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Help with my first computer build

M

Meat100

n00b
Joined
Apr 19, 2005
Messages
9
Hi, not sure if this is the right forum, but I'm going to build a computer for a friend. Aside from upgrading my own computer (optical drives, hard drive, and memory), I've never built one from the ground up. His price limit is $1000 and he'll probably be using it for internet, email, excel, and he would like the option for some gaming. Here's what I've come up with for $950 so far (I just need speakers).

Athlon 64 3000+, 512kb l2 cache
ASUSnForce4 motherboard(A8N-E)
Kingston 512mb PC-3200(I'm also giving him and additional 512mb that I have lying around)
Leadtek nVIDIA GeForce 6600, 128mb (PCI-X)
Western Digital Caviar 120gb SATA hd
Sony DVD drive
NEC 16x DVD+/-R Burner w Dual Layer support
Mitsumi floppy drive(was cheap)
Antec Sonata Case w/ 380 Watt power supply
View Sonic E90B 19" crt monitor
Lite-on keyboard
Logitech MX-510 mouse
Win XP

I chose the Athlon 64 3000+ for 2 reasons: it was a good price, and IF, say 2 or 3 years from now 64 bit computing comes to the home user, my friend has the option to upgrade to a Athlon 64 4000 or one of there FX series of processors and switch over to 64 bit. I was trying to make it so that in the future(2/3 years) he can easily and probably inexpensively upgrade his computer, such as choosing a better 939 pin AMD processor, choice to upgrade to a max of 4gb of RAM, upgrade to a better PCI-X graphics card as well as having the PCI-X expansion slots on it.

So my thought process about this build is that it will do what he wants, its not a bad computer for this price, he can do some gaming if he wants, that it can be upgraded in the future(2/3yrs) to spark some new life into it, and that its a better computer than what Dell can offer at this price(I talked him out of buying one, and not that the're bad. Ive had good experiences with them in the past).

Any and all criticism is welcome, about the parts, my thought process, if something would be better or cheaper, what could be done better, the parts stink, or if I'm totally off the mark and he should buy his Dell. I want to make sure it turns out good for him.

Thanks in advance
 
64bit is available (XP 64bit) but right now usually more trouble than it's worth. Also for the stuff he's doing it's not a factor. However the A64 is an excellent processor in its own right, aside from the incidental 64-ness.

A64 also overclocks nicely...

PCI-X is a high-speed high-bandwidth server version of PCI...I'm pretty sure you mean PCI-E (PCI Express) as I haven't heard of a PCI-X version of the GF6600.

Might want to replace the PSU...bundled power supplys generally suck, and PCI-E video cards can be demanding. Also they use a special power connector...the card probably comes with a molex -> PCI-E power adapter though.

Given the target audience, it ought to be fine. You can probably shave some cash off by going with 754 + AGP...MSI is a good pick with their nF3 motherboards.
 
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