Posted on January 22nd, 2009 by Mike Jennings

Zero Hour approaches for my £250 build

Myself and several of my colleagues are currently taking part in a unique challenge – buying or building a PC for £250 and discovering whether the high street, the internet or building the machine yourself yields the best results.

I’d had thoughts of building a media centre machine, but that plan is, at this point, dead in the water. To get that build into budget I found myself cutting too many corners: reducing the size of the hard disk, settling for an even worse chassis and not being able to include wireless internet, for instance, felt like removing too many crucial features to make it worthwhile.

So, that means my machine will be a good old-fashioned desktop PC, albeit one without a monitor or speakers. My final shopping list has been tweaked, pennies have been shaved off prices, and I’ve spent most of the week calculating delivery charges to work out if I save money by ordering from one site or if I’d be ruined by City Link.

My list of specifications is now complete, though, so you have until early afternoon to try and dissuade me from making a terrible mistake:

Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 – £57.60
ABIT I-45V motherboard – £25.53
Asus Radeon HD 4670 graphics card – £63.36
2GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM – £15.99
250GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA II 7,200rpm 8MB cache – £33.08
Samsung DVD+/-RW – £15.25
Eye T Warrior Silver Gaming Case – £18.39
Extra Value Multimedia keyboard – £3.42
Extra Value optical mouse – £2.91

This leaves me with £3.75 spare cash out of my original £250 budget and, if I were being sensible, I’d save this money to help me out should anything go wrong with my machine. I’m not particularly sensible, though, and it seems that less than four quid won’t get me very far if I melt my CPU – so I’ve earmarked that money on anything I can buy that will keep the finished machine cool, quiet and tidy – so it might mean a single case fan or a pack of cable ties.

I’m now left with nothing more than an empty wallet and a head full of anticipation. My choices of delivery – super saver on every site I’ve used, basically – means that I’m not entirely sure when my components will arrive and in what order, so my excitement at getting to build this machine will have to wait until I get a fateful call from the post room.

Nevertheless, I’ll still be keeping busy. There’s plenty of Ubuntu-related research to carry out and a huge number of useful Open Source programs to download if I want to make my PC the best £250 Open Source machine it can be.

And, of course, it needs a name. I haven’t been able to come up with anything decent so, again, it’s over to you – if you think you have a certain phrase that captures the power, versatility and (probable) incompetence of my machine then please let me know – I’ll be forever grateful.

Tags: buying, components, prices, The £250 Challenge, ubuntu

Posted in: Random

Permalink | Trackback

Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

20 Responses to “ Zero Hour approaches for my £250 build ”

Grimer Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:21 am
You might want to buy a PSU, otherwise you’re just going to end up with some components in an ugly box…

Also, why not buy 800MHz RAM? It is cheaper and faster.

Also, as you’re going with Linux, why bother with the graphics card. There are very few games available on Linux and if you’re planning to use WINE to emulate DirectX, then you’ll need a much better spec anyway.
Grimer Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
I hope you don’t mind, but I just repriced on eBuyer (free delivery) and came up with this:

Kingston 4gb (2×2gb) Ddr2 800mhz Memory Non-ecc Cl5 £29.99
Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L iP31 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard £50.98
Intel Celeron Dual Core E1200 Socket 775 (1.60GHz) 800FSB 512KB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £36.91
Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache – £33.08
LiteOn IHAS120 20X SATA DVD±RW/DL Black Bare Drive – OEM £14.99
Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case With CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU *SPECIAL OFFER* £52.99
Force3D HD 4350 512MB DDR2 VGA DVI TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card £29.62
Cart total inc vat: £248.56
ASP Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Why not install the windows 7 beta on this machine. Might be a bit more gaming fiendly than ubuntu and obviously it’s free. Not sure if it’s considered cheating though.
Mike Jennings Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Grimer – thanks for your comments. I’ve read online that plenty of games are playable using WINE, and I know that I won’t be playing much cutting-edge stuff on a 4670 anyway. I was playing to use slightly older games rather than new stuff, so I’d be intrigued to know how much performance is slashed by using Linux and WINE. I’ve also not gone with 800MHz RAM because the motherboard I’m using only supports 667MHz, and the chassis I’ve selected comes with a 450W PSU.

Your re-specced rig is, I have to admit, very enticing – although I’m wary about including such a low-power graphics card when a 4670 could provide a more well-rounded machine. If you can provide evidence to the contrary, though, I’ll definitely consider it

ASP – My original plan was to dual-boot with Windows 7 and Ubuntu, but that was scuppered by the fact that the Windows 7 beta will, at some point, run out – not ideal if this PC will be finding a new home at the end of the challenge!
Ian Devlin Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Depending on where you’ve sourced the components Pentium Dual-Core CPUs are pretty much the same price regardless of the model. Looking at Scan the superior E5200 is £1.40 less than the E2200 you’ve included above
Mike Jennings Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Ian – fantastic bit of bargain hunting, that CPU is now going in my machine.

