Cheap office PC

[gonemtbiking123]

My dads old HP finally died, will turn on but no display output. So I am going to build him a new system. Any ideas? All I need is motherboard, CPU, ram, and possible a GPU. Already have a spinpoint f3, corsair CX430, case, dvd drive. No set budget but just want to make it for cheap.

All he uses it for is surfing online, word documents, spreadsheets, light work with photos, and some flash games. He wants to keep his dual screen display, so he will need a gpu if we dont go for an APU. Any ideas will help. Thanks

 

[sadams04]

Processor: AMD Athlon II X3 445 Rana 3.1GHz 95W Triple-Core - $75

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-USB3 AM3+ - $93

Graphics Card: Onboard HD 4250

RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 1.5v CL9 - $34

Hard Drive: The one you already have.
Case: The one you already have.
Power Supply: The one you already have.
Optical: The one you already have.

$202

The first monitor will be on the HDMI or DVI ouput. The second monitor will be on the VGA output.

 

[cadder]

It takes very little PC to run office apps. In the past it was cheaper to buy a pre-built PC than to build one even using the cheapest components you can get. Recently my father thought he needed a new PC for the office in his small business so I did some searching. I found that you could buy a complete PC for about $300 from the discount stores, but surprisingly a lot of them still had single core CPU's and maybe only 1GB of ram. To move up to a dual core and to 3GB min. would get you to almost $400, and I could start to build a PC for that. If the OP already has some parts then he is that much ahead. I recommend a dual core CPU and I recommend at least 3GB of ram, beyond that you can get whatever parts you can afford. The parts mentioned above seem like they would be above average for a low end PC, or you could choose the low end Intel dual core processors. If you can find a newegg bundle of cpu+mobo+ram then that would be even better. I wasn't aware that you could run 2 monitors through onboard graphics but if it works then that is a good savings too.

 

[gonemtbiking123]

would you recommend that set up over

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103943 $110 (after giftcard)

MB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138333 $97

Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233132&cm_sp=Cat_Memory-_-Daily_Deal-_-20-233-132 $12 (AMIR)

$219

 

[sadams04]

Memory should be installed in pairs to take advantage of the dual memory controllers. Installing a single 4GB module will have you running in single channel mode.

Either of those configs would be fine. The Llano setup is great, but you aren't doing any work that would take advangate of the GPU portion. If you were doing light gaming / graphics work then Llano setup would shine. As the work you are expecting is very minimal, I would say the higher CPU speed of the X3 445 might be a better setup.

Do you have a Microcenter near you? If so, the setup below runs $235 and is considerably better than the two above.
http://www.microcenter.com/specials/promotions/AMDbundlePROMO.html
880G-E45 Socket AM3 880G ATX AMD + AMD Phenom X4 965 => $140
...and...
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0361744
Gigabyte HD 5670 => $65 after rebate
...and...
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0358348
Corsair XMS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1600 CL9 => $30 after rebate

 

[gonemtbiking123]

Good call on the two sticks of ram, I forgot about that.

Are you sure that the 965 will outshine the a6? On http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html the have the passmark score for the 965 @ 4285 and the a6 @ 5349

He also showed some interest in minecraft when I was playing it a while back but his hp couldn't really run it. I know that it is more cpu intensive but the a6 would probably help out some right?