How well did I spend $800 on a build?

[razor2025]

So my boss's boss at work asked me to build a computer for him and his son. He's moving from a 5 year old Sony. Budget was around $800-1000, lower the better. Here's what I got for him.

E6300 Core 2 Duo Retail + Free GRAW game
Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H
2 GB of Patriot Signature DDR2-667
NEC Burner
7600GS PCI-E
250GB Samsung SATA HDD
Antec NSK6500 w/ 430 watt PSU

Total came to be $812 shipped all from Newegg. From my guess, it's not bad. The son plays WoW, so 7600GS should be plenty enough power. Core 2 + 965 board provides upgrade headroom for 2-3 years.

 

[PurdueRy]

I would give it a 7/10

 

[Ayah]

I'd say it's perfect for that range.
Overclock it for more value!

 

[Kromis]

:thumbsup:

 

[tcG]

4/10

7600GT's are the same prices as 7600GS right now (oddly enough...).

Motherboard: Terrible for overclocking... should have gotten the similarly priced S3.

RAM: That Patriot was the best value around until RAM prices went through the roof... I would have gotten something more along the lines of this. (DDR2 800MHz + 3-3-3-12 seems pretty commonplace from these... they have D9 Micron chips, too)

 

[benplaut]

2gb might be a bit high for a $800, but that looks very nice for a budget system

 

[lyssword]

prolly not good idea to overclock a comp that is not going to be ur own..

 

[Zebo]

depends on your priorities... IMO 2/10 since you forgot a decent video card.

I would rather have a $60 single core A64 and x1900xt(7900GTO) than a dual core conroe and slow 7600GS within a $800 spec.

Yours is un-gameable at my LCD's native res the other is'nt.

In reality you probably should have dropped to 1GB ram saving the $100 to put into a x1900xt/7900GTO and gotten the GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 instead.

 

[dBTelos]

Considering he will probably never clean out the case, I could see how the temps could start rising. That Antec PSU has Fuhjyyu caps that are sensitive to heat (and Antec didn't include very good cooling on the PSU), I recommmend replacing it in a year or so. Also, I think a 7900GT would be a much better value.

 

[razor2025]

Thanks for the feedback. I placed Video card in lower priority, since gaming isn't the main concern for the computer. If I had $1000 to work with, I could've gotten Lian Li case + Modular 550watt PSU + 1950 pro, but alas, $800 was my budget to go for.

lowest 7600GS is still $30-40 cheaper than 7600GT, and you can easily overclock it to match GT's stock speed. Also, it's going to be running WoW, where CPU+RAM > Video Card.

 

[Hyperlite]

slightly off topic, but just to prove how important a decent video card is, i was playing quake 4 yesterday and i thought it was running a little slower than usual just because it had been 3 or 4 days since i had rebooted my laptop...when i was done playing, i checked the CPU speed just to be sure, and was startled to find that i had been playing on 2 1ghz cores for 2 hours.

so basically, there was very little change in performance at half the processing power. and this was only an X1600.

 

[razor2025]

Hyperlite is right 1/2 way. CPU-speed is usually second to GPU-speed, especially on shooters like Q4. There's far more intensity in calculating the graphics than the location of objects in the game.

I think what others needs to see is that building a computer isn't always about "uber gaming performance", especially if they're for people who's main use isn't in gaming. Sure 7600gs is weaker solution for gaming, but it's plenty of power to run World of Warcraft for my boss's son, and the CPU gives it the "bling" factor with "Intel" name. I'm a AMD fan myself, but you have to have a different mindset when making decisions for others on computers.

 

[acegazda]

Originally posted by: tcG
4/10

7600GT's are the same prices as 7600GS right now (oddly enough...).

Motherboard: Terrible for overclocking... should have gotten the similarly priced S3.

RAM: That Patriot was the best value around until RAM prices went through the roof... I would have gotten something more along the lines of this. (DDR2 800MHz + 3-3-3-12 seems pretty commonplace from these... they have D9 Micron chips, too)

That board oc's as well as a gigabyte dq6 from a techreport.com review...

 

[dBTelos]

I didn't mean more power, I ment better quality.

 

[thescreensavers]

Originally posted by: tcG
4/10

7600GT's are the same prices as 7600GS right now (oddly enough...).

Motherboard: Terrible for overclocking... should have gotten the similarly priced S3.

RAM: That Patriot was the best value around until RAM prices went through the roof... I would have gotten something more along the lines of this. (DDR2 800MHz + 3-3-3-12 seems pretty commonplace from these... they have D9 Micron chips, too)

WE can safely say his boss wont do any over clocking

 

[mithrandir2001]

Originally posted by: Zebo
depends on your priorities... IMO 2/10 since you forgot a decent video card.

I would rather have a $60 single core A64 and x1900xt(7900GTO) than a dual core conroe and slow 7600GS within a $800 spec.

Yours is un-gameable at my LCD's native res the other is'nt.

In reality you probably should have dropped to 1GB ram saving the $100 to put into a x1900xt/7900GTO and gotten the GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 instead.

Bad advice, sorry.

Single core A64? You'll get CPU limited really quick whereas a E6300 has a bit more life ahead of it. It's much easier and cheaper to replace the video later (which you'll have to do anyway for DX10!) than a new mobo/cpu/memory.