Computer System Reviews

Continuing last month’s trend, this machine is intended for a student, office environment or a home worker. This machine should be capable of providing enough processing power to run multiple applications at once, whilst still providing enough power for a single application to run well without any delay.

Full Computer Specification:

Component Type	Component Name	Price(£)
Processor	AMD PHENOM 9550 AM2+ 2.2GHz 4MB CACHE	118.96
Motherboard	Gigabyte AM2 AMD RS780G DDR2	58.24
Graphics Card	Graphics Card Integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics	N/A
RAM	Kingston ValueRAM 2×1GB 240-Pin DIMM PC2-6400	28.59
Hard Disk Drive	Maxtor Diamondback 500GB	42.28
Power Supply	Supplied with Case	N/A
Case	Asustek TM250 Mini Tower ATX 400W	31.33
DVD Drive	LG 20x DVD+/-RW	16.45
CPU Cooler	Stock Cooler	N/A
Total Price (£):	295.85

Component Specification:

Processor - AMD PHENOM 9550 AM2+ 2.2GHz 4MB CACHE:

You may be wondering why a phenom is here rather than a AMD X2 or a core 2 duo. The reasoning behind this is because of the increased number of cores. Being a workstation, multitasking is going to be key, so having a system that can keep up with 4-5 simultaneous running applications, rather than pushing out the fastest benchmarks is going to be key, hence why this phenom has been chosen. This phenom also is very power efficient, a definite plus with rising electricity prices.

Specs:
Clock Speed: 2.2Ghz
Cache: 4Mb (L2 + L3)
Socket AM2+
HyperTransport 3

Motherboard - Gigabyte AM2 AMD RS780G DDR2:

This Gigabyte board has all the features needed for a workstation, the most notable is the onboard 3200 ATI graphics. Has all the connectivity that a good workstation need, USB, Firewire and gigabit ethernet.

RAM - Kingston ValueRAM 2×1GB 240-Pin DIMM PC2-6400:

This is low rated RAM 800Mhz, with CAS ratings of CL5. However with a work machine overclocking should not be one of the first considerations, so this RAM will easily suffice, especially as it is quite cheap.

HDD - Maxtor Diamondback 500GB:

This hard drive is large enough to store many thousands of songs, documents or games or movies. It also has a large 32MB cache, which will increase performance over models with 16MBs.

Case - Asustek TM250 Mini Tower ATX 400W:

A small footprint case, perfect for a workstation, but with enough cooling and vents to ensure that components inside don’t get cooked. Includes own power supply to keep cost down.

DVD Drive - LG 20x DVD+/-RW:
Fairly cheap DVD drive, though will write DVD’s at a 20x speed.

Conclusion:

This article has managed to lay out the components needed to provide an under £300 workstation, that is also quite powerful with it’s Quad Core AMD processor. This is pretty special as a few years ago with this budget your options were extremely limted in what was available in the market.