Building a PC for under £600 - Part 2 - RAM, Power Supply, Hard Drive, CD Drive, Operating System, Fans and a Wireless Adaptor

Continuing on from Part 1 of building a PC for under £600 here are the final parts I chose when building my rig on a serous budget.

5. RAM

If you have already bought your Processor and Motherboard, this one isn't going to be hard to choose because there will be a limited amount that will be compatible. Other than this you need to decide what type of combination you want.

I chose two "Corsair CMZ8GX3M1A1600C9 Vengeance 8GB (1x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz" RAM cards. The Processor and Motherboard I chose have a limit of 32GB so potentially I can upgrade to 4 simultaneous 8GB cards.

I cant stress this enough, but make sure the actual model is specifically confirmed as compatible by the makers of your Motherboard.

6. Power Supply 

There is plenty of literature out there when it comes to the power supply you want. The key is stick to what you need and to remember that bigger is not necessarily better.

As far as I can see Corsair are one of the most reliable and reasonably priced brands. As they have made a few of the parts for my PC, I was more comfortable with them.

I chose "Corsair CP-9020047-UK Builder Series CX500 ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze Power Supply Unit, 500 W"                  

This might prove to be slightly less wattage than I need if I was to get a graphics card but so far it’s been perfect and very quiet. If you have decided on a dedicated Graphics Card, make sure you get a big enough power supply.

7. Hard Drive (SSD, HDD and SHDD)

This is a complicated and well disputed topic, SSD, HDD or Hybrid. I am not going to go into the finer details of this but unless you plan on doing some amazing graphics design or want to play the latest games in 60 fps, you really don't need anything other than a good HDD drive. 

After some research, I decided that a 1TB HDD would more than suit my needs for the time being so I chose a Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX 1TB. 

8. CD Drive

If like me your not looking to do anything to specific a CD Drive can be a cheap part so after a read of some reviews I decided on a Samsung 24x SATA DVD Writer which for £20 suited me down to the ground. So far no issues at all. 




9. Operating system

For me this is the most annoying thing to have to spend a large amount of money on as it comes free (or incorporated into the price) when you buy literally any device. 

You could spend ages debating the best OS but I settled for Windows, good old bog standard Windows 10 for over £100. This is hugely down to preference so i can't really provide any advice other than Windows 10 is a massive improvement from 8. 

10. Additional Fans

This isn't a given when building a PC as you'll already have some fans built in but I think its a good idea to keep things cool, especially when it really doesn't cost much. 

So I bought a pack of two of Corsair Air Series AF120-LED 120mm fans. They aren't loud and seem to do the trick. Remember to check what size you need for your case, if yours is like mine, it works with 120mm and 140mm. 





11. Wireless Adaptor


If like me you didn't buy a Motherboard with a built in wireless capabilities, your going to need to buy one of these. Its not a fortune so just go with the best deal at the time. I got a TP-Link TL-WDN4800 N900 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Adapter. Its slightly faster than the average and didnt cost much more. 



So there we have it, having bought these parts, assembled them and used the PC I can vouch for this combination and that you really don't need to spend a fortune to get a decent PC. 


The best part about this PC is that when I decide I actually want to be able to do some serious photo/video editing or play some high spec games I don't need to do much, just buy a graphics card and a new heat sink. 

So when you first build a PC don't jump in at the deep end, build the basics and upgrade from their. I'll be posting about any upgrades as I need them.