Low end PC

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henkc

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I may find myself needing to rebuild a low-end - documents, email, browsing - PC in the near future. The past few builds I've done have been quite nice i5 boxes but this is going to have to come in a lot cheaper. What would give me the best bang for the buck on these.

I'm thinking along the lines of AM3 and Athlon II dual core or an LGA775 Core 2 Duo. What else is there in this sort of price class?
 
What would you like to spend?

It's easier for us to give recommendations based on budget. Also what do you need, do you need an entire system that inlcudes monitor, keyboard, mouse or just a box?
 
Ideally I'd like to spend as little as possible. It is a replacement for a Celeron D on LGA775 system which was adequate for what it had to do. I have box, power supply (unless the problems stem from there), mouse, keyboard etc. All I would need is the internals - mobo, memory and, possibly, a hard drive as the existing one sits on an IDE interface which I don't see on any of the new boards.

What I've seen so far is that I could build up a pretty decent Athlon II system for about R2k and a Core 2 Duo for a bit less.

Right now I don't really have the money for either, but if I must, I must.

Given these two options, which would be the one to go for. I have no experience of AMD systems at all and the last few machines I've specced or built have had Intel chips on Intel boards.
 
This spec should work:

MB: Asus P5G41T
CPU: Intel E5700 Dual Core
RAM: 2GB
HDD: 500GB

Would be about R1800
 
Thanks. That looks like about what I had in mind. How would this compare with an equivalently priced AMD system?
 
Intel Entry Level System:

Motherboard: R357
MSI Intel G31M3-L mATX motherboard [MS-G31TM-P21]
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/intel-g31m3l-matx-motherboard-p-28899.html

CPU: R562
Intel CPU E5700 Pentium Dual Core LGA775 3.0GHz 800Mhz [BX80571E5700]
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/intel-e5700-pentium-dual-core-lga775-30ghz-800mhz-p-43696.html

Ram: R287
Transcend JetRam™ High-Performance 2GB DDR2-800 240-Pin Module : [JM800QLU-2G]
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/transcend-jetram™-highperformance-ddr2800-240pin-module-p-10378.html

Hard Drive: R437
Seagate SV35 Series 500GB 16MB Cache @ 7200RPM [ST3500411SV]
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/seagate-sv35-series-500gb-16mb-cache-7200rpm-p-43683.html

Total: R1643 (excluding shipping)


Amd Entry Level System:

Motherboard: R449
MSI K9N6PGM-V2 AMD motherboard [MS-K9N6PGM2-V2]
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/k9n6pgmv2-motherboard-p-28914.html

CPU: R595
Amd socket AM3 ( AM2/AM2+ backward compatible ) Athlon II x2 Dual Core [ADX250/AM3D]
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/socket-am2am2-backward-compatiable-athlon-p-28982.html

Ram: R287
Transcend JetRam™ High-Performance 2GB DDR2-800 240-Pin Module : [JM800QLU-2G]
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/transcend-jetram™-highperformance-ddr2800-240pin-module-p-10378.html

Hard Drive: R437
Seagate SV35 Series 500GB 16MB Cache @ 7200RPM [ST3500411SV]
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/seagate-sv35-series-500gb-16mb-cache-7200rpm-p-43683.html

Total: R1768 (excluding shipping)
 
You would still need a case, power supply, keyboard, mouse, screen & operating system to go with the PC's that the members listed.

The Intel setup that NomNom listed is definitely the better choice.
 
Pada said:
You would still need a case, power supply, keyboard, mouse, screen & operating system to go with the PC's that the members listed.
Click to expand...

henkc said:
I have box, power supply (unless the problems stem from there), mouse, keyboard etc. All I would need is the internals - mobo, memory and, possibly, a hard drive as the existing one sits on an IDE interface which I don't see on any of the new boards.
Click to expand...

;)
 
OK. I started up the trouble making machine tonight. It turns out some of the pins in the PS/2 mouse connector were bent. So all I need is a new mouse.
 
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