Grimer – I think I’ve finally succumbed and realised that I’m not going to get a decent gaming machine out of Ubuntu with the components I’ve selected. Instead, I’ll be taking your suggestions of a graphics card and ploughing the money saved back into the other components, I think. Thank you!
Grimer Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Well, if the case you picked includes a PSU, swap the one I picked for that, downgrade to 2GB of 800MHz RAM and you’d have enough to swap the 4350 for a 4670. Personally, I’d spend a little more than you’re planning on the motherboard and get one capable of 1600MHz FSB. That will give you far more overclocking headroom.

I also think the dual boot Windows 7 idea is great. At least you’d be able to benchmark it properly so that people can compare performance against the rigs you normally review. Also, it will allow people a nice easy upgrade path in the future.
E Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
From Dabs.com – Integrated graphics but with HDMI..

Dabs Value Shiny Black Midi Case 450W
quicklinx:5CWFWS £27.60

Gigabyte S775 nForce 630I MATX DDR2 Audio Lan VGA/ DVI/ HDMI
quicklinx:4SH8WS £52.60

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 2.2GHz 1M Cache S775 800MH
quicklinx:4YD6WS £57.83

Crucial 4GB (2×2GB KIT) 800MHz DDR2 PC2-6400
quicklinx:55XPWS £30.52

Samsung SpinPoint 320GB 7200RPM S300 16MB
quicklinx:4LZJWS £37.69

LiteOn 20x Int. DVDRW Retail Kit SATA
quicklinx:596JWS £16.66

Microsoft Business Hardware Pack PS2/USB
quicklinx:41XLWS £18.38

Total: £249.36
Allan Simpson Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Looks good from what I can see
But, if you can squeeze it in what about a 3rd party CPU cooler, it would give you that extra few MHZ when overclocking
nicomo Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
I think both Grimer’s & E’s Specs are far better than Mike’s.

Shouldn’t they get some credit – ie build their boxes, benchmark them and then give it to some charity?
Mike Jennings Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Allan – I’ve thought about spending the last £10 of my budget on a CPU cooler. However, I’ve heard good things about the stock Intel heatsink when it comes to coping with a Pentium Dual Core. Rest assured, I’ll be breaking out CoreTemp and Orthos to do some testing with my rig and if it’s getting too hot I’ll consider that as a final upgrade.

Nicomo – I agree, both Grimer and E have put together some very compelling specifications, and so I’ve taken inspiration from both of them to improve my rig. I was going to post an update this afternoon but the PC Pro website had some technical difficulties. I’ve ordered the components now, and I’ve taken advice from both Grimer and E as to what should be in the final rig: Grimer’s suggestion of getting a 1,600MHz motherboard and HD 4350 graphics card and E’s suggestion of upgrading to a larger hard disk to heart – all this will be appearing in the final build.
Kuryakin Says:
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
“if you think you have a certain phrase that captures the power, versatility and (probable) incompetence of my machine then please let me know”

How about Mandelson?
Mark Says:
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I would have gone for an AMD approach.

Yes Intel is superior as far as CPU goes but AMD can get you a very nice cpu for a decent price and the difference wan’t be noticed.
technogeist Says:
January 24th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Does the £250 have to cover delivery costs as well?
Ryan Says:
January 24th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
At that price you’re better off buying an AMD – you can pick an 4850ee with an motherboard for about 75-80 GBP, and that’s better than the E2200.

I actually build both systems, using the E2200 as an media center and the 4850ee as home server (linux, still busy setting it up).

If you think green the AMD system runs at 55-60watt idle (3*hdds), E2200 at 110w idle (1xhdd) and my E8400 system at 160w idle (3xhdd and an 1950pro)….
Second-hand? Several days-hand, more like | PC Pro blog Says:
January 26th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
[...] as his word, it should be with me later this week. Looking across at the systems David Bayon and Mike Jennings are putting together, I think it might measure up rather [...]
Ian Devlin Says:
January 26th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Ryan & Mark: the Intel option only costs £5 more and you get double the level 2 cache with the E5200, arguably with a better CPU architecture… certainly the E5200 is a very good chip to overclock, I don’t know about the Athlon but as an energy efficient part it may not be capable of the speeds.

Admittedly the lower running costs may get Mike a few brownie points with Mr. Danton, but so would a decent overclock (it certainly applies to the more recent desktop reviews…I don’t know if the rules will allow the other PC Pro staff to overclock as they’re buying complete systems): and a 110W power draw with the E2200 is still very impressive.

Also the other participants don’t seem to be able to include the E5200 for the money and getting 3GHz with the Intel heatsink won’t be difficult by raising the FSB Bus by 40Hz… something even a cheap board should hopefully be capable of.
Grimer Says:
January 27th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Don’t worry too much about the temps. Your colleagues at CustomPC were happy to run a Q6600 at 93C.

http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/601290/36ghz-core-2-quad-for-176/page2.html
The building begins in earnest | PC Pro blog Says:
January 27th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
[...] final shopping list – after taking suggestions from the helpful comments of Grimer, E and Ian Devlin, among others – looks like [...]
jazzyjeph Says:
February 8th, 2011 at 8:32 am
@Grimer “There are very few games available on Linux” have you ever used Linux ? which version ? what year ? why say unqualified things like that, sigh….