Building a new pc for my parents

[joetheone]

Hi all, my parents are currently using a POS dell with a Socket 478 2.8Ghz P4. Anyways, it's slow as mud and they finally asked me to build them a new one.

This computer will mostly be used for surfing the internet, office applications, ect. However, i do want it to be able to handle the occasional RTS for when i'm home from college on breaks. Nothing too fancy though, med settings at 1280*1024 is what i'm looking for.

I'm looking to make this as cheap as possible, but the only things i can really re-use are the cd-drive, keyboard, mouse and speakers.

By the way i absolutely will NOT overclock my parents pc.

So here's what i'm looking at:

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138106 $69.99
- cheap, stable, and supports AM2+ for future upgrades

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103776 $58.50
- again, cheap, decently fast. Not going intel since i'm not oc-ing

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134384 $37.99
- 2 Gb of the cheapest brand name stuff i could find.

GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150275 $130.00
- is this overkill? I play company of heroes and sins now and i want to be able to play some future RTS at med settings.

HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822210003 $36.00
- i honestly no nothing about HDD's. I just picked the cheapest SATA 3GB/s drive i found from a good brand.

Case/PSU: I'll be going with the antec model used in the $500 dollar gaming PC article. It's not on newegg though but i'll shop around. Lets assume it costs me $65.00

Monitor: ??? Please suggest a good 19 inch gaming and general purpose monitor.

Total (with tax and shipping) comes to about $450 without the monitor.

Thanks for all the help guys!

 

[stoner133]

If it were me building it for my parents and still wanted to game every once in a while I would make these changes in motherboard, video card, RAM, and CPU.


GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Item #: N82E16813128090
$10.00 Instant
$99.99
$89.99

SAPPHIRE 100234L Radeon HD 3450 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
Item #: N82E16814102731
$49.99

mushkin 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) with EPP Profile Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 996533 - Retail
Item #: N82E16820146673
$47.99

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor Model ADO5200CZBOX - Retail
Item #: N82E16819103767
$109.00

Subtotal: $296.97
These are all NewEgg prices as well. With this board and card you would be running Hybrid Crossfire but would require Vista to do this.

 

[MrMeth]

Your cpu is a bit to slow i would get at least a X24800 if you want to use this to game on in the future !!

 

[lcaley]

I have a similar build in the works for my dad when the semester is over, except with mine, I have no plans of gaming in the future. Only office work and internet use.

case/psu:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16811173029
I know neither are great, but they don't need to be.

mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16813128076

cpu:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16819116036

ram:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16820145098

hdd:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16822152107

optical:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16827151161

reusing old 10x7 LCD, mouse and keyboard
Grand total w/o shipping $295.93

Not trying to hijack the thread lol, just giving you other ideas. Hope this helps.

 

[lcaley]

wow lol Stoner is quick (or I'm real slow :lol: ), sorry for the almost duplicate post

edit: By the time stamps, it looks like I'm real slow. Don't know how that happened lol...

 

[joetheone]

Thanks for all the quick replys guys.

First off I definitely looked into hybrid crossfire, and i guess i should have said that i'll be using xp 32 bit as my OS. There's no way my parents will be able to learn Vista. And i already have the disc for xp, so buying vista would add another $100 to the price.

I'll take another look at the CPU charts but i thought the 4400+ was faster than any of the 21xx series or even the E4x00 series at stock settings. I know RTS games tend to rely a lot on the CPU but do you really think that it would be that much of a bottleneck?

 

[lcaley]

The plus about the 21xx's is that they OC like a champ, even on the stock HSF. Those are my plans eventually, I think.

 

[joetheone]

Yeah i know about their reputation. My gaming PC is currently running an E4300. But since i'm not going to be doing any OC-ing i think AMD provides better performance for the money.

Quick question though. Why on all of Tom's charts do the lower clocked windsors outperform the higher clocked brisbanes? For example, the 4600+ windsor beats the 4800+ brisbane in both sup com and warhammer.

Also, does anyone have any good recomendations for a good LCD gaming monitor under $200?