Building kids computer...trying to keep under around 500$

Building a kids computer based loosely off my Computer I just built. (E8400, 4GB Ram, EVGA 8800GT, etc with the same case & motherboard.) I figure when I upgrade my computer in the future, my parts will just go into this one.

Case, Motherboard & Chip are decided, the rest are still up in the air. I am trying to keep this right around 500$ and I am slightly over right now. I have OS, 19" monitor, keyboard (might have to get a mouse). Wife prob does not think the kids need to play some games, but I thought I would sneak a card in there as well....

If you got a better suggestion for a video card, please speak up! I just grabbed a 8800GS as it is a 'poor mans' 8800GT, from what I have been reading.

1st 5 items are pretty much decided, under the ~~~~~ are not.

Rosewill R102-P-BK 120mm Fan MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811147111

GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128078

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115052

CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W ATX12V V2.2 Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817139004

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822148262
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EVGA 384-P3-N851-AR GeForce 8800 GS 384MB 192-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130332

LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model iHAS120-04 - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827106263

Added Mouse....used these for years, no problems:

Microsoft U81-00009 Black 3 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Compact Mouse 500
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6826105166

Message edited by y2kgtp on 07-15-2008 at 03:05:12 PM

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Hmm...E7200
P31DSL
2GB RAM
Get the antec sonata 3 which comes with a very good power supply!
88GT
and your set

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to bnbader

at least spend the money on a good corsair power supply and save yourself future headaches, specially if your gonna give em your old parts, don't cheap out on the powersupply you'll have to replace later !

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817139004

it's gonna hurt budget wise, but you wont have to replace it the minute you upgrade your kids stuff.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ E8500,GA-EP45-UD3R, 8 GIG MUSHKIN, XFX 4890 , ASUS 22", WD 640 X 2, CM 532, CM 650TX
Reply to royalcrown

bnbader wrote :

Hmm...E7200
P31DSL
2GB RAM
Get the antec sonata 3 which comes with a very good power supply!
88GT
and your set

I'm going to build in the case\mobo\chip as I had listed above. I use them and they work great, and take up very little space. Can't beat a 25$ case & 59$ Motherboard.

Reply to y2kgtp

ditch the rosewill unit..

Reply to cmashwin

royalcrown wrote :

at least spend the money on a good corsair power supply and save yourself future headaches, specially if your gonna give em your old parts, don't cheap out on the powersupply you'll have to replace later !

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817139004

it's gonna hurt budget wise, but you wont have to replace it the minute you upgrade your kids stuff.

Will do....I have the same PSU in my current build....and I see the price dropped slightly.

Edited my top post for items picked. I am at 540$ b4 shipping with 40$ of available rebates so still real close to 500$ still

Message edited by y2kgtp on 07-14-2008 at 04:10:11 PM

Reply to y2kgtp

The Earthwatts 500W is a very very good PSU i reccomend strongly going with what i said!

Reply to bnbader

Yah, if you look on jonnyguru.com...you'll find that a lot of the cheap high wattage units blow up at half load or less ad that the nice power supplies (corsair included) actually can run over 100 percent load and live.

Is it their bdays or something ? he / she / him / they are gonna flip...you get the cool dad award !

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ E8500,GA-EP45-UD3R, 8 GIG MUSHKIN, XFX 4890 , ASUS 22", WD 640 X 2, CM 532, CM 650TX
Reply to royalcrown

Get this powersupply - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817104953

Why are you buying such a big psu?

Message quoted 1 times

that hard drive only got 8MB cache what is he trying to do piss the kids off. 8MB cache on HD is horrible make it a 16 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822148262

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by bpogdowz on 07-14-2008 at 04:37:23 PM

Reply to bpogdowz

bpogdowz wrote :

that hard drive only got 8MB cache what is he trying to do piss the kids off. 8MB cache on HD is horrible make it a 16 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822148262

Well, the kids currently use an old laptop. 700Mhz - 168M Ram, 10GB drive running XP Pro....Anything is a step up at this point.

