Shopping list for my dad's new PC

[nonoitall]

My dad's looking to move beyond his five-year-old budget Dell and wants me to build him a PC. The only thing he wants to do with it (aside from basic activities like web-browsing, card games, word processing, etc) is CAD. I've been thinking something along these lines might work:

[*:383e18b8b5]Rosewill R6A34-BK 0.8mm SECC 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
[*:383e18b8b5]FSP Group (Fortron Source) AX400-PN, RoHS, 12cm FAN, version 2.0, 2 SATA, 20+ 4 pin, PCI Express, 400W Power Supply
[*:383e18b8b5]Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3808110AS 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
[*:383e18b8b5]LG Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 10X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache E-IDE/ATAPI Super-Multi DVD Burner
[*:383e18b8b5]NEC Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Model FD1231H-302
[*:383e18b8b5]GIGABYTE GA-965G-DS3 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel G965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard
[*:383e18b8b5]A-DATA Vitesta 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit System Memory
[*:383e18b8b5]Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M sharing L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

All of his CAD is software-rendered, so I saw little need to go with a dedicated graphics card (though he should be able to upgrade easily if he wants to later). That's also why I picked that CPU. Any alternate suggestions or does this all look okay?

 

[shadowduck]

Drop to an E6400 and get 2GB of RAM. Easily overclock the CPU to 6600 speeds.

 

[nonoitall]

Yeah... my dad considers overclocking evil (I've been trying to reason with him, but he's being difficult). I'll recommend the 2GB's of RAM to him though. :lol:

 

[yas]

What does CAD really demand, i believe its the processor so yeah you better get the E6600. You could get 1 stick now and get the other later if youve got a tight budget.

 

[desolationw]

Surprised no has commented on the power supply as yet. I haven't heard of that brand(I'm from Ireland remember) but many people will recommend a Antec PSU.

 

[desolationw]

That's good to know, thanks.

 

[avarice]

Minor Correction - it's FORTRON not FORTUNE. Easy mistake to make.

I really like my FSP power supply - though any solid name brand should suffice for your father. If you ever intend to put in a huge power hungry graphics card such as the 8800 you will want to choose the PS very carefully - however it doesn't seem like that will ever be the case.


Cheers.

 

[SciPunk]

For CAD work, I would definitely suggest lots of memory. And in any case, you want to install in equal pairs... not one stick at a time. This way you will automatically take advantage of dual channel.

Since you're not overclocking, and you're not going SLI (or even any graphics card, for that matter), consider going w/ a micro ATX mother board and a small form factor case.

Tom's article on small form factor motherboards

Nice SFF case

 

[nonoitall]

Okay we'll probably order the stuff tomorrow. If he does decide to go with 2GB of RAM, I'm thinking this will work:

A-DATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

(Not many ratings, but they were good, and if they're anything like their 512MB cousins, they should be okay. Right? I'm such a newbie. )