budget comp for 350$ your thoughts?

[OhioState]

Hello all my partents own a Mac (4 years old) and love it. My mother is a lawyer and father owns his own company and there are some things they need a windows comp for.
So i told them i could use there exsisting monitor and keyboard/mouse on a KVM and build them a cheap comp for 350$.Here is the build i would love to hear your thoughts.

My parents will NEVER play vid games or even watch a movie to them its office use and web box.

here is the build

Case and Mobo
Sempron 3100+
Corsair value ram 512x2 ddr 400
nec 16x dvd burner
Western Digital 250GB WD2500JBRTL UATA100 8MB Buffer - Retail i ordered it for 69$ shipped went up to 140$
and windows xp home edition (already have it for them)

for a total of 355.77

good comp for very basic use ? could i have done much better ? and stayed on budget ?

 

[Koharski]

Your spelling is sub-par, I would like to waste both of our time and point it out to you.
hehe, joking ;P

I think thats a great build. In fact, I may buy the same system myself

 

[imported_killuminati]

i suggest u get this instead of the MSI box :
Asus Vintage AH1 :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16856110043

its costs $132.99 , but it got better INtregrated X300 Graphics , and also allows u to upgrade to a better Graphics card Via the PCI-Express x16 .

Peace & ciao !!!

 

[OhioState]

Originally posted by: killuminati
i suggest u get this instead of the MSI box :
Asus Vintage AH1 :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16856110043

its costs $132.99 , but it got better INtregrated X300 Graphics , and also allows u to upgrade to a better Graphics card Via the PCI-Express x16 .

Peace & ciao !!!

i agree that is better but where do i cut 50$ from the stytem to make up the diffrence ?

 

[snoturtle]

Originally posted by: OhioState

Originally posted by: killuminati
i suggest u get this instead of the MSI box :
Asus Vintage AH1 :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16856110043

its costs $132.99 , but it got better INtregrated X300 Graphics , and also allows u to upgrade to a better Graphics card Via the PCI-Express x16 .

Peace & ciao !!!

i agree that is better but where do i cut 50$ from the stytem to make up the diffrence ?

If there only using it for office stuff and basic web browsing than cut down on the drive and memory

 

[bamacre]

http://www.tfnn.net/forum/index.php?topic=4578.0

 

[PansitPalabok]

Originally posted by: OhioState
Hello all my partents own a Mac (4 years old) and love it. My mother is a layer and father owns his own company.

your mom's a bricklayer??

sorry, to keep it in topic. I know, I know... Text

 

[OhioState]

Peace & ciao !!![/quote]

i agree that is better but where do i cut 50$ from the stytem to make up the diffrence ?
[/quote]


If there only using it for office stuff and basic web browsing than cut down on the drive and memory[/quote]

this is a good point but i failed to mention there addiction to Itunes and there 80 gigs of music

also they have a dslr camera (big files) and save alot of pics

thats why i went for the big drive (the memory might be overkill)

 

[OhioState]

Originally posted by: PansitPalabok

Originally posted by: OhioState
Hello all my partents own a Mac (4 years old) and love it. My mother is a layer and father owns his own company.

your mom's a bricklayer??

sorry, to keep it in topic. I know, I know... Text

lol look at my sig thanks much sir

 

[piasabird]

I dont understand why exactly you need a dvd burner.

I also dont understand why you need 1 Gig of RAM.

You running photoshop or video editing or what?

What kind of software are they running that they need that much RAM for. I use MS Office XP professional while running lotus notes and surfing the web and accessing a database system and I can get by just fine with 512 Megs of RAM.

 

[OhioState]

Originally posted by: piasabird
I dont understand why exactly you need a dvd burner.

I also dont understand why you need 1 Gig of RAM.

You running photoshop or video editing or what?

the dvd burner is because it costs like 10 dollars more for the burner instead of a combo drive future proof for 10$

and yes im begining to think the gig of ram may be overkill

 

[piasabird]

$10.00 is not too much to worry about. I cant help thinking you can get a new dell with a monitor for this much. Mayber I am wrong.

 

[OhioState]

Originally posted by: piasabird
$10.00 is not too much to worry about. I cant help thinking you can get a new dell with a monitor for this much. Mayber I am wrong.

i looked at the dell links
and there setup is somthing like

celerond processor // 256meg ram//80 gig hd for 300+ shipping or
semperon 3100+////1gig ram///////250gig hd for 355 shipped

also as far as the monitor goes they have a 19inch flat panel already (with the mac)
that i plan to use with a kvm.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: OhioState
Hello all my partents own a Mac (4 years old) and love it. My mother is a lawyer and father owns his own company and there are some things they need a windows comp for.
So i told them i could use there exsisting monitor and keyboard/mouse on a KVM and build them a cheap comp for 350$.Here is the build i would love to hear your thoughts.

My parents will NEVER play vid games or even watch a movie to them its office use and web box.

here is the build

Case and Mobo
Sempron 3100+
Corsair value ram 512x2 ddr 400
nec 16x dvd burner
Western Digital 250GB WD2500JBRTL UATA100 8MB Buffer - Retail
and windows xp home edition (already have it for them)

for a total of 355.77

good comp for very basic use ? could i have done much better ? and stayed on budget ?