EDIT: Updated Drive to suggested.

Message edited by y2kgtp on 07-14-2008 at 04:41:21 PM

Reply to y2kgtp

royalcrown wrote :

Yah, if you look on jonnyguru.com...you'll find that a lot of the cheap high wattage units blow up at half load or less ad that the nice power supplies (corsair included) actually can run over 100 percent load and live.

Is it their bdays or something ? he / she / him / they are gonna flip...you get the cool dad award !

Well, the current laptop they use is quite slow (700mhz) and I want something that will last a while and easily upgradeable (aka my old computer parts when I upgrade MY computer )

Reply to y2kgtp

paq7512 wrote :

Get this powersupply - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817104953

Why are you buying such a big psu?

550W is not that big, is it? It is what I currently run for my E8400 & 8800GT setup. This computer will eventually get these parts when I upgrade my computer in the future (same case & MoBo as this build) in the future.

Think of it as kid computer hand-me-downs...... :lol:

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to y2kgtp

Y2kGTP...bpogdows is incorrect on the hd...the main attributes which determine the speed are the:

seek times/ rotational speed
and the density of the platter, the cach gets written to and emptied in a fraction of a second, and after that it is the speed that the heads can read from and write to the platters that is the limiting factor. 8 meg is fine and so is 16, but you'll never see a difference in speed based soley on cache size, save the money.

consider a sata drive with 8 vs 16 meg cache running at 150 for instance:

8 meg / 150 meg per sec = .053 sec to fill or empty
16 meg = .106 sec

after that, it's all from the platters
and sata 300 deplete and fill em in 1/2 that time. This is very rough math and there are other factors, but the cache deal is just for bragging rights or buffering when the system is busy.

Message quoted 2 times

------------------------------ E8500,GA-EP45-UD3R, 8 GIG MUSHKIN, XFX 4890 , ASUS 22", WD 640 X 2, CM 532, CM 650TX
Reply to royalcrown

royalcrown wrote :

Y2kGTP...bpogdows is incorrect on the hd...the main attributes which determine the speed are the:

seek times/ rotational speed
and the density of the platter, the cach gets written to and emptied in a fraction of a second, and after that it is the speed that the heads can read from and write to the platters that is the limiting factor. 8 meg is fine and so is 16, but you'll never see a difference in speed based soley on cache size, save the money.

consider a sata drive with 8 vs 16 meg cache running at 150 for instance:

8 meg / 150 meg per sec = .053 sec to fill or empty
16 meg = .106 sec

after that, it's all from the platters
and sata 300 deplete and fill em in 1/2 that time. This is very rough math and there are other factors, but the cache deal is just for bragging rights or buffering when the system is busy.

Yeah, I'm not sure if you could tell the performance difference really. Regardless, I bought a 500GB 32M cache for my personal computer :lol:

Reply to y2kgtp

I'm awaiting ups this am for my wd 640, upgrading from a 40 ide...so I can't wait !

------------------------------ E8500,GA-EP45-UD3R, 8 GIG MUSHKIN, XFX 4890 , ASUS 22", WD 640 X 2, CM 532, CM 650TX
Reply to royalcrown

Why such a big powersupply? Just get a corsair 450 Watt.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L*Intel E2180 OC 3.00Ghz Lapped*PowerColor ATI 3850 256MB*Patriot 2x1GB DDR2 800*Cooler Master CM690*Western Digital 250 GB*Silverstone Strider 600 Watt Modular PSU*Samsung Lightscribe Drive*CoolerMaster Geminni II Lapped Mirror Finish
Reply to SuicideSilence

I am thinking of this for a video card. It was listed on Tom's as best buy this month for under 130$, and this is 99$ with a 20$ rebate.

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 965-2.html

ASUS EN9600GSO MAGIC/HTDP/512M GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121255

EDIT: added to my list at the top.

