Build Me a Super Cheap Simple Rig?

So I took a coworker's computer home to have a look at what I could possibly do to speed it up a bit. He was complaining about its slow performance. I got home, unboxed it and yeah, no sh*t. It's an old Cicero prebuild from I don't know what year, running on an incredibly puny hard drive with next to no RAM and some old Pentium CPU. I did a bit of cleanup, defrag, registry repair, disabling unnecessary boot programs and other basic stuff but as I expected, that didn't help much at all. I'm still staring at the screen for 5 - 10 minutes before the computer is finally ready for full use.

He told me I can replace parts if I think that's gonna help, but I seriously think he'd be a lot happier with a whole new computer, which he told me would be an alright alternative if completely necessary.

He's a guy in his 40's and does not at all play games. He just needs a running computer with some more modern hardware inside to make boot-ups and overall performance a bit speedier. While he never gave me a budget, I'm curious to know how low I can go financially on a new custom build. I should totally be able to figure this out myself but I'm just too used to these modern gaming rig parts!

A few things I'm sure would be acceptable;

- Windows 7 Home Premium (from Windows XP, though he does still have the original copy of XP so maybe not?).

- 250GB hard drive (from a 40GB local HDD and another 40GB additional storage, both with less than 8GB left).

- 4GB of RAM (since that's dirt cheap).

I'm just not sure what kind of CPU, motherboard and GPU I should pick. I mean, we're talking maybe dual core, unless you can get really cheap quad core CPUs somewhere. Intel i3 series? Then when it comes to the motherboard, I don't know if onboard video memory should be enough or if a tiny PCI GPU should be added?

Yeah I was thinking about that too but... I just love building computers :P He totally knows that too so he doesn't mind if I were to put something together for him.

Yeah I was thinking about that too but... I just love building computers :P He totally knows that too so he doesn't mind if I were to put something together for him.

Amster_G

Go with an AMD rig based on FM1.

So I took a coworker's computer home to have a look at what I could possibly do to speed it up a bit. He was complaining about its slow performance. I got home, unboxed it and yeah, no sh*t. It's an old Cicero prebuild from I don't know what year, running on an incredibly puny hard drive with next to no RAM and some old Pentium CPU. I did a bit of cleanup, defrag, registry repair, disabling unnecessary boot programs and other basic stuff but as I expected, that didn't help much at all. I'm still staring at the screen for 5 - 10 minutes before the computer is finally ready for full use.

 

He told me I can replace parts if I think that's gonna help, but I seriously think he'd be a lot happier with a whole new computer, which he told me would be an alright alternative if completely necessary.

 

He's a guy in his 40's and does not at all play games. He just needs a running computer with some more modern hardware inside to make boot-ups and overall performance a bit speedier. While he never gave me a budget, I'm curious to know how low I can go financially on a new custom build. I should totally be able to figure this out myself but I'm just too used to these modern gaming rig parts!

 

A few things I'm sure would be acceptable;

 

- Windows 7 Home Premium (from Windows XP, though he does still have the original copy of XP so maybe not?).

- 250GB hard drive (from a 40GB local HDD and another 40GB additional storage, both with less than 8GB left).

- 4GB of RAM (since that's dirt cheap).

 

I'm just not sure what kind of CPU, motherboard and GPU I should pick. I mean, we're talking maybe dual core, unless you can get really cheap quad core CPUs somewhere. Intel i3 series? Then when it comes to the motherboard, I don't know if onboard video memory should be enough or if a tiny PCI GPU should be added?

Amster_G

keep the case the hard drive.  Get a new mobo, h61 plus a celeron g530/540 dual core at 2.4 ghz.  The cpu costs like $40 and it is a total work horse.  You could stick with integrated graphics, it will be fine.  Thats pretty much all he needs aside from the ram and a dvd Rom.