Another spec my mate thread,

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I have a mate who has asked me to build him a system round my now redundant gigabyte ds4 board. he wants to play games like supreme commander and command and conquer but he's not a big gamer,

most of his games are dx8 as he tells me dx9c games don't work on his system.

Budget is £450 - 500 max

it needs to be set up and forget for him and so far i have come up with this

Gigabyte GZ-X2 Black Midi Case £34.06

Asus GeForce 8500 GT 256MB DDR2 £56.39

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) £146.86

NEC ND7173 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter £18.79

Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache £46.99

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £52.86

Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU £46.99

Total 402.94

I'm trying to keep the price as low as posible for him but so he can still make the most of the games available

it's difficult for me to spec a lower end system as i know little about midrange parts.

any other ideas?
 
The E6600 is pretty much a redundant chip now, the E6750 is cheaper than it yet it's much better (this is due to Intel pricing revisions for later models of CPU's that they made). I would also push the graphics up to a x1950 Pro to make use of the "This Week Only" offer, and the same for the GeIL to the OCZ RAM on TWO. Below is a spec for around the same price but overall would be a lot better.

The only downside on this one is the CPU is slower at stock, but being £90 under max budget you could add to the processor with the remainder of the budget as much as you wanted and get it maybe up to an E6750. Swaping out the E2160 for the E6750 would make it £478.48 which is still under budget and a really good setup.

If you wanted to drop the price of this spec more, you can drop the case/psu Sonata combo and switch it for this instead which is good enough but looks a little more tacky. You can also drop the motherboard down to an Abit IP35-E and save a tenner as well, doing both would take you to £377.

Even better since you only live 5 miles from OcUK, just nip along and pick up the components and save on the delivery cost which is another tenner saving :-)

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Thats a good spec flibby i would the only change i would make to the spec would to change the Pioneer as it is ata and sustitute it for the samsung sata x20 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-090-SA at £19.96 inc
The Pioneer model is SATA :-) You may be getting confused with the "Pioneer 111D" which is the PATA version of this drive. The Samsung model could be good... although the Pioneer for me I find is personal preference, had a couple of Samsung DVD models die on me in my time and never had any problems with Pioneer. Probably vice versa for some people but it's just a personal choice.
 
The Pioneer model is SATA :-) You may be getting confused with the "Pioneer 111D" which is the PATA version of this drive. The Samsung model could be good... although the Pioneer for me I find is personal preference, had a couple of Samsung DVD models die on me in my time and never had any problems with Pioneer. Probably vice versa for some people but it's just a personal choice.

Ah ok Flibby m8. never realised that;), as the saying goes everyday is a learning curve:D I do use the samsung and its very good. But as you say, i suppose different experiences with different manufactuerers products result in varying preferences.

But to Ca9phoenix Flibbys spec is good
 
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The only issue is i'm giving him my DS4 Rev 1.0 which won't run 1333fsb so need to keep the processor below that. the rest of the speck i'm in agreeance with
 
The only issue is i'm giving him my DS4 Rev 1.0 which won't run 1333fsb so need to keep the processor below that. the rest of the speck i'm in agreeance with
Hmm, not sure what you mean. He's getting your motherboard I'd take it from what you said, but also the new CPU? If that's the case then the new CPU is 800 FSB and your DS4 will run it assuming you have to latest BIOS installed to avoid any compatability issues.
 
sorry i read about using the model up from the E6600 my mistake, will probably use that speck and then add a better 1033fsb processor
 
sorry i read about using the model up from the E6600 my mistake, will probably use that speck and then add a better 1033fsb processor
In that case you could check the Members Market, should be able to pick up an E6300 / E6400 for about £55 and that's 1066 FSB and a good CPU for the build.
 
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