cater for any future upgrading he might fancy, for instance if he wished to have a graphics card in order to replace the onboard graphics that this system will rely on (trying to convince him that onboard graphics arent really the best idea in the long run)

Thanks for your help....still rather red faced over the laptop HDD though

 

[Yami]

The reason for the perhaps oversized PSU was to cater for any future upgrading he might fancy, for instance if he wished to have a graphics card in order to replace the onboard graphics that this system will rely on (trying to convince him that onboard graphics arent really the best idea in the long run)

Well, the onboard will generally be fine unless he plans on doing gaming or stuff like 720p/1080p video. Ofc, that might not be true in three or four year's time, so ofc you're justified in the future-proofing.

 

[Slaymate]

The reason for the perhaps oversized PSU was to cater for any future upgrading he might fancy, for instance if he wished to have a graphics card in order to replace the onboard graphics that this system will rely on (trying to convince him that onboard graphics arent really the best idea in the long run)

The idea of possibly upgrading the video is all the more reason to buy a good quality power supply to start with. While other component can occasionally be a pain, a crappy no-name power supply is the number 1 cause of heartache.

 

[Yami]

Aha, it's back up. I'll have a look now.

 

[Whelkmaster]

Ok so I fixed the clanger that was the notebook Hard disk with this

Scan.co.uk: Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB Hard Drive - HDD - HD502HJ

Im particularly interested to hear on any suggestions regarding PSU as whilst I would like to keep the cost low there is still some room in the budget to go for better quality. I recall my 1st "gaming machine" (premade from PC world) was operational all of 3 days before the PSU went and I had to get a decent one....also the ram went a few days later.

Would still like to sort of overgun it in order to keep it viable should a graphics card become nessacary

 

[Yami]

Scan.co.uk: Antec EarthWatts Green EA 380D 380W Power Supply (PSU) - EA 380D Green
That's about as low as I'd go. It still has a PCI-E connection, which will be fine unless he takes up high-performance gaming.