$140 for the WD(plus shipping) or $90 shipped for 300GB Maxtor(warranty same @ 1 yr) use the difference to get the newer Asus setup <edit> or forget the dual 512 ..stay with your listed msi barebone and get a single stick of pqi for a few dollars less ..would allow adding a 2nd later much easier as the 754 doesn't do dual channel anyway..a single 1gb is much snappier than 2x512 in a s754 setup

 

[OhioState]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

Originally posted by: OhioState
Hello all my partents own a Mac (4 years old) and love it. My mother is a lawyer and father owns his own company and there are some things they need a windows comp for.
So i told them i could use there exsisting monitor and keyboard/mouse on a KVM and build them a cheap comp for 350$.Here is the build i would love to hear your thoughts.

My parents will NEVER play vid games or even watch a movie to them its office use and web box.

here is the build

Case and Mobo
Sempron 3100+
Corsair value ram 512x2 ddr 400
nec 16x dvd burner
Western Digital 250GB WD2500JBRTL UATA100 8MB Buffer - Retail
and windows xp home edition (already have it for them)

for a total of 355.77

good comp for very basic use ? could i have done much better ? and stayed on budget ?

$140 for the WD(plus shipping) or $90 shipped for 300GB Maxtor(warranty same @ 1 yr) use the difference to get the newer Asus setup

that price has changed i bought it for 69$ shipped 2 days ago man that thing went up

 

[zephyrprime]

Just buy a Dell. For cheap computers, dell can't be beat. Just wait around for a 40% coupon or something like that over at hot deals and then buy a dell.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: OhioState

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

Originally posted by: OhioState
Hello all my partents own a Mac (4 years old) and love it. My mother is a lawyer and father owns his own company and there are some things they need a windows comp for.
So i told them i could use there exsisting monitor and keyboard/mouse on a KVM and build them a cheap comp for 350$.Here is the build i would love to hear your thoughts.

My parents will NEVER play vid games or even watch a movie to them its office use and web box.

here is the build

Case and Mobo
Sempron 3100+
Corsair value ram 512x2 ddr 400
nec 16x dvd burner
Western Digital 250GB WD2500JBRTL UATA100 8MB Buffer - Retail
and windows xp home edition (already have it for them)

for a total of 355.77

good comp for very basic use ? could i have done much better ? and stayed on budget ?

$140 for the WD(plus shipping) or $90 shipped for 300GB Maxtor(warranty same @ 1 yr) use the difference to get the newer Asus setup

that price has changed i bought it for 69$ shipped 2 days ago man that thing went up

alright then reread my edit ..

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Just buy a Dell. For cheap computers, dell can't be beat. Just wait around for a 40% coupon or something like that over at hot deals and then buy a dell.

out of my last 9 machines I worked on 1 was one I'd built(ECS mobo ) 2 hps ..1 compaq and the rest were dell..one was Dec 2k5 manufacture..2 dead optical drives..they stonewalled the user but after 3 weeks back and forth they sent 2 refurb drives of those 1 was still dead..user not happy with dell ..told him to buy a nec dvd burner and he is much happier now ..this week have worked on 2 dells alone..while doing my regular job one had a wd with a few bad sectors and the other had a bad ide cable..guess there are more dells out in the world

 

[aniruddha23]

Step 1 Buy Dell with Celeron for 349

Step 2 Sell 19" LCD on ebay for 200

Result: Needed computer for 150

Cant go wrong

 

[tjpark1111]

back when i was a uber-newb, i didn't even know what memory was but later from coming to Anandtech, I realized I had 512mb in my crappy laptop. I do basic stuff like the OP does, listen to iTunes, type up documents, and 1 more stick of 512 helped a LOT. It's not like I couldn't do anything on 512mb, but 1gb just really helped out a lot, even for basic tasks. I would say get the gig.

 

[OhioState]

Originally posted by: tjpark1111
back when i was a uber-newb, i didn't even know what memory was but later from coming to Anandtech, I realized I had 512mb in my crappy laptop. I do basic stuff like the OP does, listen to iTunes, type up documents, and 1 more stick of 512 helped a LOT. It's not like I couldn't do anything on 512mb, but 1gb just really helped out a lot, even for basic tasks. I would say get the gig.

yeah i ordered all the above parts 2 days ago im lookin forward to makin the system

 

[plagiarist]

I'm in the same boat, I'd like to hook a friend up with a cheap but better computer (he's on a 233mhz.. shudder shudder gawd) for ebay, web use, music, etc.

I'd like to do it cheap, like this guy, same price range. Maybe he should just go the Dell route?

 

[bamacre]

http://www.tfnn.net/forum/index.php?topic=4578.0

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSale...E74CHA&~lt=popup&c=us&l=en&s=dfh&cs=22

 

[plagiarist]

Whoa, kickass.

 

[drum]

looks like bamacre is pimping dell outlet again :laugh:
nice work