Please help me build a PC for ?250...

[Link83]

Hi everyone,
My younger brothers birthday is coming up, and my mum has asked if I could help build a new PC for him as a surprise. Now I have built PC's before but I have never bought all the parts - usually i've been upgrading old PC's or building from parts they already have - so I need some help/advice as to what to get. Im also abit 'out-of-the-loop' as to whats best currently.

My brothers current PC is from around 2002/3 and has:-

-Asus A7V8X-X Motherboard
-512MB RAM
-Think its a 1ghz CPU
-Sapphire Radeon 9600 Graphics Card
-80GB Western Digital Hard Drive

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I would like the new PC to be at least twice as fast, which im guessing shouldnt be too difficult. The budget though is an absolute maximum of £300, with £250 being preferred - bear in mind this is just for the PC - no other accessories are needed.

Some things I definitely would like for him are:-

-160GB/250GB Western Digital hard drive (Possibly two if possible, as I would like for him to have another one he can 'easily' back up to, as he can never be bothered to turn on his external hard drive )
-Graphics card at least as good as what he currently has if not a little better, with a VGA or DVI-I port as will be connecting to a VGA monitor. He only plays 'older' PC games so his current Radeon 9600 is more than adequate.
-At least 1GB RAM, or possibly 2GB if theres enough funds
-Multi-tasking is key so perhaps a dual core processor would be best?

My main problem is I just dont know what Barebone (Or Case/Motherboard) and CPU to get, I have read that ASUS would be a good brand, but what model? and of course whatever case I choose dictates the CPU (or vice-versa) Plus however much it costs will effect what other parts I can buy.

So whats you thoughts/opinions? and any all help is welcome (A full list of suggested parts would be great )

Thanks for reading

[RetroRevival]

I built the following a few weeks ago...

Asus M3N78
AMD 64 x2 6000
4GB OCZ 800MHZ memory
500GB Seagate HDD
Internal DVDRW
Coolermaster Case & Decent Coolermaster PSU

Came in at £350 delivered from Ebuyer. You could drop the memory to 2GB (saving £25) and then maybe get a cheaper case & PSU (the Coolermaster came in at £50), even dropping the CPU to an x2 5000 to save even more money.

Check out Ebuyer, you will get more than enough for your price bracket.

[abigsmurf]

You're not going to get something with a graphics card for £250 I'm afraid.

What Retro-revival posted is pretty much along the lines of what you want, bear in mind you're looking at low end, 1 1/2 generations behind current tech. However there are a lot of media center focused systems out there with that setup and the AMD are offering fairly decent built in graphics cards(by embedded GPU standards) that can decode 1080p video without breaking a sweat. The forums on Toms hardware will have lots of these kinds of builds detailing what hardware to get.

Bear in mind the graphics card will limit you to World of Warcraft generation graphics, maybe fallout 3 if you turn all the options right down (it won't be pretty). You're looking at £60+ to get a graphics card that'll cope with current games on reasonable (not highest) settings. Before you buy a graphics card, post here and/or look on the toms hardware graphics card charts. The naming system is deliberately complicated and there are an awful lot of turkeys around.

You can cut back money on the case and get a cheap £20 one but don't cut back too much on the psu. A cheap PSU is great until it fails after 6 months and possibly takes your motherboard with it (they're also noisy). Earthwatts do reasonable quality budget PSUs that are often bundled with cases to save you money. If you aren't getting a graphics card and have no intention of getting one in the future, you can get away with a 250-300W one. If you are getting a mid to low end card, you're looking at 450-ish. Power supplies are a pain in the arse to change so it's better to get a higher powered one if you think you'll get a graphics card rather than changing.

Do not be tempted by £175 Atom based systems. These are horrible for all kinds of games and not even any good as a media center (can't do 720p video well)