Client Build ??

SillyOldSquid

SillyOldSquid

New member
Hi Everyone,
I have a client asking me to build him a rig for his home office, he currently has a budget of £250 (I've asked him to raise it slightly, waiting on a reply),
he wants the pc for surfing the internet mostly and im having a hard time finding hardware within his budget.

Does anyone have any ideas for hardware I could use within the budget.
I'm thinking ether a mATX or a mITX board will be a smart idea, also I'm trying to look for a cheap case that is aesthetically pleasing to look at and doesn't look to cheap.

any suggestions are very much appreciated.
 
These threads always make me chuckle.

" I have someone that thinks Im a professional and is paying me to build him a rig, can you please tell me what parts to use because I have no idea and I can only put things together"

Thats what I read :/
 
If it's just for office work I suggest something like a Fractal Design Core 1000 with a Corsair VS350 PSU, some cheap Haswell motherboard paired up with the cheapest i3 (which is plenty and offers decent graphics).

The Gigabyte B85M-HD3 was the cheapest board I could find that offers HDMI, VGA and DVI, so that he can hook any screen up to it and it even features two USB3 ports at the back.

Then, if he doesn't need a lot of storage you might be able to get a 120GB SSD in there. If you can't, or he needs more storage you could go with a 1TB 7200 RPM drive such as the Caviar Blue.

4GB RAM will be enough, or at least for the time being and it could be a cheap and easy future upgrade if he ever thinks it's necessary.

If he thinks that is too expensive, he's going to have to step down to an Intel Celeron or an AMD APU build, however he doesn't need a very good graphics chip.


Edit; @ Tom, I agree although to be fair: These extreme budget builds can be a bit of a challenge when you don't want to skimp on parts (like a plastic case or some shitty value CPU). At least he tries to offer his 'client' some form of quality for his money :p
 
tinytomlogan said:
These threads always make me chuckle.

" I have someone that thinks Im a professional and is paying me to build him a rig, can you please tell me what parts to use because I have no idea and I can only put things together"

Thats what I read :/
Click to expand...

Tom I would completely agree with you this does sound that way and the client knows I am not a professional, I am interested in building PC's as a professional though so I'm being productive and offering a build to order service, the issues I'm having are because I am used to building higher end pc's with a much higher budget I'm having a hard time finding good hardware for the lower end user.
To put your mind at rest I wont really be making any profit from the service for this build and I see this as an opportunity to add lower end builds to my portfolio.
 
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http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/35EFs

CPU: Intel Pentium G3420 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor (£47.05 @ Amazon UK)

Motherboard: ASRock B85M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£55.98 @ Amazon UK)

Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 2GB (1 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£19.99 @ Amazon UK)

Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 2GB (1 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£19.99 @ Amazon UK)

Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£47.99 @ Aria PC)

Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (£31.73 @ CCL Computers)

Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power
Supply (£36.73 @ Amazon UK)

Total: £259.46

If he needs extra storage i'd get a extra £40 out of him for a 1TB hdd.
WD blue 1tb drives are going for around £40 at the moment.
 
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Feronix said:
If it's just for office work I suggest something like a Fractal Design Core 1000 with a Corsair VS350 PSU, some cheap Haswell motherboard paired up with the cheapest i3 (which is plenty and offers decent graphics).

The Gigabyte B85M-HD3 was the cheapest board I could find that offers HDMI, VGA and DVI, so that he can hook any screen up to it and it even features two USB3 ports at the back.

Then, if he doesn't need a lot of storage you might be able to get a 120GB SSD in there. If you can't, or he needs more storage you could go with a 1TB 7200 RPM drive such as the Caviar Blue.

4GB RAM will be enough, or at least for the time being and it could be a cheap and easy future upgrade if he ever thinks it's necessary.

If he thinks that is too expensive, he's going to have to step down to an Intel Celeron or an AMD APU build, however he doesn't need a very good graphics chip.


Edit; @ Tom, I agree although to be fair: These extreme budget builds can be a bit of a challenge when you don't want to skimp on parts (like a plastic case or some shitty value CPU). At least he tries to offer his 'client' some form of quality for his money :p
Click to expand...

I have also been looking at the Gigabyte B85M-HD3, he only needs 4gb of ram I was thinking G.skill Ripjaws x series as its fairly inexpensive.
For storage he has asked for a 500gb hdd so i was going to go for a WD green.
The main problem im having is the case, I was originally going to go with the bitfenix prodigy because im used to working in them and they are good solid cases but its still too expensive for this build so maybe a fractal design node 304 would be a decent idea and then obviously the cpu will be the money sink in this buld.
 
ITX cases and motherboards are a lot more expensive than the mATX ones. If you desperately want to go mITX (Which I seriously advice against for a budget build, you should get the fairly inexpensive CM Elite 110/120/130.

