Cheap Socet A board/cheap PC help..

[Sirbendy]

I just had a mail from my mother-in-law telling me that her aged and venerable KS741 based Sempron has just died. So..3 options appear.

1. Get a new board for it. Expensive now, but all parts could be reused.

2. Get a new board/chip/ram bundle. Expensive, but more up to date.

3. Get a cheap second hand PC.

Anyone got any suggestions? She's complaining about being terminally short of cash, but..£50 for a socket A board seems silly when you can get clearance older Dell kit for £99ish in places.

What would you do?

[dhicks]

£50 for a socket A board seems silly when you can get clearance older Dell kit for £99ish in places.

Check eBay - I seem to remember there were some older (Windows XP, 256MB RAM) Dells on there for £50 each. One of those plus an extra 256MB of RAM (or use that from the existing PC) should sort it nicely.

--
David Hicks

[OutToLunch]

Secondhand socket A board, option D? Probably £10 or less on Ebay for a value one. There's probably plenty of people local to you on here who could sling one your way for nothing too. We have quite a few socket A boards floating around in duff machines but off the top of my head I don't know which ones are a mobo fault and which ones lost a HD and were cheaper to replace with a new machine.

Second preference - secondhand PC, I'd try Freecycle before buying a whole one, I've had quite a few in the 1-1.5Ghz Sempron/Athlon/Celeron range passed my way for nothing with just a couple of mins repairs needed (usually a dead HD or loose memory). If you have a local shop that offers a warranty this may be a better option than Ebay - mine does a 2Ghz P4 for about £60 with COA etc.

Third - brand new PC for about £150-200. I wouldn't personally build anyone anything from a bundle these days - don't want the "You've done it wrong" type tech support calls where they've broken it but it's my fault. If you get a new PC then their tech support can handle it. You could have HP ProLiant ML115 G5 - Micro tower - 1-way - 1 x Third-Generation Opteron 1352 / 2.1 GHz - RAM 512 MB - HDD 1 x 250 GB - DVD-RW - Gigabit Ethernet - Ebuyer for £170, most bundles would be around £100 anyway!

[triggmiester]

How about this

[triggmiester]

oops sorry


Stone C2.4GHz PC ( 40GB, CDR/W ) Gloucester on eBay, also, Desktop PCs, Computing (end time 04-Dec-08 18:30:00 GMT)

[PeterW]

I have some here if you would like one. Does it have to have anything in particular or are you just looking for the closest match to what she has at the moment?