Here’s a poser for you… if building a PC for a mere £250 is a challenge (hence the name of the feature) then what is building a PC for absolutely nothing? A labour? A punishment? The wrath of Tim? Whatever it is, I’m going to give it a bash.

Thankfully, I have a couple of weapons at my disposal. The first is an almost alarming lack of dignity that means going cap in hand into the world isn’t going to faze me at all. Couple that with a distinct lack of common sense or taste and you’ve a formidable begging combination. However, my most important weapon is you… I desperately need your help. I need to find legitimate sources of free computing stuff: groups, organisations, tips, anything that will net me something completely free that I can stuff into a case (though I’ll be needing a case, too, thinking of it). Bear in mind, I’m not soliciting free stuff from you. I need to go through the everyday, normal channels that anybody could use if they wanted to do the same thing.

God only knows why I was chosen for this particular task, maybe it was my Ringo Starr accent, or my dress sense which has something of the homeless chic to it I admit, but I absolutely refuse to lose out to my comparatively loaded colleagues.

Goodwill is a powerful thing, and people are generally brilliant if given half a chance. Now let’s see if together they’re powerful enough to build a PC from scratch.