Mind you that the WD Caviar Green drives are only 5400RPM and will slow down system performance. A 500GB Caviar Blue shouldn't cost that much more and is well worth it.

As most budget mATX motherboards only have 2 RAM slots, I would advice you to get 1x4GB of 1333, but preferably 1600MHz RAM. This way it's easier to upgrade later and should be cheaper than 2x2GB. It won't run in dual channel mode but that probably doesn't matter too much for him and budget builds are about compromise.

Thing is; You're trying to save money on a cheaper HDD and CPU so that you can fit it in a smaller case with a smaller motherboard, which he probably doesn't need.

You're spending money, and saving money in the wrong places mate. First rule of budget builds: Performance over presentation.
 
Feronix said:
ITX cases and motherboards are a lot more expensive than the mATX ones. If you desperately want to go mITX (Which I seriously advice against for a budget build, you should get the fairly inexpensive CM Elite 110/120/130.

Mind you that the WD Caviar Green drives are only 5400RPM and will slow down system performance. A 500GB Caviar Blue shouldn't cost that much more and is well worth it.

As most budget mATX motherboards only have 2 RAM slots, I would advice you to get 1x4GB of 1333, but preferably 1600MHz RAM. This way it's easier to upgrade later and should be cheaper than 2x2GB. It won't run in dual channel mode but that probably doesn't matter too much for him and budget builds are about compromise.

Thing is; You're trying to save money on a cheaper HDD and CPU so that you can fit it in a smaller case with a smaller motherboard, which he probably doesn't need.

You're spending money, and saving money in the wrong places mate. First rule of budget builds: Performance over presentation.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, I'm so used to building overkill machines, this is a good exercise for me to hold back a bit when on a tight budget.

-------------------------
Edit:

This is what I've come up with.(with lots of help from you guys)

Case - Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0
MOBO - Gigabyte GA-B85M-HD3
CPU - Intel core i3-4130
PSU - Corsair CX430M
Storage - 500gb WD caviar blue
RAM - Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600

Total cost - £271.92
What do you guys think ?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Feronix said:
Haha yeah exactly, though I still have an (un-used) BluRay burner in my system :rolleyes:

Good luck on the build!
Click to expand...

Tanks again for the help and thank you to everyone else that has given me advice, now all I need to do is wait for a reply and see if the client is willing to up his budget ^_^
 
SillyOldSquid said:
Thanks for the advice, I'm so used to building overkill machines, this is a good exercise for me to hold back a bit when on a tight budget.

-------------------------
Edit:

This is what I've come up with.(with lots of help from you guys)

Case - Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0
MOBO - Gigabyte GA-B85M-HD3
CPU - Intel core i3-4130
PSU - Corsair CX430M
Storage - 500gb WD caviar blue
RAM - Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600

Total cost - £271.92
What do you guys think ?
Click to expand...

I think you are wasteing money on the i3 tbh.
Its a haswell pentum dual core that has hyper threading something thats not going to be used + the i3 is what £100? the haswell pentum with no HT is £50 thats a missing ssd right there with saveing £50 ;)
 
cooperman said:
I think you are wasteing money on the i3 tbh.
Its a haswell pentum dual core that has hyper threading something thats not going to be used + the i3 is what £100? the haswell pentum with no HT is £50 thats a missing ssd right there with saveing £50 ;)
Click to expand...

The i3 is £83, I'm assuming you are recommending I use the Intel Pentium G3420 Dual Core CPU instead as its basically the same cpu without the bells and whistles?
If I were to use the extra money on an ssd what would you recommend?
Maybe something like a kingston 120gb - £51
 
SillyOldSquid said:
The i3 is £83, I'm assuming you are recommending I use the Intel Pentium G3420 Dual Core CPU instead as its basically the same cpu without the bells and whistles?
If I were to use the extra money on an ssd what would you recommend?
Maybe something like a kingston 120gb - £51
Click to expand...

Yes the v300's are not bad for cheap ssd's the system will be a lot faster with even a cheap 60gb ssd in it than haveing spent the extra on hyper threading.
 
cooperman said:
Yes the v300's are not bad for cheap ssd's the system will be a lot faster with even a cheap 60gb ssd in it than haveing spent the extra on hyper threading.
Click to expand...

Yeah I would agree id be more inclined to go with a cheap 120gb though so i can throw the os on it and have the 500gb of storage free.
 
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If they're not very good with PCs its a nightmare trying to show them how to use more than one hard drive in my experience. If they're not tech savvy just get one hard drive.
 
barnsley said:
If they're not very good with PCs its a nightmare trying to show them how to use more than one hard drive in my experience. If they're not tech savvy just get one hard drive.
Click to expand...

This was my original thoughts exactly, but I guess I'l have to decide do I want him to have better performance and a better experience using the pc or do I want to dumb it down to save him asking questions :/
 
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