Spec Check

[SH4RKY]

I'm building a PC for a Uni friend. Needs to be fairly cheap, have a lot of HDD space, be able to run archiCAD/WoW/Photoshop/Office etc. It will probably end up running a 22" Widescreen. She has a student version of Vista.

Is this spec decent enough for her needs? Wasnt sure on Mobo... Needs to be cheap (paid for by student loan )


OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK)
(£27.01)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775)
(£17.61)

MSI P35 Neo2-FR Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£70.49)

OCZ StealthXStream 500w Silent ATX2 Power Supply
(£43.46)

Samsung SH-S223F/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
(£15.26)

Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCS Extreme 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£111.61)

Antec Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case £29.99
(£35.24)

Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD10EACS)
(£85.76)

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
(£117.49)

Total £525
+150 for a sammy 22 wide.

Or is anything overkill and can be replaced with something cheaper??

 

[semi-pro waster]

I might trade the E8400 for an E7200 or perhaps better to go with a 750gb hard drive to save a bit of cash since hard drives are the easiest things to add later and get 4gb Ram with the money saved as I think CAD and Photoshop would benefit from the extra Ram. Admittedly it would be better to stump up the extra £25 and just get the 4gb with the E8400 but that might not be possible.

 

[SH4RKY]

Thanks for the reply

I veered away from 4GB as I believe the student version of Vista will be 32 bit...

Swapping out the 8400 for a 7200 and the 1TB to a 640GB the cost is down to £463.
I guess the CPU can be overclocked to 8400 speeds (if i can figure out how ) and as you say... HDDs only get cheaper and can be added later. When she fills the 640, will just buy another and stick that in.

 

[semi-pro waster]

I don't know about the student version of Vista but even if it is 32bit with 4gb Ram she'd get to use ~3.4gb of the Ram (the graphics card Ram will also be counted) which would probably still be an aid for manipulating large files.