a friend of mine got his parents to give him a $900 budget to build a new PC, wanted some opinions

i built the April hot rod PC (http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200604.ars/3) from ArsTechnica, sans a few things he already has i.e. power supply, sata2 HDs, sound, 2 of fregac's Sun monitors and a few of my own suggestions

newegg wishlist: http://tinyurl.com/k6rdg

i need to downgrade something to get it under the 900 threshold with s&h - i was thinking the processor. but then i started thinking is SLi worth it? should i go that route?

IM me at dFcontrol, PM, post a review on the newegg wishlist, or post here - he wants me to buy this thing tonight for him.

[Edited on May 9, 2006 at 7:30 PM. Reason : forgot HTML was off, tinyurl]

5/9/2006 7:26:16 PM

looks solid to me, if you downgraded the cpu, go with the 3700+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103539

the benefit of single core is it'll be faster now and in a year he can upgrade to X2 and not have to change socket.

[Edited on May 9, 2006 at 7:32 PM. Reason : .]

5/9/2006 7:30:33 PM

yeah i was just looking up some benchmarks of how single core is faster right now in most apps

anyone feel really strongly that single core is the way to go? he isn't going to upgrade for another 3 years after this, i'm pretty sure.

should i downgrade to single core and go with the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131517)?

[Edited on May 9, 2006 at 8:00 PM. Reason : asus]

5/9/2006 7:51:23 PM

that case is pretty expensive....

5/9/2006 8:19:25 PM

nevermind

[Edited on May 9, 2006 at 9:30 PM. Reason : ]

5/9/2006 9:27:27 PM

thats the second time i've seen a tinyurl link today

[Edited on May 9, 2006 at 9:44 PM. Reason : out of never before today]

5/9/2006 9:44:33 PM

i have a 3.0 single and a 2.8 dual core pentium and the 2.8 is way way faster in everything i do. maybe in "benchmarks" it's a little slower, but that has to all be bullshit.

same speed ram
same speed hdd
~same motherboard

5/9/2006 10:02:28 PM

ordered, thanks.

ABIT KN8 Ultra Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Item #: N82E16813127222 $94.99

Antec Performance I P180 Silver 0.8mm cold rolled steel for durability through the majority of chassis, 1.0mm cold rolled steel around the 4x HDD area ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
Item #: N82E16811129154 $119.99

XFX PV-T73G-UDE3 Geforce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
Item #: N82E16814150141 $189.00

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA3800BVBOX - Retail
Item #: N82E16819103562 $297.00

CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model Twinx2048-3200c2pt - Retail
Item #: N82E16820145575 $189.00

ASUS Silver ATAPI/E-IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DVD-E616A2 SV - Retail
Item #: N82E16827135090 $22.99

NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Silver IDE Model ND-3550A - OEM
Item #: N82E16827152060 $34.99

/thread

[Edited on May 10, 2006 at 12:03 AM. Reason : frickin monkey-ass credit card verification!?!*$!@ gotta call 'em in the mornin'.]

5/9/2006 11:51:57 PM