Shopping list for a very basic PC?

[hagatha]

Greetings,

My wife would like a computer to do the routine stuff she likes to do ie, web surfing, email, watching Youtube videos and some times light Word and Exel docs.. She has never played a PC game in her life.

Can I build a system cheaper than a retail box from a "Brick & Mortar"?

All very basic components, on board video and audio, preferably DDR2 mem, I guess what I really need help with is the mother board selection...

any recommendations?

hagatha

[flanzig1]

If you are looking for a complete set-up: PC/monitor/keyboard/mouse/etc. then a package deal from Dell or your local PC megamart will be your best bang for the buck.

[Masaki 7-11]

A good computer in terms of just the computer and no peripherals or monitors, can be had for about the same or cheaper than a brick & mortar retail box with better performance, I'll take a swing at what you might be looking for, use the list as a reference:


LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DH-20A4P-08
$27.99

Antec NSK4480B Black 0.8mm cold-rolled steel construction ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 380W Power Supply
$84.99

Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$49.99

ASUS M2N-MX SE AM2 NVIDIA GeForce6100 / nForce430 uATX AMD Motherboard
$49.99

CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory Model VS2GBKIT667D2
$38.99

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor Model ADO4000DDBOX
$59.99

Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Home Basic for System Builders Single Pack DVD
$94.99

Subtotal: $406.93

[mattaggie]

If you need everything and dont want a really expensive gaming computer, it is hard to beat the Dell, Best Buy, etc. Its the extra value meal of computers. The above build that Masaki gives you is a very nice computer for your needs, but you still have to buy monitor, mouse, keyboard, and speakers, then pay for shipping and deal with putting it all together. So you are looking at at least $600. Dell can give you all this put together for about $500. But the way companies like Dell can get you is with the upgrades. So they will offer to add 1GB of RAM (making 2GB) for $100 when you could buy the RAM yourself from newegg for $30. If price is not a big issue and you want to learn how to build a computer, go for it.

[rjfvillarosa]

If you want really really cheap and it's only for basic use try this for size:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=A-AXP-SIS-K1&cat=BAP&cpc=APM

[Masaki 7-11]

I don't trust the quality of the parts from geeks.com, they usually sell a lot of low quality parts, so going for a build similar to the one above will give out a fast, stable system. In regard to buying from dell, it's not going to cost you that much more to get a dell vs. a newegg build. The cheapest dell would be about $520-ish without shipping included, a newegg build could probably be had for about $600 with shipping and the necessary monitor and peripherals. You probably won't want to get a dell because the performance is pretty bad, so if you do spend a little bit extra and go for a newegg build, it will last for a much longer time without having performance issues.

[Cricket]

Can I build a system cheaper than a retail box from a "Brick & Mortar"?It depends on what you mean by "cheaper".

You could build a very cheap computer using very cheap low quality parts and it'll be a lot cheaper than a budget name brand computer but it's performance and longevity will be questionable.

You could build a fairly decent computer using low cost good quality parts but then you're looking at a cost that is usually more than a budget name brand computer.

Budget name brand computers are fine for most things normal users will do on their computers...surf the web, email, word processing, looking at pictures taken with their digital cameras. You just need to get rid of the junk they put on it and that's what The PC Decrapifier (http://pcdecrapifier.com/) is for.

If you do want to build your own budget box let us know the budget and if you have a CPU brand preference and we can help you spec it out.

:) Cricket