I wouldn't touch that with a 10ft barge pole! Stick with the one you've got, nothing wrong with OCZ, I had one by them, rock solid.

Agreed. Stick with the OCZ. Cheap, generic, power supplies are a false economy.

If you are still over budget, you could opt for a Celeron dual-core. I know that sounds terrible but, if they're only using it for surfing the net and such, it will serve them fine. Personally, I'd want to keep the E5200, but the Celeron is an option to consider if money is tight. clicky

I haven't looked, but what are AMD's cheaper CPUs like, compared to similar Intel's these days?

Is there one you could get cheaper that would cover what's needed? I suspect the few quid difference doesn't add up to the performance difference, but I thought I'd ask...

You might save a few quid on the CPU (compared to the E5200), but you'll lose a few quid on the motherboard, and you'll get less performance. The X2 4400 may be a better bet than the dual core celery, but I haven't seen any comparisons.

Just a silly question, sorry, because this will be the second computer I have ever built. Will the case come with all of the necessary screws included, such as those to mount the hard drives and attach the motherboard?

Thanks,

Peter.

Yeah, they should do. All the cases I've ever bought have anyway.

I'd reccomend getting an AMD system over Intel if it's just going to be used for internets and word. If you go into Maplin, you can buy a Athlon x2 + motherboard combo for £60, and that'll do just fine.

I've seen the deals you mean, but there's none on their site currently unless I've missed something - maybe instore though...

motherboard, CPU and memory bundle at Ebuyer £86.97

* Intel Celeron Dual Core E1400 2GHz (800MHz) Socket 775 512KB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
* ASUS P5SD2-VM SiS672 Socket 775 Onboard graphics 6 channel audio mATX Motherboard
* 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 CL5 Memory

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167044

just built someone a shuttle cheaply with that CPU and it takes everything that was thrown at it
a link to some reviews at ebuyer on that CPU …

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145259/sh ... ct_reviews

You sure about that Bally?

In my experience, Maplin seldom offers value for money on mainstream components. Even their specials are overpriced. They're great for those emergency buys, but they are not cheap.

I was shocked by this:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/ ... egory_oid=

Esp. cos it's PCW

I'd still go with Pg's current lineup myself, but food for thought...

There's these too:

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/cat ... 56|&Sort=1

Yeah, I'm sure. I was in Maplin the other day buying a Wifi dongle for my laptop.

It was £60 for a Athlon X2 something, cooler, ECS mobo with GeForce 6100 onboard graphics and it was £60 IIRC.

@MrStevenRogers- I have the E1200 in my PC, overclocked it from 1.6ghz to 2.4ghz (low OC due to OEM board >.<) and it handles everything I want it to perfectly.

I think for your parents, the most important components are:

Monitor, keyboard and mouse: These are what they actually use, so they're crucial. They may well even last until the next upgrade c. 2020! The monitor on your list gets good reviews, which is always reassuring.

Hard drive: This is the single most important hardware factor when it comes to boot time. I'm not up to date on the recent performance, but a faster hard disk makes a huge difference to how fast a system feels in every day use. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could comment on this?

PSU: I think the one you've chosen is good. Cheap PSUs are a very bad economy because they can make the entire PC unreliable and inefficient.

Software: When you install Windows, you can increase the boot-up speed enormously by turning off all the things they don't need. Install all the software they'll use, and then turn off all the annoying start-up bits that just get in the way.

Any modern dual-core processor, integrated sound and graphics and 2GB of memory will be fairly indistinguishable if they're using the machine for everyday tasks, but a poor monitor and slow hard drive will be obvious.

I have just purchased the computer at around £320.00 including a decent monitor, keyboard and mouse as JJW009 rightly points out. As I ordered it, the cheap fan went out of stock, so I upgraded it to a much larger and quieter one.

Ebuyer seems to think they dispatched it last Friday despite only ordering it this afternoon! I'll send them a complaint email tomorrow asking where my order is

Many thanks to each and every one of you. Your help was truly invaluable!

Peter.

Just one question... what is the Operating System? I know you said it would be transferred from the old computer, and I'm not going into the legalities, but if you havebought 4GB of RAM your PC won't be able to use all of that unless you have a 64 bit O/S which isn't likely to be the case in a 10 year old computer.

He won't be able to use all of it, but certainly most of it. No graphics card.

He should get 3.25 to 3.5 gigs.