Message edited by y2kgtp on 07-14-2008 at 05:27:38 PM

Reply to y2kgtp

SuicideSilence wrote :

Why such a big powersupply? Just get a corsair 450 Watt.

For future upgrades.....

Reply to y2kgtp

the 8800gs will destroy that 8600, but if your gonna give em your card then go for it, plus if they are lil still, lil kids games don't use much.

edit: link

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ew-benches

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by royalcrown on 07-14-2008 at 05:35:11 PM

------------------------------ E8500,GA-EP45-UD3R, 8 GIG MUSHKIN, XFX 4890 , ASUS 22", WD 640 X 2, CM 532, CM 650TX
Reply to royalcrown

royalcrown wrote :

the 8800gs will destroy that 8600, but if your gonna give em your card then go for it, plus if they are lil still, lil kids games don't use much.

It's a 9600GSO aka renamed 8800GS nVidia card. I would not even bother with a 8600 series, I agree.

Reply to y2kgtp

I'm not sure if the DDR2 on the Asus 9600GSO has the same effect on it as it does on the 8600GT. Same price for this 8800GS from EVGA that uses the 384 DDR3. I'm just not sure if you noticed the change by Asus
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130332

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to dirtmountain

dirtmountain wrote :

I'm not sure if the DDR2 on the Asus 9600GSO has the same effect on it as it does on the 8600GT. Same price for this 8800GS from EVGA that uses the 384 DDR3. I'm just not sure if you noticed the change by Asus
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130332

I'm not too sure what the performance differences really are, but the kids are not going to play Crysis or high end games, so either one should do fine.

Reply to y2kgtp

8800gt = very cheap as of late as well....

Reply to bloodymaze

Get the e2200 instead of the e7200. With that cheap motherboard, you won't be overclocking the e7200. At stock speeds, you won't notice a big difference between them and you will save $50.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to orangegator

orangegator wrote :

Get the e2200 instead of the e7200. With that cheap motherboard, you won't be overclocking the e7200. At stock speeds, you won't notice a big difference between them and you will save $50.

Motherboard is fine, it can overclock as well as any other....I just prefer mATX as I like the smaller cases.

Reply to y2kgtp

Or check out this article....

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/A [...] ,5846.html

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to ohiou_grad_06

ohiou_grad_06 wrote :

Or check out this article....

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/A [...] ,5846.html

No AMD for me....I want this PC to be upgradable from parts from my current setup.

Reply to y2kgtp

Dont go with that 9600 gso for $10 more u can get the 384mb 192 bit model

Reply to hawkeye21

How about this one:

EVGA 384-P3-N851-AR GeForce 8800 GS 384MB 192-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130332

Reply to y2kgtp

Ok..changed Video card to EVGA 384-P3-N851-AR GeForce 8800 GS 384MB 192-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Reply to y2kgtp

royalcrown wrote :

Y2kGTP...bpogdows is incorrect on the hd...the main attributes which determine the speed are the:

seek times/ rotational speed
and the density of the platter, the cach gets written to and emptied in a fraction of a second, and after that it is the speed that the heads can read from and write to the platters that is the limiting factor. 8 meg is fine and so is 16, but you'll never see a difference in speed based soley on cache size, save the money.

consider a sata drive with 8 vs 16 meg cache running at 150 for instance:

8 meg / 150 meg per sec = .053 sec to fill or empty
16 meg = .106 sec

after that, it's all from the platters
and sata 300 deplete and fill em in 1/2 that time. This is very rough math and there are other factors, but the cache deal is just for bragging rights or buffering when the system is busy.

