Question for you IT build experts

[Crackle]

Looking at building myself another desktop but on a limited budget so have been perusing 2nd hand Motherboard and cpu bundles on ebay.

Looking mainly at the lower end dual core processors which come in a variety of flavours on a variety of different flavoured motherboards.

I've narrowed things down a bit but want to be sure I've not missed any gotchas. I want to run windows 7 Pro on it and potentially more than 4GB of Ram. Some of the boards won't run a 64 bit operating system but as far as I know all the dual core processors will.

Trying to avoid older boards which may not be able to install Windows 7 but I'm not really sure what the cut off is or what technical bits will identify that to me, hence just going for dual core processors.

Have I missed any gotchas?

 

[MontyVeda]

My current MB is an Asus AM1M-A .. i think it was about £25-30. It's got an equally cheap quad core processor (no idea what) and 8gb of ram. I did have to put a graphics card on it though as the on board graphics were really poor.

Have a look at CCL on Ebay... they do very cheap bundles.

 

[Crackle]

My current MB is an Asus AM1M-A .. i think it was about £25-30. It's got an equally cheap quad core processor (no idea what) and 8gb of ram. I did have to put a graphics card on it though as the on board graphics were really poor

Yes, I would be adding a graphics card too as I mainly want it for photo processing. Again, a used one.

 

[Crackle]

A good example of the kind of thing I'm looking at

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121792884092?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

but this board only supports 32bit operating systems, so probably out for me.

 

[accountantpete]

Another very satisfied Asus AM1M-A user here (£25) with 64bit Mint.

I added a 120gb ssd (£30) and Athlon 5350 Quad Core (£30) cpu.

It runs with just the cpu fan and is virtually silent.

For photo's the cpu graphics are perfectly good - graphics card wise it is only Pcle 2.0 x16 x 4 mode but a GT610 will work well.

If I want much better colours and HDMI out I simply transfer my files to another pc with a bit more power running a GForce GT640.

 

[MontyVeda]

if the budget is tight you'd be better looking at

Another very satisfied Asus AM1M-A user here (£25) with 64bit Mint.

I added a 120gb ssd (£30) and Athlon 5350 Quad Core (£30) cpu.

It runs with just the cpu fan and is virtually silent.

For photo's the cpu graphics are perfectly good - graphics card wise it is only Pcle 2.0 x16 x 4 mode but a GT610 will work well.

If I want much better colours and HDMI out I simply transfer my files to another pc with a bit more power running a GForce GT640.

got an SSD in mine to... it's as silent as a silent thing

 

[Crackle]

Another very satisfied Asus AM1M-A user here (£25) with 64bit Mint.

I added a 120gb ssd (£30) and Athlon 5350 Quad Core (£30) cpu.

It runs with just the cpu fan and is virtually silent.

For photo's the cpu graphics are perfectly good - graphics card wise it is only Pcle 2.0 x16 x 4 mode but a GT610 will work well.

If I want much better colours and HDMI out I simply transfer my files to another pc with a bit more power running a GForce GT640.

The problem with that particular board is it won't take my SCSI card but other than that, it looks pretty good and hunting through the specs of 2nd hand boards is now giving me a headache as I find driver limits or memory limits or fsb limits.

 

[steve50]

A good example of the kind of thing I'm looking at

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121792884092?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDXT

but this board only supports 32bit operating systems, so probably out for me.

if you take a good look at that board you will see it has very limited options should you want to add graphics etc,
this would give you everything you want at a budget price and you have scope for upgrading graphics etc, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ASUS-P5N-...280573?hash=item58cf6f013d:g:WHAAAOSwI-BWHejT

 

[Crackle]

if you take a good look at that board you will see it has very limited options should you want to add graphics etc,
this would give you everything you want at a budget price and you have scope for upgrading graphics etc, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ASUS-P5N-...280573?hash=item58cf6f013d:g:WHAAAOSwI-BWHejT

That's pretty good. Definitely more what I need. I'll add that to my consideration list. I was also mulling on another Asus board. I knocked that Intel board and quite a few others off the list earlier after looking at the specs of the boards and available drivers. I've got three I'm just mulling on now, all Asus, currently favouring one with no memory for about 40quid which would leave room to buy two 4Gb sticks but it's only a dual core processor so it's a question of deciding if it would do. Bound to be better than this current dual core Celeron laptop though.

So Dual core with more memory or quad core with less memory is my choice for running Photoshop and Lightroom in the main and a dual display. That's all I need this for and my SCSI scanner?

 

[steve50]

I would go dual with more memory if you are restricted by your budget. The quad with four gig of ram would be even better but the dual core will cope nicely, if you are going to be doing a lot of graphics heavy work get a good quality graphics card with at least 1gig of onboard ram and make sure you have adequate cooling.

Processors, dual core , quad core, i3, i5 etc, the bigger the processor you have the more the machine can multi task BUT if you only have a couple of gigabyte of ram
( random access memory) it will still run slow. So the general rule is, more memory = more speed.

 

[fossyant]

Some programmes don't utiise all the cores either. Go for the fastest dual core and more memory.

 

[fossyant]

Have you thought about a HP Elite desktop - there are loads of refurbed ones from about £120 upwards

Actually, even cheaper on ebay

 

[Crackle]

I looked at them Fossy but prefer to put it together myself. I did think about it. Also thought about another laptop but as I've got a lot of stuff lying around I thought I'd build one.

Went for this in the end

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/161864167449?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

8Gb of memory a tenner or so and will probably get something like this for a graphics card

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/XFX-Radeo...192831?hash=item3f55c942bf:g:tVoAAOSwPcVV1XTG

I have everything else apart from an OS and was thinking of chancing an OEM one off ebay. Any experience? The other thing I'm not sure about is my power supply, it's a 350w one. Need to just check what the graphics card will want. Might see if I can get an SSD as well.

 

[steve50]

What os are you going for, win 7 £30 on ebay with keygen.
or you could go win 8 free to download from microsoft and get the key from here http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Windows-8...547833?hash=item35f3ae3839:g:n0gAAOSwT5tWH7yM
then upgrade to win 10
I would recommend at least 400watt or better psu for your new build.

 

[Crackle]

What os are you going for, win 7 £30 on ebay with keygen.
or you could go win 8 free to download from microsoft and get the key from here http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Windows-8...547833?hash=item35f3ae3839:g:n0gAAOSwT5tWH7yM
then upgrade to win 10
I would recommend at least 400watt or better psu for your new build.

My only concern with something like that is is it really genuine. At least with an OEM version you get a genuine copy through a loophole which Microsoft don't seem so bothered about.

My son did briefly run his Radeon card on a 350 when his psu died and it worked. I'm thinking if I'm not gaming I might get away with it, especially as the dual core is not so demanding in power as a quad core. I need someone clever to calculate it for me.