I remember when this used to be easy - it's been so long since I last built something - I realised last night my gfx card is getting on for being 9 years old.

Anyhow, I want a 240GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, CPU + board. Maybe a 1TB disk for file storage.

I'm going to put Server 2012 on it and run Hyper-V + maybe 4 virtual machines.

I was thinking:

* Crucial M500 for the SSD. I don't care if it only lasts a few months, it's cheap and fast enough.
* 16GB of whatever's cheapest and at whatever MHz the board I get says to get.

The hard bit is the CPU.

I don't want to pay for an i5 - this is only a lab machine I'll be using for 6 months.

So something AMD, because I figure 4 or 6 cores are better than 2 with HT, (even if the i3 is slightly faster in general). I'm thinking the A8 6500 4.1GHz is the best fit; 4 cores, onboard gfx, and only 65 watts so it'll be cheaper to run and less noisy than most of the other AMD chips.

But I'm still not sure because I've been out of the loop since the days of Core2Duos. Anyone think the A8 is a bad choice?

Motherboards, I need something cheap as possible but I don't want to lose out on any features I might need - anyone recommend one? I don't care about graphics, the AMD onchip do-dah is no doubt way faster than my 7800 GTX, but I'll need a slot of some sort to add a NIC to - is PCI still a thing?

Oh, and will a PSU I'm using for my LGA 775 board work with an FM2 board - are there any new fancy connections?

I wanna spend about £325 tops and don't care about future-proofing.

Crucial M500 is £78.99 at http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A/?tag=ho01f-21

Can't go wrong with it IMO, my Crucial SSDs have all been faultless, they are regarded as highly reliable.

Not sure on the processor either, I'm pretty out of the loop.

SSDs use standard connectors, nothing special needed. You might want a 2.5" to 3.5" mounting bracket though (or some blu tac)

TBF, If you get a graphics card with Mantle, then that would be a good gaming PC, despite it's low cost.

If you're willing to go with an air cooler, I'd suggest the Scythe Mugen 4 cooler I used in my build. It's near silent even when maxing my i7 encoding video, and the fan rarely has to go above it's minimum speed. With water you have to remember that you have an extra source of noise - the pump.