Build for a friend?

[Peerzy]

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.

No music, movies or games at all. It will be a PC for using MS Office and the internet on. I would imagine 10GB will last her ages.

She's set on the idea of 4GB RAM when I told her when my PC had that running on XP everything happened pretty much instantly. CPU isn't too expensive anyway, maybe I could cut down to a lower one? As for mobo I've already cut that, no gfx card, no sound card, case I'd like to use as I've worked with it before, same with the DVD/RW drive. Power supply I know nothing about and just picked the second cheapest one?

 

[fizzy]

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.

This is partially true. Yes, a 32 bit OS can only address 4GB memory in total. However, its only the I/O address space that's mapped to this memory area, and not the whole gfx memory.

I was using a 1GB card and was seeing 3.25Gb for instance - was also the same when I was using crossfire.

Disabling any unused devices and bios caching options in the system bios may also free up some more. I did have my old xp machine up to 3.75 at one point.

 

[mame]

Slower RAM, bigger HDD that she certainly won't use (160GB is more than enough!) different processor and £20 more expensive (£30 over her budget ideally)?

Yeah so it's the next processor up and it has a bigger HDD. Not bad for £20. I think you just want to try and impress her by building it. There's no way I'd not buy that PC only to put together a slightly lower specced one to save £20. The Memory is the same speed. Unless you mean timings but i'm not going to waste time looking at the timings of a cheap internet PC.

 

[Liampope]

4GB ram on a web browser/word processor!! Crikey I know it's old and well due an upgrade, but I play games with 2GB ram! And a disabled page file - which is about the best 'mod' I've ever done.

IE starting up, etc etc, will be just as 'instantaneous' with 2GB ram. The £40 quid saved could then buy a slightly better mobo/faster CPU which actually will make things more 'instantaneous' for her. As above disabling page file will help with that too. Or use the extra to buy a nice wireless mouse or something. But seriously 4GB ram on that system is pointless.

I'm admittedly no expert, but that makes sense, right everyone?

Liam

 

[Peerzy]

Ordered this today, the RAM I wanted was out of stock but OCUK had some Corsair RAM on special so went for that.

Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X4096-8500C5C) £57.86 1 £57.86
AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 240 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £39.99 1 £39.99
Asus M4A78L-M LE AMD 760G (Socket AM3/AM2+) DDR2 microATX Motherboard £39.99 1 £39.99
OCZ StealthXStream 500w Silent Power Supply £36.59 1 £36.59
Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Black £26.95 1 £26.95
Samsung SpinPoint F1 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD251HJ) £24.67 1 £24.67
Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.46 1 £14.46
Order Cost Summary

Sub Total: £240.51
Shipping: £11.75
Total Vat: £44.15
Total inc Vat: £296.41