IM bulind a PC

[ZrEo0]

i havnt been looking at what new hardware has come out for a long time, i drooled over it too much, a friend of mine wants to make a decent PC, he has around 1500, and all he has to start out is a copy of windows, so he needs everything, he wants a good amount of hard drive space, and the os to be on its own drive, he would perfer a intel, but asain i dont know whats good on the market
can i get some ideas?

[ski]

Pentium 4 3.0 C GHz or higher
512MB RAM or 1GB RAM
120 GB hard drive or higher
128MB Video RAM or higher (see many of the video card threads), I recommend Radeon 9800 Pro if he plays games
DVD +R and -R dual format burner
Sound card / Speakers as needed

... you're drunk, aren't you ;)

[DaFunkyUnit]

$1500 is a pretty generous budget. does that also include monitor?

cpu: intel chips just dropped due to the release of the Prescott core and according to that other thread. but since you got plenty of $$ to work with, I'd recommend going all out, so that your chip wont go obsolete too soon. think of it as an investment. So get one of the new 3 Ghz, 800 Mhz bus cpus. As for athlon, i guess you could get the 64-bit cpu.

motherboard: uh... depends whether you're OCing it, and how much bells & whistles u want

Power supply: 300W at least, P4 certified, of course

ram: 512, ddr 3200. go for Samsung or Kingston, if overclocking is involved, then go for higher-end stuff like Corsair.

HD: theres been plenty of deals on 120 GB and up. the question is whether to go Maxtor or WD. pick your poison, i guess...

CDRW/DVD: LiteOn is good, so is TDK. quiet drives, solid and reliable.

Vid card: since you're getting a new comp now, and HL2 and Doom 3 are gonna be released soon (relatively speaking), you should go AT LEAST ATI 9700pro (check the ATI vid card heirarchy thread).

www.pricewatch.com

check the forums, look for reviews, do some research, land some deals. etc..

:)

[ZrEo0]

Originally posted by skiAtomic
... you're drunk, aren't you ;)
not this time, i just cant spell

[ZrEo0]

Originally posted by DaFunkyUnit
$1500 is a pretty generous budget. does that also include monitor?


he need a monitor

[ski]

Spend $350-$400 of that money on a 17" LCD by Samsung or Dell

[Showtime]

AMD 64 3200 and try the new M$ 64-bit OS.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/downloads/upgrade.asp

Ha ha triple post for the OS.

-jel:halo:

[Grimm]

No!!! No!!! It's a trap!!!

You help a friend build a PC and you are trapped as free tech support for life! Run away while you can. Have him buy a 400SC Dell and drop in a decient video card and some real ram (1GB of Dual channel DDR 3200). Add a burner and a monitor and he is done.

Reccomend the parts, but don't do the work. Or you will be doomed!!! Doomed I say!

[ZrEo0]

i was looking at the shuttle boxes, and he likes them, pretty good prices too