Building box for a friend, opinions needed.

[cryotek]

Alright my friend wanted me to fix his OLD packard bell which was a Pentium 3. I decided That I was going to just rebuild him something new. He doesn't really play games, though he likes WarCraft 3 and might play with us. And it'll mostly be used for music(playing and making mp3 cds, etc)

So heres the specs i've given him:
Athlon 64 3000+ Orleans core socket AM2 - 1.8GHz
PNY Optima 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 533 RAM
Asus M2NPV-VM with Geforce 6150 onboard video
WD 160GB SATA2 3gb/s (375MB/s) hard drive
Sound blaster Audigy SE 7.1ch sound card
creative 56k modem

total comes to about $442.93 (includes price of case, but not shipping so add another $20 for shipping)

Did i over kill it? i went semi-low end since he doesn't need anything super powerful, but gave him room to upgrade in the future if he wants to play different games. I gave him 1GB instead of 512MB because if he plays us in warcraft 3 he'll lag, our games usually take up 500MB of ram and its bad enough he only has 56k access.

I know onboard video sucks but like i said, he doens't need anything special i think this onboard will suffice for playing warcraft 3 under vista. If he wants, he can upgrade to PC-E video card later.

Any changed anyone would make?

[Drocona]

I think that's ok.

Athlon is fine, tho I wouldn't choose 64 bit but hey, it's just as cheap these days so why not!
The memory is a big overkill if you ask me, I can't remember warcraft3 using that much memory tho. I always played it pretty fine on my P3 1GHz 512MB RAM. But if it really does use 500 these days 1gig is fine.
I don't know what other games he will play but I always prefer a dedicated video(I hate onboard it always slows down everything). like a $20 will suffice.
Sata isn't realy needed I think, depends on what's cheaper, there isnt much of a price difference these days so I'd go for the best for lowest price.

Overall I think it's ok since the changes would pretty much be useless if you look at the price.

[cryotek]

lol, the reason it uses so much is because me and my friends play maps where its like 9 computers vs us 3 with pop 300 and about 50+ creeps on the map. Gets to be pretty intense, if he only has 512MB of ram, he'll page like CRAZY. i'll have to post a replay of how we play if you have warcraft =]

[HottspittaJr]

(Yes i realize this is old) (This is for those that if they want to buy a new comp again witch is now cheaper then keep upgrading the old!)If you plan on buying a new computer I would consider buying a refurbished dell! I got twice the bang for the bucks on it. But its your choice. This is what i got for practicaly your price (RECENT)(ALSO DONT FORGET ABOUT THE PRICE IS CHEAPER WITH THIS NEW TECH):

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.00Ghz
2GB of DDR2 RAM 677Mhz or close around there.
128MB of DDR2 RAM on a NVIDIA 8300GS - Not an official nvidia part dell SoundBlaster X-fi XtremeGamer Card make suspected
DVD Dual layer burner
Vista Home Premium - Maybe the evil, I'll find out!
Cant really think of anything else.


Also with Vista consider it as taking up 256 more RAM on board then XP
Dual channeling stuff is like a 50% boost in that area of performance.
Try not to use motherboard RAM for Video.

All this equals a great multi tasking and media comp! Great for allot of stuff if you do all around stuff on your comp.


P.S. $50 More - but if i include my rebate its exactly the same!
(but this is ahead of post time)
(Sad how you wish sometimes you waited it out)


But then again this is a year old post... Poop


Also i used to think a Pentium 4 was all i needed till now. Yup I fried my processor overnight!

[Drocona]

May I just say that Dell really is the WORST choice for gaming and upgrading on the run!

They have custom everythings! Some dont have PCI slots, some have special sockets, screwholes on the motherboard are in different places than normal mobo's so you can't place them in any other case than the bad airflow dells.

There is also ALWAYS at least 1 downside that makes it so cheap, I don't know what the above cost you but Dell isn't stupid and they are actually way more costly than a PC you build yourself. in this case the C2D 2.00 GHz is cheap.. it has less cache than the others and mostly they are custom ordered for dell implementations. that 128MB 8300GS card uses OLD DDR2 memory instead of DDR3 which was introduced way back in the 6xxx series, also it's a TURBOCACHE graphics card so it'll sap your SYSTEMS RAM. The RAM is getting a bit old too already but that won't be your worst problem.

I'm pretty sure I can get twice the performance for the same price if I build it myself.
This might seem a lot of crap against dell yes, but trust me it's true, I've done extensive research on dells, it all seems sunshine and heaven in the beginning until the point where something breaks or some mid-quality game doesn't run due to dell chipsets etc.