New PC Spec please

rctneil · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:05

Hello,
I am going to be building a pc for a neighbour who runs his own business, does not play any games but would like it overspecced for what he needs to do to keep it sort of future proof. What sort of spec would you guys reccomend?

I was thinking a Q6600 for the cpu but not sure on the GPU or mobo?

Any ideas?

Thanks

Regards,
Neil

fobose · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:07

It may help us if you say what the PC is going to be used for? General office use?

rctneil · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:07

yeh, general office use and web browsing mainly

fobose · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:16

I should have also asked before, do you need a complete PC, as in, monitor, keyb+mouse and an OS?

rctneil · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:18

I'm mainly concerned with getting help on choosing the cpu, gpu and mobo as the rest are pretty easy, was gonna go Vista home premium 64bit and find a decnt keyboard and mouse and monitor

fobose · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:23

Ah ok. For CPU I would go with the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail. Apposed to the Q6600 as for general office use 4 cores wont make any difference over 2, and the faster speedshould help future proof the PC. This is still really overkill.

GPU wise I would go for one of these: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3450 Silence 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail. Its an absolute bargain at £30 and is fanless and the 512mb will be usefull for Vista's aero.

The motherboard depends if you want to RAID. I personally like to RAID 1 my computers as if a hard drive fails, there is no down time on the computer (except switching over the broken hard drive for a new one), and no time wasted having to reinstall everything.

rctneil · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:25

Not too bothered about RAId as that is just another HDD I have to add into the cost - The CPU and GPU sound excellent

fobose · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:25

But what will it cost him in down time if the HDD fails?

For no RAID, I would get this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Looks like it supports wolfdale out the box too. Actually looks like it supports RAID anyway

Godsbrother · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:27

fobose said:
But what will it cost him in down time if the HDD fails?

Yea especially if he's running his business on it.... and you built it!!! Think of the phone calls!!

rctneil · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:29

I'll ask him about raid 1 protection tommorow

Godsbrother · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:31

rctneil said:
I'll ask him about raid 1 protection tommorow

or maybe tonight

rctneil · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:32

why tonight? - I have said I will speak to him tommorow. I'm confused with that last post!

Godsbrother · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:36

rctneil said:
why tonight? - I have said I will speak to him tommorow. I'm confused with that last post!

ha just a little light heartedness

fobose · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:42

I would go for something like this

Antec NSK 4480B Mini Tower Case (Black) - 380W Earth Watts PSU
MSI P31 Neo2-FR Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK)
TWO x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3250410AS)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3450 Silence 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Samsung SM-2253LW Aqua 21.6" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black
Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 700 v2 (M7A-00027)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66I-01939)
LG GH20NS15 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM

Total : £608.46

Depending how much he wants to spend you could bump the cpu up a bit to what I recommended earlier but I think this would be perfectly fine.