My roommate has finally decided to replace his ten year old Dell and asked me to build him a system for under $600. I've been building systems for myself as well as friends and family for years now so I'm pretty confident in the build I've come up with but I always like to post here before I order my parts.
He mainly wants to use this computer for media, storing and viewing his collection and the like. He also said he wants it to be able to handle conversion software (AVS and Ulead products most likely) and maybe do some very light video editing. I'm a bit concerned about the video card I've chosen because of this, but he says he doesn't intend to work with much in the way of high quality video. Also he intends to do some light gaming, he isn't much of a gamer but has expressed interest in a few older games as well as some of the newer Call of Duty titles. Don't need them to run at max settings or anything, a decent frame rate at medium settings is sufficient.
He currently has a monitor, speakers, mouse and keyboard he intends to use with this build as well as a copy of XP professional, however he has said he may want to upgrade to Windows 7 eventually so some of these specs are keeping a future OS upgrade in mind.
Also, this is my first quad core build (I've built three dual core machines but never a quad) so if there is anything special I should know about building and maintaining a quad core system please let me know.
Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100255HDMI Radeon HD 4670 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102820 (I've never bought a card manufactured by Sapphire before, actually I haven't bought a Radeon card in quite some time. If anyone has any advice about Sapphire it would be appreciated.
DVD Drive: LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD Burner LightScribe Support
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827106280 (He said he is fine with having just the one drive)
Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Aluminum Bezel , SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811119068 (Cheaper case but I've used one of these before in a dual core AMD machine I build for my father about a year ago and it hasn't had an issues so far)
With this setup along with some thermal compound and shipping costs this comes out to be around $580, he wants to order these parts within the next few days so any input would be greatly appreciated.
ok, change processor to AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition
the original phenom's weren't that good, if you could get thee budget to about $630 you could fit in the {henomm II X4 945
change the PSU, Raidmax makes total utter garbage, change to a corsair 400CX, itwll have enty of power for the system
change the motheboard to the Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P, AM3 for better upgradability
change the hdd to the Western Digital 640 Black Edition, a tad faster
Add my vote for the 720BE. And "Oh HELL no!" to Raidmax PSUs. Raidmax = Chokemax. http://www.corsair.com/cinema/movie.aspx?id=622747 The Antec Earthwatts 380 is only $40 now: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371005 I'm still waiting for a competent technical review on that OCZ; hoping it's a winner, but it is made by Sirtec, which has a dicey reputation.
I like cheap cases too, but have given up on Coolermaster due to minor but consistent quality control issues, like untapped screw holes and misalignment. ANY of the cheap[est] Rosewill cases will be similar inside, but not have the quality issues.
Oh, and with no (or little) gaming involved, a 4670 should be sufficient, or even a 4650 if you really want to cut the cost.
You won't need to buy thermal compound if you use the stock AMD cooler, which already has some applied.