Building a cheap PC in 2021

[mikkh]

I don't mean a gaming PC, just your basic home PC like the big manufacturers sell for £299 or even less and are laughingly labelled "social"
What they mean is barely acceptable but at least you can check your Facebook

The build I'm about to propose is roughly the same price but and it's a big BUT, it will absolutely destroy the shop bought budget PC in terms of power and should even do light gaming if required

When building a PC there are certain things you shouldn't economise on, well only one thing in this case because it's not a gaming machine and that is the PSU which will be second most expensive item here

There's no such thing as a bad motherboard really, it's just some are lacking in features that you probably don't need anyway. Feel free to shop around for the cheapest you can find which will be £40-50

The jewel in the crown here will be the CPU, a Ryzen 3200G currently on offer at Curry's for £80 a nice quad core processor with built in graphics.

The RAM in these 'social' machines is nearly always 4GB, so we're going for 8GB which will cost roughly £50 (2 x 4GB sticks NOT one 8 GB)

PSU doesn't have to be a high wattage, so a good quality gold rated 400-450 Watt is adequate. Be Quiet sell one for £60 which is also modular - you only fit the wires you need, instead of the mass of spaghetti that comes out of non modular PSU's

Then we need a case to put it all in and this can be a minefield with so many different ones on the market. I suggest you stick to well known brands like Corsair, AeroCool, Antec and Be Quiet. You'll be horrified by the top end prices, but all do cheaper models you can get for £40 or less.

Almost there, just need a hard drive now and it's obviously got to be a SSD . The smallest 120 GB ones can be had for about £15, but if you can't resist hoarding stuff you'll have to go bigger

Assuming you don't hoard or do the sensible thing and put personal files on external storage devices that's a grand total of £295 and that's counting the higher prices for motherboard and case which could be another £10 or more saving.

Even if you have pay someone like me to assemble it, you're still getting a far superior PC for a bargain price
No honest IT tech should ask more than £50 for that service btw, it's barely an hours work.

[mikkh]

Late April update

CCL computers are now doing the 3400G CPU with matching motherboard for just over £130, which was the price for the CPU alone back in March (still is at Curry's)

Considering the original build used an £80 CPU and a £50 motherboard, this is a nice bonus because it's a better CPU and superior on-board graphics for the same price - result!

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184712586427?hash=item2b01ba64bb:g:thQAAOSw7qhgT6Rx

Particularly impressive from CCL because they normally add a hefty surcharge for assembling/testing and this price is cheaper than buying the bare components from most other places.

It also removes one of the possible expensive mistakes some first time builders make - bending the pins on the CPU. It rarely happens unless you're very clumsy or don't read the instructions properly, but for nervous newcomers to the world of PC building, it's one less worry.

[mikkh]

I set myself a little challenge of building the cheapest PC possible and managed to do one for £50 - in actual cash outlay anyway, as I always have various parts lying around in my workshop/lounge.

I already had several spare cases, a reliable PSU, LOTS of spare RAM (enough to do 10 or more PC's) and an old but still decent CPU etc.

All I was short of was a suitable motherboard and a new SSD. Buying a new motherboard wasn't an option because they stopped doing them several years ago, so I had to enter the murky world of buying one second hand. I don't normally do this because the motherboard is the bedrock of everything in a PC and not really something you should be risking buying secondhand.

That was only the start of the fun though, it seems this particular type of motherboard is still quite sought after and in many cases more expensive than buying a brand new one!
All the buy now prices were too expensive for my liking, so I had to seek out auction type deals instead and hope I got lucky. After being outbid on many, I eventually won one for £35 including postage.

This was quite pleasing because this particular dealer had many of the same item and others (I had been outbid on) had gone for £50+

I'll probably sell it for a modest 10-20 profit, but someone will get a real bargain and I'll have a little less clutter.