Compact build for my mom- good or bad idea?

[plagiarist]

She wants a more compact system. I can save by only buying what's necessary for a new form factor, re-using her optical drive, hard drives, psu, etc.

Thermaltake LANBOX Lite VF6000BNS Black SECC Gaming Cube Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811133045
ASRock A780LM AM2+/AM2 AMD RS780L (760G) Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157153
(2) G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231143
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz Socket AM2 125W Dual-Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103772
Thermaltake A4022 92mm CPU Cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835106135

The whole thing comes to $254.89. She'll be doing general user type activity. Nothing really demanding. I've heard about a compact computer at walmart for around $300 that comes with a 21" monitor and 750gb hd, so building might not be a good idea right now.

Think I'm going with some iffy components? The mobo doesn't seem that great but it fits the price range.

Also, holy crap RAM got expensive compared to some time ago.

 

[Pederv]

I would use a 240 Regor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103688

and double the memory to 2GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231144

I just upgraded my mom but I ended up spending almost twice what my original plan was because of the extras I got her.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I agree with the above poster, that CPU is kinda hot/old look at something in the 65W envelope.
That heatsink is also very cheesy, it's probably no better than a retail hsf.

 

[piasabird]

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=ddcwua1&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19

I have no Idea what you can get this computer with???

Dell is killing you on the price of the monitor. I purchased my 18.5" HD monitor from dell (Same one) for $90.00 when it was on sale. HD really brings out the vista eye candy.

Maybe DDR3 is now getting cheaper because large OEM's are shifting to DDR3 and increasing the supply of DDR3 RAM. Maybe there is a lot of used DDR2 RAM out there somewhere. Why does grandma need an after-market CPU cooler? Dell wouldnt use one.

What about speakers, and other things like a printer? I put a media bar under my HD Widescreen Simply because I did not want to waste the extra space for the speakers. So I spent like $100.00 on my 19" widescreen HD monitor, but it cost $35.00 for the media bar. I could have just used some old speakers. I bet you can find all the old keyboards you want at one of those recycling events. I am still using my old white IBM keyboard. It is heavy and all the keys work.

A good optical mouse is always nice. I bought a cheap one a while back at office depot or wherever. Sometimes the generic brands are not half bad. It says ativa on the mouse. I needed it right away. I am surprised it still works after a year.

 

[Fayd]

I just upgraded my mom

trade her in for a new model or something?

 

[fffblackmage]

I would use a 240 Regor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103688

and double the memory to 2GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231144

I just upgraded my mom but I ended up spending almost twice what my original plan was because of the extras I got her.

I agree with the above poster, that CPU is kinda hot/old look at something in the 65W envelope.
That heatsink is also very cheesy, it's probably no better than a retail hsf.

^Agreed with those two.

You shouldn't be looking at old cpus. There are plenty of affordable low end cpus to choose from anyways. That Athlon X2 240 is a good choice and you should just use the stock cooler. Low-end 3rd party coolers... just suck. I've had a couple before and they're noisy and unimpressive at cooling the cpu.

The computers at my school mostly have either 512MB or 1GB of ram. And these aren't slow computers either. Some have Pentium D's, C2D E6400's and a few had E6600's. However, the fact that they only have 1GB ram or less makes them slow to a crawl often. So you should get, at the very least, 2GB of ram.

 

[Pederv]

trade her in for a new model or something?

Took her to Cyborgs-R-Us

I was going to get my mom the 240 but went with the 620, either way would be a world of difference over the XP2000+ that she had.


plagiarist,

I noticed after I posted that you we going to get 2 of the single stick packages saving yourself $2 or $3 over the dual stick package.

 

[rudder]

Ever consider an atom based ITX motherboard? I have a case that is barely larger than a CD rom drive and it runs Server 2008 pretty good. XP would be a great fit since it runs on single core atoms in netbook pretty good. The link below is the dual core...

Motherboard/cpu $80 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121359
2Gb ram for ~40 (whew ram has gone up!)
Case $70 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811120015

or $40 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811108189
A little bigger but has a 5.25" slot to reuse the optical drive.

That first case has room for a 3.5" drive. They even get smaller with room for only 2.5" drives. But for some reason the smaller you go... the more expensive it all gets.

The atom cpu requires minimal cooling and can be very quiet... especially if you go with a notebook drive. You can even splurge and get the 40GB kingston SSD!

 

[piasabird]

being over 50 years old, I like the newer HD quality LCD flatscreens I think they cause less eye strain. I can only hope that one day my kids will want to buy me something. I like using HULU to watch different programs.

Goin to a tiny screen would be like torture.

 

[Mundos]

itx is prolly a good idea.

id stay away from asrock, ecs, and pc chips motherboards, as ive noticed a pretty alarming failure rate with the ones that have gone through my store. it doesn't sound like she's going to be doing anything too intense, so an itx system would be cute, cheap and simple for her. running xp the performance can still be pleasant.