Suggestions on Budget System

cambrosecambrose
edited November 2006 in Hardware
For XMAS, my parents decided that they are going to give him some money to upgrade his old system (athlon xp old). So he asked me to help him out. I've never really had a money limit on my own stuff, so this is where the problem lays. For the price, what is the best to build with (from mobo to ram to proc) I'm fond of amd, but would be willing to go to intel. He is going to be using it to play WoW, the net, and school papers. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2006
    called4more, what kind of budget does your buddy have? We need to know what he can spend before making recommendations. :)
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited November 2006
    This may sound starnge, but if you want to game you almost have to start with the GPU and work backwards.

    For some good outside advice try this
    http://anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2861
    They go step-by-step and lay out some options.

    You can build AMD for less money, but Intel has the power.
  • cambrosecambrose
    edited November 2006
    I think he's going to have around 700. That's plenty for a WoW box though, correct. He's going to go socket 939 (bang for buck)
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2006
    OK, here's a suggestion for your budget build. I assume your buddy plans to reuse his psu, case and optical drive here. Otherwise it's not worth building the machine for a $700 budget.

    Processor - Opteron 165 at Newegg. Dual core proc, so it will age well with tomorrow's multithreaded games and they overclock nicely. Also, the stock cooler is a great hsf and if you upgrade the fan to something pushing around 40 cfm should do him nicely even when overclocking.

    Mobo - Asrock 939Dual VSTA at Newegg. Good budget board base, not too expensive.

    Ram - A-DATA Vitesta 2GB (2 x 1GB) at Newegg. A 2 X 1GB kit with half decent timings and a great price.

    Hard Drive - 320 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 at Newegg. I figure he probably needs a bigger hard drive anyways. But if he plans to use his present hard drive, then he can spend some extra money on the vid card.

    Vid Card (with new hard drive purchase) - eVGA 256-P2-N554-AX Geforce 7600GT at Newegg. Decent performance for a decent price.

    Vid Card (without new hard drive) - eVGA 256-P2-N624-AR GeForce 7900GS 256MB at Newegg. If he can get by with his old hard drive, this vid card will give quite a bit better performance than the 7600GT vid card. It also uses a 256 bit memory interface instead of the 128 bit memory interface of the 7600GT.

    Total with new hard drive configuration: $684.17 including shipping.

    Total without new hard drive configuration: $627.20 including shipping.
  • cambrosecambrose
    edited November 2006
    That's a good idea. I like it a lot.Asrock won't have much oc room. Does that mobo have room for 4gb of ram? WoW is a ram hog.
  • miragemirage
    edited November 2006
    muddocktor wrote:
    OK, here's a suggestion for your budget build. I assume your buddy plans to reuse his psu, case and optical drive here. Otherwise it's not worth building the machine for a $700 budget.

    Processor - Opteron 165 at Newegg. Dual core proc, so it will age well with tomorrow's multithreaded games and they overclock nicely. Also, the stock cooler is a great hsf and if you upgrade the fan to something pushing around 40 cfm should do him nicely even when overclocking.

    Mobo - Asrock 939Dual VSTA at Newegg. Good budget board base, not too expensive.

    Ram - A-DATA Vitesta 2GB (2 x 1GB) at Newegg. A 2 X 1GB kit with half decent timings and a great price.

    Hard Drive - 320 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 at Newegg. I figure he probably needs a bigger hard drive anyways. But if he plans to use his present hard drive, then he can spend some extra money on the vid card.

    Vid Card (with new hard drive purchase) - eVGA 256-P2-N554-AX Geforce 7600GT at Newegg. Decent performance for a decent price.

    Vid Card (without new hard drive) - eVGA 256-P2-N624-AR GeForce 7900GS 256MB at Newegg. If he can get by with his old hard drive, this vid card will give quite a bit better performance than the 7600GT vid card. It also uses a 256 bit memory interface instead of the 128 bit memory interface of the 7600GT.

    Total with new hard drive configuration: $684.17 including shipping.

    Total without new hard drive configuration: $627.20 including shipping.


    I can not agree more. By the way, called4more, 939Dual is a "good" overclocker, just google it.
  • cambrosecambrose
    edited November 2006
    Okay, I didn't know that. I'll take your word for it. I've just always heard great about asus and dfi.
  • miragemirage
    edited November 2006
    This is just one of the links you can find in Google.
    http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=6224

    It was already a well known board when I bought. Actually I am a late comer since I could not afford to buy AthlonX2 and Opteron before the recent price cuts, thanks to Core 2. Yeah, I heard about Asus and DFI too :)
  • cambrosecambrose
    edited November 2006
    I believe you, just never really heard of them before.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2006
    FYI, Asrock is actually a subsidiary of Asus. It's Asus's value brand. So when you see Asrock, you can also figure there's a little Asus design work in it too.
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