check please!!!!!

[snaggster]

Been asked by a friend to build him a new desktop pc.. The catch is, he only wants to spend £350.. He wants it for mainly photo editing, though he would like to do some light gaming. The only way i've been able to draw up some kind of system is, if i donate my old e6600 to the cause. Anyway can you guys give the rest of the spec alook over. Also i will be clocking the cpu to 3.2mhz as i know it runs loverly at that speed. will the mobo take the clock?

 

[snaggster]

you can buy a F3 500GB or western digital black for a little more.

I know but every penny counts. I have been trying to get him to make it £400

 

[snaggster]

When you say light gaming...just how light? Do you have an old optical drive anywhere that you could bung in (even an old IDE drive would do it). Or if you wanted to go for best performance NOW, you could always drop it down to 2Gb of RAM with a view to expanding to 4 later, and spend the remainder on a better HDD (only a few quid more) and perhaps a better gfx card/case/mobo.

He loves playing need for speed shift on my pc, so really wants to play that. for some unknown reason he has bought an 27" lcd tv (720p) what i have already told him will be rubish for photo editing. At least the gpu won't be taxed, thats why i think a 4850 will do him.
I had thought about droping to 2gb of ram, but as he really wants it for photo editing mainly in raw format using photo shop cs4, thought best to give him 4gb.
At he moment he is using a laptop with a low end c2d and 3gb ram, so he really wants to see an improvement over that. Dvd-r is a must as he archives on dvd's...! (Yes i know, bloody pain). I think if i sat him down to decide the componants he will go for a larger 500gb hdd (i hope)..
And yes he already has keyboard, mouse and windows 7 (pre ordered £49 last year still unopened!)
Thanks for the replys guys

 

[snaggster]

Does he have the receipt?

If it was bought online in the last 7 days he should be able return it under the DSR. How much did he pay for this TV?

The prat bought it from a mate in the pub, on the cheap. He sore it had a dvi imput and thought it would be the same as an 27" monitor. I wish he had rang me first. Ow well.
Am3 is looking promising.. thx gents. The only problem is i have no experiance in overclocking amd chips. Though would be a good time to learn.

 

[snaggster]

He wouldn't see a massive improvement over his rig by moving to an e6600 though, that's the real issue. Might even be worthwhile looking at a q8300 and having a chat to him about perhaps saving up for more RAM or a better gpu later on.

[email protected] should be more than enough for what he needs. The idea is he could use that untill he has money to upgrade to a quad core..