Ok, my friend has just moved over to Wales and his dad has been given a grant for a computer from his new job. Now to spend it...
We decided on about £800 for the base unit only, they may decide to get a nice TFT sometime later. Keyboard/mouse and floppy + cd/dvd drives are being re-used from their old computer.
Mainly to be used for Internet, work and photoshop. Some games as well. It has to be reasonably future-proof in that it will have to last a good few years, but it's not likely to be upgraded much (or overclocked, for that matter).
I had a bash myself, but I'm uncertain on many of the choices, particularly graphics.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM - £144.95
Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard - £56.95
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 - £114.95
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler - £14.95
Leadtek GeForce 7600 GT Extreme 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £121.95
Windows XP Professional Edition - £81.95
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - £64.95
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - £48.95
Enermax Liberty 400W ELT400AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU - £40.95
Subtotal £690.55
VAT £120.85
Total £811.40
Possibly room in there for more if AMD drop prices as expected, stock levels depending. I don't know enough about Conroe to attempt a spec, and it seems like a good idea to take advantage of the price cuts rather than the latest and greatest thing. Same with AM2. I could be very wrong though.
We decided on about £800 for the base unit only, they may decide to get a nice TFT sometime later. Keyboard/mouse and floppy + cd/dvd drives are being re-used from their old computer.
Mainly to be used for Internet, work and photoshop. Some games as well. It has to be reasonably future-proof in that it will have to last a good few years, but it's not likely to be upgraded much (or overclocked, for that matter).
I had a bash myself, but I'm uncertain on many of the choices, particularly graphics.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM - £144.95
Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard - £56.95
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 - £114.95
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler - £14.95
Leadtek GeForce 7600 GT Extreme 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £121.95
Windows XP Professional Edition - £81.95
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - £64.95
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - £48.95
Enermax Liberty 400W ELT400AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU - £40.95
Subtotal £690.55
VAT £120.85
Total £811.40
Possibly room in there for more if AMD drop prices as expected, stock levels depending. I don't know enough about Conroe to attempt a spec, and it seems like a good idea to take advantage of the price cuts rather than the latest and greatest thing. Same with AM2. I could be very wrong though.