Constructive criticism on my first build

[Meat100]

Hi, I'm going to build a computer for a friend. Aside from upgrading my own computer (optical drives, hard drive, and memory), I've never built one from the ground up. His price limit is $1000 and he'll probably be using it for internet, email, excel, and he would like the option for some gaming. Here's what I've come up with for $950 so far (I just need speakers).

Athlon 64 3000+, 512kb l2 cache
ASUSnForce4 motherboard(A8N-E)
Kingston 512mb PC-3200(I'm also giving him and additional 512mb that I have lying around)
Leadtek nVIDIA GeForce 6600, 128mb (PCI-X)
Western Digital Caviar 120gb SATA hd
Lite-On DVD drive
NEC 16x DVD+/-R Burner w Dual Layer support
Mitsumi floppy drive(was cheap)
Cooler Master Centurion 5 case w/ 350 W power supply
View Sonic E90B 19" crt monitor
Lite-on keyboard
Logitech MX-510 mouse
Win XP

I chose the Athlon 64 3000+ for 2 reasons: it was a good price, and IF, say 2 or 3 years from now 64 bit computing comes to the home user, my friend has the option to upgrade to a Athlon 64 4000 or one of there FX series of processors and switch over to 64 bit. I was trying to make it so that in the future(2/3 years) he can easily and probably inexpensively upgrade his computer, such as choosing a better 939 pin AMD processor, choice to upgrade to a max of 4gb of RAM, upgrade to a better PCI-X graphics card as well as having the PCI-X expansion slots on it.

So my thought process about this build is that it will do what he wants, its not a bad computer for this price, he can do some gaming if he wants, that it can be upgraded in the future(2/3yrs) to spark some new life into it, and that its a better computer than what Dell can offer at this price(I talked him out of buying one, and not that there bad. Ive had good experiences with them in the past).

Any and all criticism is welcome, about the parts, my thought process, if something would be better or cheaper, what could be done better, the parts stink, or if I'm totally off the mark and he should buy his Dell. I want to make sure it turns out good for him.

Thanks in advance

 

[AwesomeJay]

i predict most replies to this will be asking you what kind of power supply comes with that case and suggesting you get a brand name one

 

[EndGame]

I believe it looks pretty good for what you described you want to do for him. You/he should be very happy overall. The board is very solid/stable, the 1GB ram will perform well and as long as he doesn't want to do to much gaming or try to many intense games, he should be fine until he can afford to upgrade the video card.

 

[SlitheryDee]

If he could stretch just a wee bit over that 1000 limit he could grab a 6600GT.

 

[Ike0069]

That PSU (with only 16A@+12V) is a little lean. Most likely will power the sytem, but he would have to get a better one if he wanted to upgrade parts, particulary the VC.
If you just like that case, I suggest buying the one without a PSU, then buying a seperate PSU. A much more econmical choice is the Sonata. It comes with a very good PSU for $100.
I suggest you get the G90FB monitor. It's a much better monitor IMO, and for not much more money.
I like everything else. I also went with an inexpensive Lite-on keyboard. Best one I've ever used.

 

[Meat100]

Thanks for the quick replies. Didn't even think about the PSU and future upgrading. I think I'm going to change to the Sonata case because its only 20 dollars more than the one I've currently chosen. Depending on how much a speakers end up costing (only looking for a 3 piece speaker set), I may look into that other monitor you spoke of.

Thanks again

 

[NiKeFiDO]

Originally posted by: Ike0069
That PSU (with only 16A@+12V) is a little lean. Most likely will power the sytem, but he would have to get a better one if he wanted to upgrade parts, particulary the VC.
If you just like that case, I suggest buying the one without a PSU, then buying a seperate PSU. A much more econmical choice is the Sonata. It comes with a very good PSU for $100.
I suggest you get the G90FB monitor. It's a much better monitor IMO, and for not much more money.
I like everything else. I also went with an inexpensive Lite-on keyboard. Best one I've ever used.

i second the choice for the Sonata w/ PSU

 

[l Xes l]

go sonata