Parts for a freind

[KoolDrew]

A freind of mine wants to build a new PC. He is going to be uisng it for mostly just web-surfing talking on aim and some video editing. He can spend up to $1,000. He also is not going to be doing any gaming on this thing so a cheap Radeon 9000 would do. This is what I chose for him. Tell me any suggestions.

ANTEC Black Performance Series II SOHO File Server Tower ATX Case with 400W Power Supply
AMD Athlon 64 2800+ 1.8GHz "Newcastle" Processor Retail - $127
Chaintech VNF3-250 NForce3 250 Motherboard Retail - $73
Mushkin 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC3200 Retail - $74
Samsung 160GB 7200RPM Hard Drive - $91.69
NEC 16X Double Layer DVD+/-RW Drive Black - $68
ATI RADEON 9000 Video Card - $39.00
NEC 1.44MB Black Internal Floppy Drive - $9.99
LG Silver 17" LCD Monitor 16ms DVI/VGA Input - $289
Microsoft Windows XP Professional With Service Pack 2 -OEM - $143

He will also not be overclocking. I was thinking he could get a larger CRT. Like a 19" which would be better. He also does not need speakers, keyboard, mouse and floppy drive as he is using the ones from his old PC.

 

[Deucer]

19in CRT = 17in LCD. as far as viewable area goes. When i went from a 17in CRT that I had for 4 years to a 19in LCD my head almost exploded because the screen was so big . LCD's have drawbacks like native resolution, which you should explain to your friend, but a 17in LCD should be fine if you are comparing to 19in CRT on screen size only.

 

[KoolDrew]

OK thanks. Any suggestions on the other parts?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew
OK thanks. Any suggestions on the other parts?

Yes... For video editing, he'll need another 512mb.
And some way to capture the video he's going to be editing. If he's just capturing from a DV camcorder... Firewire.

 

[KoolDrew]

Any suggestions on some way to capture the video he's going to be editing.

 

[KoolDrew]

He really should at least have some cheapie speakers to hear how the audio sounds with his video editing.

I already said in my first post that he will use his old speakers.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, there is the budget constraint.

But -- taking leave of that consideration briefly -- if he plans on video editing, a single ATA100 drive and its speed limitation may lead to frame-dropouts, and they usually recommend a second drive to avoid competing between OS and software drive access versus accessing video files. A way around this would be to insure at least that the drive is an SATA150. What would be even better are two SATA150's -- one for software installation and one for working vid files. Or an SATA150 RAID0 would eliminate the need for two separate drive volumes on different physical disks -- although I have found that you still want to defragment a RAID array frequently when doing video work.

But then there's the budget constraint. And again, video work would also benefit greatly from doubling the choice of memory you plan to socket (and I hope you mean 2x256 modules as dual-channel). Again, I'm no AMD expert, but . . . .

Has your friend given any thought to what sort of video capture-card he plans to use?

Also -- given these other thoughts -- I don't know how much the Antec case/PSU bundle will cost, although I think you would've included the price in the budget if it not already been purchased. If it has not been purchased, you might find a free full-tower case by trading cyber-junk with a local "computer-recycling/surplus/repair" business, but then you have to buy the PSU.

 

[kornphlake]

if your pal isn't gaming and is on a budget does he really need an athlon 64? Why not get an Athlon XP with an NForce2 board and DDR PC2700 memory, it'll save you $50, or more, that could be put toward a second harddrive or more memory, also drop windows xp pro in favor of xp home to save a few more dollars. The wording of the original post lead me to believe that the main use would be for surfing the internet and AIM with occasional video editing, in which case a cutting edge processor and motherboard aren't really necessary, heck get him a dell with a fast processor and a gig of ram for that matter.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: kornphlake
if your pal isn't gaming and is on a budget does he really need an athlon 64? Why not get an Athlon XP with an NForce2 board and DDR PC2700 memory, it'll save you $50, or more, that could be put toward a second harddrive or more memory, also drop windows xp pro in favor of xp home to save a few more dollars. The wording of the original post lead me to believe that the main use would be for surfing the internet and AIM with occasional video editing, in which case a cutting edge processor and motherboard aren't really necessary, heck get him a dell with a fast processor and a gig of ram for that matter.

Could you give any suggestions for CPU, mobo and RAM then? and also anything else?

 

[kornphlake]

I don't have the time to really dig into it, I know as of about 6 months ago the Athlon XP 2500+ Barton processors were the sweet spot for budget/performace ratios and allow pretty stellar overclocability if you are into that thing, it seems like I paid about $75 for mine. Abit NF7-S motherboards are pretty popular for XP processors at about $80, it seems like the shuttle AN35N board was pretty good at around $50, or the Asus A7N8X series if you're an Asus fanboy. You can usually find Kingston 512 MB PC2700 Ram on sale for $80 or less with a rebate at best buy, circuit city, office depot. The same goes for hard drives, I've seen 200gb harddrives for ~$120 after rebates. Really unless your friend wants to have something that will be blazing fast for video editing something like this will be plenty. I've got a friend who does quite a bit of editing on a 3 year old 1.2 ghz XP processor and while he aknowleges it isn't as fast as a newer system, it does get the job done. It seems like to many people who think they can save money by building their own system over estimate the power they need out of a system and end up spending more on premium parts than they would if they bought prebuilt.

 

[KoolDrew]

Someone else reccomended Intel would be better in his case. IS this true? IF so then if anyone could pick out a CPU and mobo nand anything else it would help as I don't know much about Intel based systems as I am all AMD.

 

[Rike]

For casual video editing I wouldn't worry too much about which processor to pick up (AMD vs. Intel). The few seconds you save for this or that will make no difference. I'd say kornphlake got it right: a nice XP system will do him just fine with money to burn.

 

[KoolDrew]

Thanks. After your guys suggestions this is what I have come up with for him.

Antec Solution Series Quiet Black Mid Tower Case w/350W PSU
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton
ABIT NF7-S2
Kingston 512mb PC-2700 (2 for 1GB)
Seagate 200GB hard drive
NEC 16X Double Layer DVD±RW Drive
ATI Readeon 9000
ViewSonic G90FB 19" PerfectFlat CRT Monitor
Microsoft Windows XP Home w/SP2

What do you guys think about that?