£600 Media Centre PC Spec

ajgoodfellow · 17 Jan 2007 at 15:37

Hi

A collegue at work has asked me to price up a £600 Media Centre PC spec that'll be capable of playing the latest games at medium detail/res

I've come up with this so far, what do you think?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.20GHz (Socket AM2) - OEM £79.99
Leadtek GeForce 7600 GS SILENT 256MB DDR2 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £58.99
Logitech B58 Optical Wheel Mouse (Black) - OEM £4.99
OcUK 1GB (2x512MB) PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £61.99
Abit KN9 Ultra nForce 570 Ultra (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £54.99
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £42.99
Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 Floppy & Media Drive - Black £14.99
NEC AD7170A 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.20
Titan Tower TTC-NK32TZ Heatpipe Cooling Fan (Socket 754/939/940/AM2) £8.99
Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU £42.99
Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Edition - OEM - 1Pk (M93-00200) £65.99
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 Media Centre Edition TV Tuner £50.99
Logitech Deluxe Keyboard (Black) - OEM £5.49

Sub Total: £510.58
Shipping: £10.95
Total Vat: £91.27
Total inc Vat: £612.80

Cheers

semi-pro waster · 17 Jan 2007 at 16:54

Conroe would be faster but also a bit more expensive here, I can't really see any obvious ways to improve the system given the budget and requirements so I'd say go for it.

ajgoodfellow · 17 Jan 2007 at 17:05

Cheers

Yeah, Conroe is definitely faster but the cheapest Conroe at 1.86GHz is £119 inc VAT so about £25-£30 more expensive

I'd have thought that, at stock, a 2.2GHz X2 would perform about on par with a 1.8GHz Core 2 (especially as it's the 2MB cache version) so I decided so save the money for a better graphics card. He's not interested in clocking

semi-pro waster · 17 Jan 2007 at 17:15

The 6300 at stock is about on a par with an X2 4400/4600 if memory serves so not a huge difference overall and given the limited budget I probably wouldn't bother either. If your colleague can stretch a bit further on the budget then a 7600GT would be a massive improvement and more likely to allow games to be played at medium detail levels. Maybe if you drop the floppy/media drive for the moment?

ajgoodfellow · 17 Jan 2007 at 17:30

Yeah - that's a good idea. It's about £15 or so more for the 7600GT and scrapping the floppy/media drive will free that up. Cheers - that'll be a more rounded spec