Am putting together a system for my parents as an upgrade from their 600Mhz p3. Its getting a bit slow
I'm trying to keep costs as low as possible and so will keep the case, and optical drives, everything else must go due to incompatibilities.
Am looking at the following all from scan....
Gigabyte GA K8N51GMF-9 NF4 S939 PCI-E uATX DDR400 SATA USB2/1394 7.1Ch Audio (£48)
400W SilverStone Strider aPFC PSU (Titanium black colour), Temp Controlled Fan (22 dBA min) (£41)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ S939 "Venice" 512kb Retail with Heat Sink Fan (£110)
512MB corsair value (30£
160Gb SATA300 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 (7200rpm 8Mb) - NCQ (£52)
Total: just shy of £300
I think the cpu will be adequate, if not over the top. the memory should also be fine, what i am curious about is the motherboard with its on board graphics, I would imagine that they won't be up to spec for hardcore gaming, but my parents arn't into that, at worst they might use the computer for a bit of hdtv, but i doubt that will be for a while and if thats the case then the motherboard will accept another better graphics card. may occassionally use it for graphic design which may be the only problem, but i'm not sure (photoshop)
Also, will the uatx motherboard fit in a standard atx case and will the heat generated require case fans - currently there is no cooling in the case
p.s I'm an engineer so i over spec things...tell me if I'm going overboard