Building a PC for someone...

[Lead_Head]

Lo all,

I'm going to be building a PC for someone, and obviously I'm not going to do it for free...

so.... my question is... how much should I add onto each component, and then for putting it altogether?

Bearing in mind delivery etc, and the time spent to configure it all!

Whilst I'm on about it, I might as well tell you the requirements...

It's going to be a small form factor machine, well, the base unit is as small as possible

It's mainly going to be used for music, and audio production (nothing too heavy),

I dont mind getting the parts 2nd hand, he's not going to know the difference, is he?? Or should I stick with brand new because of warranties etc..?

Any help / recommendations are welcome!

Oh, he doesn't need monitor / keyboard / mouse - he can source them himself

Cheers,
Nick

[Stewart]

Well, depends if you're builing it for a mate or not. I've got a mate who runs his own PC Repair Business, he ordered my PC for me, came down from up North to Brum, built it for me, installed everything, and went back home.

The cost? I put him up for the night, kept him in beer whilst he was working, and ordered us a curry from the local Indian, when he'd finshed. As well as a bed for the night.

Its what mates are for.

If on the other-hand, its a service you are offering, and you don't know the person in question, then get everything you can for your work. Avoid dodgy dealing to do this though, such as pretending second-hand items are new.

There is a difference between buisness and dishonesty, and that sort of stuff can come back to bite you.

[Lead_Head]

It's a mate, but he has said he'd pay me for doing it.

I'm looking at that Creative MegaPC, it looks geared to audio.... unless someone else recommends something else..

Nick

[BoB_DoG]

if its music, I would personally reccomend he buy a Mac. Im certainly not a Mac fanboy, but its about the only thing that they are better for than PC's IMHO. My mate is doing an audio engineering course at York, and he almost exclusively uses Macs, due to their industry standardness, and therefore massive amounts of support for midi and all that shinola.

Not what you want to hear, but its certainly worth suggesting to him

[Lead_Head]

Good suggestion, but he wouldnt have a clue how to use a Mac, and even I know they r simple!

It's just costs as well, he isn't exactly mainstream audio producing, but he's getting quite into it atm

I just been onto OcUK, and they have suggested the following parts:

AMD Athlon "Thoroughbred" XP 1800+ (Socket A) - OEM (CP-052-AM) - £38.72

Shuttle Spacewalker XPC SN45G nForce2 Ultra 400 Aluminium Barebones System (FS-020-SH) - £156.63

TwinMOS 512MB (2x256MB) DDR PC3200 Dual Channel Kit (MY-006-TM) - £58.69

LiteOn LTC-48161H 48x/48x/24x/16x CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive - Retail - £42.07

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 80GB 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-014-MD) - £54.93

Teac 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive - OEM (RD-000-TE) - £9.87

Sparkle GeForce FX 5200 128MB TV-Out - Retail (GX-057-SP) - £48.76

£409.67 inc vat + del...(£15)?

These recommended? Two heads are always better than one!

Cheers,
Nick

[clockwork67]

Try www.gemma.co.uk slightly cheaper
SN45g 145.69
2 x256 ddr pc3200 400mhz 52.78 or 512 51.31

[Knoxville]

If im building for other people i normally add about 20 quidish for putting it together, depends on the person your doing it for though, if your doing it for your best mate or sumthin i personally wouldn't expect anythin off em.

If he's using it for music he might want a seperate sound card and possibly a faster cpu depending on how much encoding he's gonna be doing cos and 1800 will take much longer to encode wav. to high bit rate mp3 than a 2500/2600

[5cupa]

it depends if he;s gonna bug u afterwards when windows crashes on its own accord.

if i build for a friend, i;ll just round up componants. so say £127 becomes £130 and then they normally keep me in beer as well.

[schrickvr6]

your going to need loads of ram so unless he can afford a gig straight away just get a 512mb stick and upgrade to dual channel later