Suggestions on a pretty inexpensive system build

[bafiofromgermany]

My girlfriends sisters computer broke down last week, it was one of those wonderful 4 year old dell computers. Anyways, I am going to build her a new computer. A few things to note is she doesn't wanna spend money on a computer. In fact, I ended up talking her out of a 350 dollar compaq computer a few days ago. She also has 4 kids, right now the girls love playing The Sims 2 and will probably want to get Sims 3 soon, and the boy plays Team Fortress 2 at my house all the time. His birthday is coming up so I'm thinking of buying the game and putting it on this new computer for a birthday present.

I'm doing my shopping at newegg, and I came up with a product list.


Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA
$29.99
Have gotten this drive before, and love it.

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
$49.99
I would rather go for a 640gig western digital but this price point is hard to beat.

ASUS VH202T-P Glossy black 20" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor w/ aspect control
$129.99
I think they will fall in love with this glossy monitor, however if price is too high there a 109 dollar monitor that will work.

SPARKLE SX96GT1024D2HP GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 256-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI
$79.99
I personally feel with the kids that a decent graphics card is needed, if needed I can look at getting a Radeon HD 4650 but I hope she will go with me on this.

Rosewill RP500-2 500W ATX12V v2.01 Power Supply
Rosewill TU-155-P Black 0.8mm SGCC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Combo Deal $49.99
Cheap cheap cheap, this is a combo deal special going on right now and I think will work well for this build.

GIGABYTE GA-EP43-UD3L LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard
WINTEC AMPX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
Combo $119.98
I love gigabyte motherboards, never had any troubles with one yet. The memory is 10 dollars off with this combo deal so looks like a decent deal on it.

Intel Pentium E6300 Wolfdale 2.8GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80571E6300
ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink
$110.48
I do want to overclock the cpu to maybe 3.4 or so GHz nothing extreme but give the cpu alittle more juice. I know this Zalman cpu fan is not the best but I'll get 10 dollars off of it and it'll be better than any intel cpu fan.

First off I want to make sure everything looks okay in this list, and all these parts will be compatible with each other. To me this list looks good, but I might be overlooking something.

Now the final price with shipping is going to be just under 600 bucks. She may freak out on me since she thinks a high end computer should cost about 450 dollars. I do have some wiggling room though. I can get a cheaper monitor and video card. I can also use the stock cpu fan and forget about overclocking much.

I'm gonna go over this list with her tomorrow Saturday 12th. My main question is what would you do to bring down the cost of this machine if needed. Hopefully we can get these parts all ordered tomorrow but I gotta funny feeling the price will need to go down before I order anything.

 

[zach538467]

You could go E5200 instead and use the stock cooler. Easy 3.0+ overclocks even with the stock cooler and should be fine for her and the kids usage.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116072

GPU you could go with a 4670, not a bad card, and passively powered to boot.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102854

 

[bafiofromgermany]

Yeah, the stock cooler in this instance will work good enough. After thinking and looking over it more there's no need for a better fan. That will alone bring the price down an extra 20 some dollars.

I'm thinking if this price isn't good enough I'll downgrade the monitor, and if it's still not good enough I'll do a small downgrade on the cpu and gpu. Thanks for the help.