Can anyone look over this rough spec?

[Werewolf]

I've been asked to look at upgrading my nephews PC for christmas so i've been trying to find a decent cheapish spec that will allow him to play games to a reasonably good level.

I think we'll be able to reuse his current case and hard drives, but everything else inside the case is going to need replacing (it's an old P4 1.8ghz system I built him about 3 years ago out of my spares).

Tagan TG430-U15 430W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU £42.99
(£50.51) £42.99
(£50.51)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz (800FSB) - Retail £46.99
(£55.21) £46.99
(£55.21)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2900 GT SILENT Heatpipe 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (21123-00-40R) £87.99
(£103.39) £87.99
(£103.39)
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA804) £43.99
(£51.69) £43.99
(£51.69)
Asus P5K SE Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Pioneer DVR-112DBK 18x18 DVD±RW IDE Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM £14.99
(£17.61) £14.99
(£17.61)


Total is about £360 inc shipping.
The videocard is possibly overkill, but given the 1950's and 2400's etc are only marginally cheaper i though it's better to go with that.
Unless there is a very good reason i'm probably going to stick with the core2duo CPU (I tend to have less problems with intel based systems for some reason).



Thanks in advance

 

[Van Diemen]

Nice setup there. If system is not going to be Oced, I would go for cheaper RAM and the Abit IP35-E. You could add the saving towards something else, maybe better graphics, game are getting very demanding nowadays.

 

[Yiuca]

Well Core 2 Duo outperforms AMDs at the moment anyway, It's looking as though they may pounce over Phenom too... But it still remains to be seen. Anyway the CPU if you ever want can be overclocked pretty well... I dont know if you'll be doing any of that considering it's for a nephew.

As I mentioned earlier in another thread: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-083-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=416 better performance (quite abit, if we go by recent benchmarks) & only £10 more (or basically better value for better performance, the performance rise outweighs the small increase in price), It's upto you if you think it is worth it, but if you were to overclock you could get the most out of the card too, just mentioning... Your choices here.

 

[Werewolf]

Thanks for the comments
I'll definately look into cheaper ram, but I suspect i'll end up with Crucial of some kind (the warranty is superb and no hassle - i had to rma some ram that was about 3 years old and had a replacement module 72 hours later).

The video card is definately worth looking into, i'm having a chat with my brother in law tomorrow to see exactly what the budget will be

It's kind of sad that my nephews machine is likely to end up considerably faster than my own one (at least for a while)