Incorrect. a 16MB cache drive scores 5.9 on the Vista rating where as a 8MB drive only scores 5.3. Not the topic to be bashing microsoft's programmers now is it? The benchmarks don't lie. There you have it. A performance difference of .6 on the Vista rating chart. Oh and I can tell the difference or why would I post such nonsense.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by bpogdowz on 07-15-2008 at 06:49:46 PM

Reply to bpogdowz

I'm not too worried about Vista ratings :lol: I just don't want it to drag slow. If Vista seems to lag too much, I'll just put put XP Pro on it.....

Reply to y2kgtp

Well whatever my rig is faster

Reply to bpogdowz

bpogdowz wrote :

Incorrect. a 16MB cache drive scores 5.9 on the Vista rating where as a 8MB drive only scores 5.3. Not the topic to be bashing microsoft's programmers now is it? The benchmarks don't lie. There you have it. A performance difference of .6 on the Vista rating chart. Oh and I can tell the difference or why would I post such nonsense.

Vista scores are just cr@p and un-reliable. The best way to measure performance is to run benchmarks. For HDDs run HDTune to benchmark. Usually a 16MB drive is better than a 8MB drive, but depending on if it's a 7200.11/7200.9,etc the performance changes.

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http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3553/3818083596_1a772f7162_o.gif

Reply to Shadow703793

I dunno why you have a 550-watt gaming power supply in a kids computer. Keep in mind that dual GTX280's don't even use more then 550-watts (the whole system).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817153023
This 430-watt thermaltake would be more then enough. I have it and it works great. (its super popular for a reason) I have brought this up 4 times here so far, but remember that Tomshardware was able to SLI 8800GT's under a 400-watt power supply....

Also, an E7200 is probably way overkill. Kids generally aren't insanely picky on graphics, and a AMD 5200+ with an 8800GS would be more then enough to run games very nicely with 2xAA, 4xAF, on medium-high settings (on a 19" monitor.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103210
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813186141
The above motherboard is awesome, I highly recommend it.

My friend has a Q6600, 4GB of RAM and and an oldschool 7900GS, and his kids play the new lego Indiana Jones on it or whatever... it runs it on high at 1440x900... it actually looks pretty good hehe.
My kid's computer is running an AMD3500 with 3GB of RAM and onboard graphics... and it's absolutely plenty for them.

@ bpogdows comments... your hard drive argument is pretty bogus. Vista scores don't matter... like at all. There are lots of 8MB cache drives that outperform 16MB drives.

Just for the record, an AMD Sempron (which I also own), with 1GB of RAM and onboard graphics will be PLENTY for any homework/school/kid stuff.\

Good luck on your build.

Message edited by doomsdaydave11 on 10-11-2008 at 08:19:27 AM

Reply to doomsdaydave11

Get an HD 4670. I would say good enough for the kids or wait for the RV740 if you can.
For the Case get something better. Get the Antec Sonata III. It gets great reviews(just google or go to antec site) and comes with an Antec Earthwatts 500w and just for $99.99. I think it is enough to even power a quad core with a high end gfx card. And why such an old HDD, slow and with such less space? get something like WD Caviar Black 500GB for just $20 more. HDD speed makes quite a difference and a Caviar Black would improve it by about 35%. For the mouse, get this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6826105026 as it is getting better reviews at the same price.

Reply to zedx

+1 for 4670. Also you might be able to save money by going with a Corsair 400CX. Or the Antec Sonata w/ PSU.

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Reply to Shadow703793

y2kgtp wrote :

550W is not that big, is it? It is what I currently run for my E8400 & 8800GT setup. This computer will eventually get these parts when I upgrade my computer in the future (same case & MoBo as this build) in the future.

Think of it as kid computer hand-me-downs...... :lol:

550W is great not too big and plus it will give you alot of headroom for upgrading in the future

Message edited by Levi182 on 01-22-2009 at 03:51:02 AM

Reply to Levi182

Forum Homebuilt Systems : New System Build - Building kids computer...trying to keep under around 500$

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Building kids computer...trying to keep under around 500$

Forum Homebuilt Systems : New System Build - Building kids computer...trying to keep under around 500$

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