Quiet budget PC

[Glass]

I'm looking to build a new PC. I'd like it to be quiet (that's why I'm here). While I have a reasonable budget, my PC doesn't need to be fast at all by today's standards. I would like to be able to watch any HD trailers I download while doing other stuff without any problems, and play some older PC games - when I say older, I principally mean Half-Life 2 and Thief: Deadly Shadows - comfortably and with nice settings.

Aside from that, the only main requirements are a wireless NIC (or is onboard good?) and maybe a video card which can handle two monitors. I've had a look at some old posts and tried to see what's relatively cheap now, but it's quite confusing having not built a PC in a couple of years, especially given that I don't know how well mixing old and new will work. The way I figure it, the older stuff should consume less power, produce less heat, and cost less money, but that's probably not how it works

To sum up, as a rough spec I'd say:

• Decent CPU
• 1 GB RAM minimum
• No more HDD space than 200 GB is required
• Decent case
• Wireless networking
• Graphics card than can handle old-ish games and maybe two screens
• Quiet!
• Box only - monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers are all here already.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello & welcome to SPCR!

You don't say what your budget is? Or, are you just looking to be as inexpensive as possible?

[Chocolinx]

For a decent setup I suggest this:

Asus P5LD2-VM R2.0 or P5B-VM (P5B I think it can Overclock)
Intel PD-805 (Get E6300 if you Budget Allows)
Asus TM-210 (Nice Cheap comes with 300W)
Airlink Wireless USB Adapter (Cheap; I'll explain why)
ATi X550 or ATi X300 or Nvidia 6200
WD 80GB (250GB is better)
OCZ PC4200 533Mhz Value Ram (It's the one without headspread)

A note on few things.

For the video cards, you might want to try to on-board graphics to see if you games will play. Intel 950 graphics usually run okay on Warcraft III. But the ones I listed are the cheapest you'll find brand new, since they don't really make anything lower than those.

The Airlink Wireless adapter or any cheap wireless adapter you'll find on the market under $30 is usually good enough. I bought one for my Dad downstairs, being cheap the signal was shit at first, but then I built a 10 minute unidirectional dish out of tin foil and cardboard and it boosted the single by 50% making the wireless adapter as good as any high priced one on the market.

HDD's today right now 250GB seems to be the best dollar per GB. But you'll find 80GB well under $60. But a 250 is around $80 so the price difference isn't toooo much.

For the CPU 805 is one of the best value CPUs out there. Can be bought for $100 roughly. If you buy anything else higher it'd have to be an E6300 for $200. Anything inbetween is kind of waste of money.

The Case, well that one I just like how it looks lol. And it fits micro sized boards. comes with a 300W sometimes but might want to swap that out or just leave it till it dies out on you.

Anyway that's my 2 cents.

[jackylman]

- AMD X2 processors are a bit scarce and vendors look to be jacking up processors today on the ones still in stock. It's hard not to recommend a C2D E6300 or E6400 unless you want a single core.

- A Gigabyte 7600GS (passively-cooled) shouldn't have any trouble handling HL2 or doing multi-monitor. Not sure about the other game, but I'm guessing it'll have no problem there either.

-I don't know of too many mobos with built-in wireless. Some Asus premium boards have it, but I don't think you'll be shelling out for any of those soon if you're on a reasonable budget.

[jackylman]

HDD's today right now 250GB seems to be the best dollar per GB. But you'll find 80GB well under $60. But a 250 is around $80 so the price difference isn't toooo much.

For the CPU 805 is one of the best value CPUs out there. Can be bought for $100 roughly. If you buy anything else higher it'd have to be an E6300 for $200. Anything inbetween is kind of waste of money.

I'll agree with that first statement. A WD 2500KS or Samsung SP2504 would be good choices here.

The 805D is not something I'd recommend to someone who's looking for a silent PC and is going to have other quiet components. E6300's can be found under $200 and X2 3800's can be found for $150 (if you grab one now.) An X2 3600 would be even better here if anyone knows where to buy one.

[einsteingodel]

Hello

You can build one killer, almost silent system based around an E6300 for dirt-cheap. And I am talking about quality components, too... Seasonic PS, Samsung HD, Nexus fans, Sony DVD-RW, Antec case, etc..

And if you chose to go with onboard graphics, you could build such a system in the US for just over $500. You would be getting amazing CPU performance for your buck, that would almost equal the best of the not too distant past. If you indeed choose to go with a dual-head GPU card for your monitors, you would need to adjust that estimate for whatever graphics card you choose.

But, how Neil stated, you need to be more specific on your target budget to better allow others to give you fitting recommendations.

[Glass]

Hello & welcome to SPCR!

You don't say what your budget is? Or, are you just looking to be as inexpensive as possible?

Hi Neil, thanks for the welcome. Sorry I didn't mention the budget: it's about £800. It's possibly more mid-range, but then I don't feel under any pressure to spend it all

A WD 2500KS or Samsung SP2504 would be good choices here.

Thanks, those look perfect!

A Gigabyte 7600GS (passively-cooled) shouldn't have any trouble handling HL2 or doing multi-monitor. Not sure about the other game, but I'm guessing it'll have no problem there either.

It was released in 2004, so it can probably be considered about equivalent in terms of stress it will place on the card.

For the video cards, you might want to try to on-board graphics to see if you games will play. Intel 950 graphics usually run okay on Warcraft III. But the ones I listed are the cheapest you'll find brand new, since they don't really make anything lower than those.

Thanks - my only concern is that most of those cards I've found for sale use system memory to boost their own memory. I'll have a look at some reviews and see if it's likely to be a problem with my usage (likely not, but that sort of thing always makes me wary).

The Case, well that one I just like how it looks lol. And it fits micro sized boards. comes with a 300W sometimes but might want to swap that out or just leave it till it dies out on you.

This doesn't seem to be widely available in the UK - and when it is, it costs about as much as an Antec Solo, which I know is well regarded.

Obviously I'll need a PSU to go with that - the S12-380 seems to have been recommended several times on this site.

An X2 3600 would be even better here if anyone knows where to buy one.

Well, I've found one, and it's (only?) £25 cheaper than the E6300 from the same store. I'm not quite sure whether you were saying it would be better because it was cheaper, or cooler?

Thanks very much everyone for your help so far!

[NeilBlanchard]

Greetings,

Ah, £800 -- is that about $1,250? I was pricing a system that was half of that! Unless hardware costs a lot more in the UK, you be able to do dual core, and you could go to 2GB of RAM too, I think.

The C2D E6300 would seem to be on the list -- it is on sale at $165 (MicroCenter), which is roughly £105?

[Glass]

£800 is about $1400 (US), but products are generally more expensive in the UK. Often something that costs $100 will be available over here for £100.

The E6300 I linked in my previous post, for example, is £125. That's definitely a processor I'm considering, though. Current thinking looks something like:

• Case: Antec Solo
• PSU: Seasonic S12-380
• CPU: Intel Core Duo E6300
• Memory: 1 GB Corsair CM2X1024
• Motherboard: Gigabyte 965 DS3 (?)
• Graphics: Gigabyte 7600GS (Silent Pipe)
• Hard drive: Western Digital 2500KS
• Optical drive: Sony DVD rewriter
• Networking: Generic wireless PCI card

That comes to about £560, which suits me fine. On cooling the CPU: I have a Scythe Katana spare - will that work with the E6300 or should I be looking at a different cooling option?