Win 7 machine - £450

[Jameslee]

I'm hoping to build a home office machine that will run windows 7 and remain as future proof as possible. The budget for the machine is £400-450.

This would include:

Case:
Power Supply:
Motherboard:
CPU:
RAM:
HDD:
Optical Drive:
OS: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-127-MS&groupid=33&catid=1555&subcat=

Speccing a gaming rig when you have a nice budget is easy, but trying to get a home office machine that is going to remain useful for a while on a low budget is a little more taxing than I expected. Ideally I want to keep it as silent as possible as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm falling at the first hurdle mind in which processor to go for, and subsequently whether to use DDR2 or DDR3.

 

[FoxEye]

speccing an office machine for that budget is too easy. you *could* do a gaming rig for that price, np.

ram ~ 80 (4gig) ddr3
mobo ~ 50 - 70
psu ~ 40
case ~ 20
cpu ~ 65 - 100 (amd x3 or intel i3)
gfx ~ 0 (on-board)

total: 255 - 305

that leaves you ~ 150 to sink into a massive cpu upgrade (i7 if you need it), or other things (gfx if you need it)

all will depend on what you use it for. "future proof" doesn't really mean too much without knowing what you do now, and what you might need to do in future.

a p4 is "future proof" if all you do is browse the web and open ms word

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would get:

Athlon II X2 245 ~ £50

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-251-AM

I would try to fit an Athlon II X3 425 or 435 for under £60 into the build specification if possible!

Asus M4A78L-M LE ~ £47

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-377-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1482

4GB 1066MHZ DDR2 ~ £71

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-192-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=817

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate ~ £64

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-194-SP

This is passively cooled

Corsair CX 400W ~ £37

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-017-CS

Samsung SpinPoint F1 250GB ~ £29

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-084-SA

SATA DVD rewriter ~ £16

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-099-SA&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=

Coolermaster Elite 335 ~ £32

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-160-CM

Windows 7 retail ~ £100

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-124-MS

I would avoid the OEM version.

The total comes to around £446 excluding delivery.

If you get an X3 435 for around £55 to £65 it would be a good choice!

With the components listed you could also play some newer games too!!

The HD4670 is not a bad card for the price:

http://www.elitebastards.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=695&Itemid=27

Windows 7 runs more efficiently than Vista out of the box.