Looking at cheap build or other suggestions

[theknight571]

I am in the process of a divorce and will be moving to my own place soon. Once I move out I will not have a PC any longer. It's not a huge loss, as it's an old Dell, but it gets the job done better than no PC at all.

As money has been tight for years, I haven't looked at PCs or parts for a long time. So when I started looking for a cheap PC I was surprised at all of the different flavors of processors etc.

All I'll be using it for is surfing, banking, Facebook type games, etc. I would like it to be able to run Visual Studio and Adobe Creative Studio apps, since I do work from home on occasion. I don't, however, use Photoshop or the video apps of CS very often. Dreamweaver and Fireworks are the ones I use most.

I'm not a gamer, and will address those issues if I decide to get into it later.

Money is going to be tight for a while as I don't have anything I need to put in an apartment or house other than my clothes. (This isn't a result of the divorce, it's been a long term loss of everything for both of us...lol)

Looking at "pre-builts" left me a little less than enthused so I'm looking at building a cheap PC.

I live near-enough to a Microcenter, or I have used NewEgg frequently, but I am open to other sites if that's where I need to go.

I have Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit, so my OS is taken care of.

I also have an external 500GB hard drive I can use for backup.

Here is what I pieced together from the current Microcenter ad:
- CPU: AMD FX-4100 Black Edition 3.6GHx Quad-Core (89.99)
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P (4.99 - Free After Rebate)
- Case: Thermaltake V3 Black Edition (34.99 - 19.99 After Rebate)
- PSU: Thermaltake TR2 Series 600 Watt (44.99 - 29.99 After Rebate) This may be overkill but I thought it and the case might be usable in the future, and after rebate the price was decent )
- RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR3-1600 (44.99)
- SSD : Samsung 840-Series MZ-7TD120BW (98.99)
Total: 345.49 (with tax) 310.50 (after rebates)

For $20 more I can go with the FX-6100 Black Edition Hex-Core... if it's worth it.

I might need to get a monitor as well, but I haven't determined that yet.

I also priced out an i3 version but that worked out to be 60-70 more. I might consider it if you think it'd be worth it.

I guess my question is... Is it worth building this (or similar) system or is there another option that might be better?

Sorry for the long post and thanks for your help.

 

[lehtv]

Actualy looks pretty good.

- PSU: Thermaltake TR2 Series 600 Watt (44.99 - 29.99 After Rebate) This may be overkill but I thought it and the case might be usable in the future, and after rebate the price was decent )

You will use less than 100 watts almost all of the time. Efficiency with that unit (which is advertised >72%, not even 80 Plus certified) will be terrible at idle and sub par at load. Thermaltake also isn't very good for PSUs. Better off with Corsair CX430 $27 AR which is 80+ Bronze.

I'd also recommend NZXT Source 210 over that Thermaltake case.