Basic to Mid Range PC recommendations

My mothers latptop, which i am currently tapping away on, has a million niggling problems and she is now considering going back to a desktop as portability isn't the greatest worry she has now.

So, i of course piped up and offered to build her one, for a couple of reasons.

1. It's fun and it will give me more experience

2. I reckoned it would be cheaper.

I am not so sure about point 2 now, as on www.hotukdeals.com i have spotted a Dell machine for about #320 (american laptop, no pound sign) excluding monitor, which has a decent spec including an Nvdia 8300 GPU.

Now, as I will be using this machine when i come home and i play WoW and stuff, then I would prefer to have it capable of gaming, but mainly it's for school work (my mother is a teacher) and surfing.

What i would like to put in it, is an Abit Mobo, as i like them lots, with built in wifi, Intel Core 2 Duo and at least a gig of ram, and an 8600 Geforce.

With a budget of #600 including Monitor i am not sure if i can quite get this, but i am fairly sure i will get close.

But, does anyone out there have any recommendations on prebuilt units that would meet this spec? I do tend to find that prebuilts have terrible mobo's and while this isn't going to be OC'ed or even tampered with much, i want some decent equipment :)

after doing some messing around during the night, i have come up with a spec under 500 quid that should do the job nicely. I did some online searching and couldn't find anything prebuilt that i was as happy with, so gonna give Scan a call now and order it :)

what have you decided on?

couple of the deals from Scan, altho numpty me forgot to include a DVD rewriter, parts should be arriving any moment actually

Xclio case and 700W psu
Intel E6600, Abit il9 pro and 1 gig ram (upgraded this to 2gig), Corsair 5400 stuff
Samsung Spinpoint 400Gb HDD
Gainward 8600 256Mb Graphics card
Logitech g5 mouse (stealing this for my own methinks)
Logitech Media Keyboard
Siemens 108 usb wifi dongle thingy (i love my technical terms as you can see)
Daewoo 19" monitor

a shade short of 600 quid, and i'm pretty happy with the spec tbh, and i got Lee when i called up, which is a bonus, always good to deal with someone you know :)

Being the genius i am, i forgot a DVD rewriter, and erm, case fans, but its up and running like a dream, score 4475 in 3dMark 06 and looks to be pretty stable, had it running for about 9 hours non stop atm.

system temp is 32 degrees and processor at 37-40 degrees, pretty safe i reckon

couple more software additions and it will be set :)

http://forums.hexus.net/images/smilies/smile.gif
the IL9 Pro is no overclocking monster :eek: but it should be reliable enough & quiet which are probably more important to your mother.

aye, i went a bit overboard with some of the things i put in it, but she is happy :)

Tbh, I still havent messed around with my own system enough, and pretty sure the AW9 D-Max is just begging me to start some overclocking stuff :)

I'll have to get you round to show me how to get started mate :)

ooh, I've never played with an AW9D (v. nearly bought 1 but held off) ...