can i improve on this spec

[toblarone45]

hey guys
I've got to spec a tower only for a friend who has a budget of £450-500.

This is for the tower only, needs to include the OS, no peripherals and he won't be overclocking.

It's mainly for general use and is attached to i believe either a 17 or 19 wide screen monitor with i think a resolution of bellow 1440x900 and i think the newest game he has is L4D but that's it.

I've had a look and come up with this:

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66I-01939)

Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS)

Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel (KHX6400D2LLk2/4G)

Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Black (No PSU)

Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM

Akasa Ultra Quiet 400W Paxpower Active PFC ATX2.2 Power Supply - Black Nickel

Total : £522.47

He'd really like something a bit cheaper and i was wondering if you guys knew where i could save a few pennies or should i get him just to push the boat out with regard to budget.

Is there a AMD route i could go down or can i save on the motherboard, etc.

Thanks

 

[toblarone45]

wow quickly reply thxs

and shaved off about £25 i think i'll head him in this direction. but is it worth dropping down to the 4830 to save even more?

there is also one thing - i think i can build a system reading around on here reading pointers you guys give and i get the most part.

i.e. motherboard doesn't screw onto case - use the little rises provided with the case, thermal paste - although not a problem with stock heatsink i believe.

but ok say everything work and i hit power and it boots into the bios - what do you do in there before you install the OS? if anything - is it like the clock, checking everything "looks" right? or is there more before you boot to the cd install windows, then drivers, etc

 

[toblarone45]

cool thanks guys so i guess the BIOS side is more changing the boot order/priority and making sure the HDD and DVD are detected rather than the fiddling with settings (few for i mins i thought i'd have to change RAM latencies or something )

spec wise i've combined the 2 and got the price dwn further (dropped to a 4830 as watching a vid on youtube they're almost identical) and kept the RAM pc2 6400 because i read that not all pc2 8500 is detected at 1066 and i'd rather not have to fiddle):

just got to run it by him then fingers crossed could try building and cable management

 

[toblarone45]

Hey all
Sorry to drag this up again but I've spoken to the guy i'm building for and found out a few things that might change the spec.

His monitor is 1440x900 and has a copy of Windows XP media center edition which he would be quite happy to use.

So with that in mind and a max budget of £500 i've come up with this:
AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

Asus M4A78 PRO AMD 780G (Socket AM2+/AM3) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Corsair HX 450W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-450HXUK)

Samsung SpinPoint F1 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD322HJ)

OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 Dual Channel (OCZ2G10664GK)

Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Black (No PSU)

Total : £494.29

is there anything obvious i've missed or anything totally incompatible? we can recover his IDE DVD drive so will be using that and i'm guessing using AM2+/3 it should also be a tad more "future proof"?