Build for a friend?

Peerzy

Peerzy

Peerzy

Soldato
Joined
9 Nov 2008
Posts
7,125
Hi,

Looking to build a PC for a friend, her old one has just died on her. Some PC shop wanted to charge her £832 for a PC with Core 2 Dui 2.66GHz, 2GB Ram, 160GB hard drive, Gigabyte 351M Motherboard and a few other bits (wireless router, home setup, XP and Office etc...).

I was like :eek: then suggested I'd throw one together for her.

She doesn't need it to do anything other than email/internet and trying to keep costs down. No gaming or anything like that so no need for a graphics card.

I'd like to keep with the Coolmaster 335Case as I've worked with it before and found it great, the power supply I usually use isn't sold anymore so would need one of them, as for the other stuff I was just gonna go for the following:

Asus M4A785D-M Pro AMD 785G (Socket AM3) DDR2 microATX Motherboard
AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 240 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel
Samsung SpinPoint F1 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD322HJ)
Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM

that with the case, a random power suply comes in at £330 delivered but it's a bit overkill and I'm sure we can get the price down even more or use better but cheaper parts.

Any ideas?

Cheers
 
Biz.Kid09 said:
Well email and internet doesnt need 4gb ram so you can get 2gb ram and also a lower motherboard? If your not worried about graphics
Click to expand...

Yup what I was thinking but don't know what mobo to get that'll still work with that processor or if I can even get a slower processor?
 
I did an office build for the step mother a while ago. She's thrilled with it, but there may be a better i3 based option now.

e8400
Intel G41 board
4gb corsair c4 800mhz ram
Corsair 400W
Antec mini P180
dirt cheap hard drive/optical drive

I used this without the fan on the cpu. no one else seems wildly excited by this, but the two stock fans on "low" and the £9 heatsink held the e8400 at 75 centigrade intel burn test. Ludicrously quiet computer.
HS-026-AR_400.jpg
 
Msi G65 board? Rather nice, only needs a 4pin atx connector and a standard 24pin, so you can use any basic old power supply.
 
stulid said:
Msi G65 board? Rather nice, only needs a 4pin atx connector and a standard 24pin, so you can use any basic old power supply.
Click to expand...

I'd rather get her a new PSU, last thing I want is her new £300~ build going to crud because I reused a 6 year old 300watt cheapy PSU. Especially if anything goes wrong I'm likely to be the first point of call.
 
How does this look? Just needs to be the system, no need for monitor, mouse, keyboard, sound system etc....

Just needs to do email, internet, basic Office stuff like Word. Certainly no gaming, very little video playing or music or anything like that.

 
Right about to order this:

72205347.jpg


I've gone for 4GB of RAM and she doesn't want to be waiting around for anything she said, 250GB HDD instead of 160GB as it's cheaper. The processor, case, RAM and optical drive from my build.

Gonna chuck Win XP 64bit as she doesn't want Vista or 7 really.

Any improvements without spending anymore money?
 
peosonally, unless she used XP 64bit before, i would either get XP32, Vista or 7 on that PC, as XP64 bit can be problematic at times. this may include lack of drivers or certian programs just not working. this does include some mircosoft programs too inc windows live messenger that requires a workaround and Itunes amongst others
 
s452 said:
peosonally, unless she used XP 64bit before, i would either get XP32, Vista or 7 on that PC, as XP64 bit can be problematic at times. this may include lack of drivers or certian programs just not working. this does include some mircosoft programs too inc windows live messenger that requires a workaround and Itunes amongst others
Click to expand...

Really? I used XP 64bit (only for about 2 weeks though) and didn't really see any issues. She's a total PC novice and any problems it'll be me being called up so I'd rather it be as simple and easy to use as possible. I simply said 64bit because of 4GB of ram?

She doesn't like Vista and uses XP at work and has used it at home for the past 9 years so I'm just gonna stick that on it. I've never used Win 7 so wouldn't be easy if I needed to fix something. When I had my system (which is pratically the same bar gfx card and mobo) on Win XP for a few weeks it was stupidly quick which is the idea for her!

@PapaLazaru - Thats the idea, she was originally quoted £832 for a slower system to be build and setup in her home by a local PC shop. This is much cheaper and should do her for a while.
 
i ran xp64 bit for over 2 years, while its a very good OS for those with at least some knowledge on how to fix problems, i would not recommend it for any novice.
 
Bog standard 32 bit XP it is then, not too fussed as only means losing 0.75GB of RAM, and she hopefully won't be using anywhere near 4GB of it anyway.
 
Lots of people don't realise that the amount of memory shown depends on a micture of things. the chipset, graphics card, and OS.

XP itself, like most 32-bit OS's can register 4GB of RAM. This total includes everything like graphics cards, physx cards and the like. Meaning if someone had 4GB of system memory, and 2 1GB cards SLI'd/Crossfired, then 2GB of ram would be the graphics... meaning you'd only see 2GB of system RAM.

If you have a 768MB card like a gtx260, then you will see 3.25GB most of the time. You may see 3.75 if you have a 256MB card, or just an onboard. It depends on the rest of the hardware, and I'm not sure there's an easy way to check - its not like reviews will mention this.
 
Does she download mp3's?

If so, 160 could be filled up in no time. So allow slightly more storage space is recommended especially for a system that she will be keeping for awhile.

Everything else you cancut down on, but I wouldn't go down on the hard drive too much.
 
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