helping my mate who is a bit out of luck

[Tripp]

so my friend as just split with her bf, an he took her gaming pc. it was nothing great but played games she plays fine, an i wanna help her get a gaming rig back, as she doesn't have much money and it will cheer her up.

it needs to be as cheap as possible, an be able to play source engine games well if possible. any ideas on where to start would be great

thanks ladies an gents

P.S: please do not offer things you have for sale or free stuff

 

[WYP]

am APU sounds like a logical starting point, their Motherboards are cheap and they offer a cpu and gpu on a single chip.

do you have a budget in mind or any spare components to donate to her? if so i can draw up a quick spec list

 

[Tripp]

am APU sounds like a logical starting point, their Motherboards are cheap and they offer a cpu and gpu on a single chip.

do you have a budget in mind or any spare components to donate to her? if so i can draw up a quick spec list

yerah that what i was thinking, so far i have a case and she has a monitor. i have an athlon silgle core cpu and an asus kv8 se delux mobo, but i think they're too ancient too be of much use

 

[SeekaX]

as cheap as possible is a pretty vague statement, maybe a limit in numbers?
it will obviously have to be an APU build, maybe a richland APU, those should be cheap by now.

 

[SieB]

From CEX you can get a Q6600 for £32, an ATI 4890 or many other older but capable GPUs for around £40. Good thing with CEX is everything comes with a 12 month warranty.

https://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku=SCPUBDNA10
https://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku=SGRAATI48901GBPCE

From Ebay you can get 2gb 2x1gb of DDR2 for £15 and a 775 mobo for ~£30-40.

So for ~£130-40 you can get a CPU, mobo, ram and GPU that will be capable of running source games pretty well.

 

[SeekaX]

From CEX you can get a Q6600 for £32, an ATI 4890 or many other older but capable GPUs for around £40. Good thing with CEX is everything comes with a 12 month warranty.

https://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku=SCPUBDNA10
https://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku=SGRAATI48901GBPCE

From Ebay you can get 2gb 2x1gb of DDR2 for £15 and a 775 mobo for ~£30-40.

So for ~£130-40 you can get a CPU, mobo and ram and GPU that will be capable of running source games pretty well.

wouldn't be sure if a q6600 + 4890 would outperform an apu though, the price is pretty similar.

 

[SieB]

wouldn't be sure if a q6600 + 4890 would outperform an apu though, the price is pretty similar.

Including a mobo and ram? I'm not sure on APUs and prices, I haven't really looked into them.

 

[Tripp]

right think i have got an am2 motherboard, that can have a bios update to am2+, an i can grab 8gb of ddr2 ram for cheap. just waiting on my dad to get in touch with me on what motherboard it is