General non gaming PC spec please

Andrew G · 7 Apr 2009 at 22:59

Hi People,

I am wanting to upgrade an old PC for a friend, they have an old Althlon XP system that has finally died and gone to Silicon heaven.

They are willing to reuse:

PSU: Corsair VX 450W (recently replaced)
Monitor 19" DGM value
Keyboard and mouse
3 hard drives.
CD RW/DVD ROM

Their use is just general e-mailing, internet surfing, no gaming. They will be burning DVD's but do not need light scribe, however the price difference is so small may as well have one is my advice. They do some video/audio editing and encoding/decoding. Overall they would like a quieter PC since it might be left on in a bedroom.

I have spec'ed the below but am unsure of the graphics card needed for video editing since i don't even go near it so I spec'ed a fanless one with a reasonable warranty.

Any input would be great, thanks people.

Ooo BUDGET around the £400 but I am sure I can get a few extra £'s if there is a sweet spot around that poundAGE.

Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU)
Akasa AK-191-SM Smoke Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin x 2QTY

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail
Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775)
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 X 2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX8500D2K2/4G)

Gainward GeForce 9500 GT "Silent" 512MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

95thrifles · 7 Apr 2009 at 23:02

looks like a sound build, though if the HDD's are older than a year na new one would be good

KingZeddy · 7 Apr 2009 at 23:13

An alternative from oc:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7750+ Black Edition 2.70GHz (includes heatsink and fan) / Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard / OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500 Gold Edition Bundle £167.22 inc VAT
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) £50.59 inc VAT
Asus ATI Radeon HD 3650 Vcool Silent 512MB GDDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £54.04 inc VAT
total £272+ delivery

Andrew G · 8 Apr 2009 at 14:26

Thanks for replies, the AMD alternative is not in stock and i was hoping to order it today and maybe get it on the saturday. I have changed for the ASUS card though and the 3 year warranty seems good for a fanless card. plus I have spec'ed a few extra fans for the front of the case to keep good airflow for possible future over clocking which sould help the fanless keep cooler. (I have fitted fanless before to a friends machine only lasted 18months before over heating issues). Also added an IDE DVD RW a bit old school I know but a lot of the hard drive DOS tools only seem to work with IDE drives and not SATA ones when trying to boot from disc. Unless someone knows of a better way so I should/can get a sata DVD RW drive??

* Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU)
* Akasa AK-191-SM Smoke Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin x 2QTY

* Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail
* Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
* Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775)
* Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 X 2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX8500D2K2/4G)
* Asus ATI Radeon HD 3650 Vcool Silent 512MB GDDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
* Samsung SH-S202N/BEBN 20x DVD±RW IDE Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM