Quiet PC for Dad

[Azzy..]

Since he has seen me buying the components for my computer, Dad has decided he would like something new too..

He has given his laptop to my sister and has decided he wants a desktop as he wants to play some games on it. (Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Dirt 2)

He also wants it to be able to run the applications i have so i don't have to bring my computer home over Christmas because i take the bus. I mostly just program using Visual Studio, but i also dabble in the UDK and occasioanlly use 3DS Max for creating simple objects (im getting better just need to work a bit harder)

Anyway he has a budget of about 500 for just the tower.

Would ideally like it to be as quiet as possible as its going to be in the kitchen and mum doesn't like computers.

Thanks in advance.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Will he be needing an OS included in the price and do you have any components you can re-use (such as case, fans, dvd drive etc.)?

 

[Mr Krugga]

£100 over the budget

Edit: I accidentally went a £100 over the budget. Missed out on RAM for some unknown reason

Comparison of Athlon II X4 635 vs Phenom II X2 555 (bear in mind that some say "Lower is better") - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Prod....50.51.52.53.54.55.56.57.58.59.60.61.62.63.64

£40 more for the Phenom II X4 955, comparison - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Prod....36.37.38.39.40.41.42.43.44.45.46.47.48.49.50

The motherboard will take any Phenom II CPU on the market - http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us, if you will feel a need to upgrade. It will also do Crossfire in 8x/8x mode.

PSU for highly clocked Phenom II X6 1055T and Crossfire Radeon 5770s:

System Type: Single Processor
Motherboard: High End - Desktop
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 1.3v 2800 MHz Thuban
CPU Utilization (TDP): 90% TDP

RAM: 2 Sticks DDR3 SDRAM
Video Card 1: ATI Radeon HD 5770

Regular SATA: 2 HDDs

DVD-RW/DVD+RW Drive: 1 Drive

Fans
Regular: 2 Fans 120mm;
LED: 2 Fans 120mm;
High Perf.: 1 Fan 120mm;

Keyboard & Mouse (included): Yes

System Load: 90 %

Capacitor Aging (+ W %): 20 %


Recommended Minimum PSU Wattage: 489 Watts

 

[Azzy..]

Will he be needing an OS included in the price and do you have any components you can re-use (such as case, fans, dvd drive etc.)?

No OS, as i allowed more than one key from MSAA,

And he is moving from a laptop so nothing is really reusable as the laptop is going to my sister.

Actually thinking about it we have a spare 80GB laptop hdd we can put in to the laptop and we can use the 320GB on we bought not long ago

 

[Azzy..]

Spec given..

WOW thats an awesome spec.

So AMD is defo the way to go on a budget ?

 

[Mr Krugga]

For your and your father's needs - definitely the way to go. It offers a great upgradability too.

The cooler is operating at high speed and is noisy when doing so. You'd have to set it up in BIOS to operate at lower speed. It does a great job though.

This spec is a little downgrade in terms of gaming performance and won't offer Crossfire setup but when necessary, there's always a possible upgrade of gfx. The mobo will swallow any recent Phenoms as well (after a bios flash).