Building a computer for a girl

[Grimley]

I built a pc for my sister for Xmas using this case

http://www.evercase.co.uk/KM4023.htm

I had to respray the damn thing after she said she wanted a case in candy pink

[dave87]

Only thing with the case above is that it is likely to be quite noisy - 80mm fans have to spin faster than 120mm fans to push the same amount of air, and that grill looks to be pretty restrictive of airflow.

Dave

[Dreaming]

Only thing with the case above is that it is likely to be quite noisy - 80mm fans have to spin faster than 120mm fans to push the same amount of air, and that grill looks to be pretty restrictive of airflow.

Dave

Could I get two 80mm fans (it has a spare place for one on the back) and put a resistor on them to have them run slower? Also, are there 'quiet' 80mm fans on the market?

Thanks

[Dreaming]

P.p.s

I'm not trying to go over the budget too much (£400) - what lower end card do you think will run basic games and possibly Vista ok (at 17" TFT native res).

I'm more of a gamer so maybe I'm thinking she needs more than she does.

[chis]

I'm sure a Geforce 7300 of some sort would cover it. If not, then a 6200? Just don't go near the FX cards any more.

[topgun23]

Whether this is helpful to you or not, it's a real shame Scan don't stock this beauty:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s....html?NOV-CAG5

They do its this

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=127841

[directhex]

chicks dig shuttles.

[dave87]

I'm sure a Geforce 7300 of some sort would cover it. If not, then a 6200? Just don't go near the FX cards any more.

Don't get a 7300. Spend the little extra and get a low end 7600, or if looking second hand, 6600. 7300s use Turbo Cache which ends up nicking system RAM, and is slower as a result. 7600/6600 will be a dedicated card with its own memory, much better should she ever want to play the latest sims or whatever (I don't know the age of the person the PC is for, but seems like a suitably girly game )

[Dreaming]

Don't get a 7300. Spend the little extra and get a low end 7600, or if looking second hand, 6600. 7300s use Turbo Cache which ends up nicking system RAM, and is slower as a result. 7600/6600 will be a dedicated card with its own memory, much better should she ever want to play the latest sims or whatever (I don't know the age of the person the PC is for, but seems like a suitably girly game )

Will be 18

She doesn't play a whole lot of games, the odd one here or there really. She was going to have my old 9800 and was very happy with that performance, but unfortunately it's AGP so no joy with new motherboards.

[directhex]

LN15975 - AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3800+ Windsor Core, Dual Core 2GHz, 2x 512KB Cache, OEM - £58.74
LN7592 - 1Gb (2X512Mb) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC4200 (533), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 - £46.99
LN15641 - Shuttle SK22G2, AM2, VIA K8M890, DDR2, PCI-E (x16), On Board VGA, SATA I, SATA RAID - £143.34
LN13602 - 256MB ASUS 7300GS Mem 540MHz, GPU 550MHz, 4 Pipes, D-Sub/DVI-I/S-Video PCI-E (x16) Fan Cooling - £43.70
LN15922 - NEC ND-7170A-0B Black x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer (with Ram Support ) DVD-Writer OEM UK - £19.26
LN11461 - 250 Gb Samsung SP2504C SpinPoint P120, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 9.0 ms, NCQ - £46.49
LN17167 - Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) - £69.31
LN13998 - 17" LG L1717S Silver/BlackTFT, 1280x1024, 8 ms, 500:1, 250 cd/m2 - £99.86
---
£527.69 from scan.co.uk

chicks dig shuttles

[my new pc is a]

Sweet system there ^. Would also personally go for the AM2 - the difference in memory bandwidth gives an almost free performance boost over plain DDR.

And shuttles do indeed seem very popular!

Shame you can't budget in the deal of the day 19" widescreen Daewoo for £17 extra. Would really make the whole system quite spectacular!

By the way Dreaming, are you budgeting for a peripherals as well? The Logitech Ultra X mouse and keyboard are very elegant.

ooh, saw this link by mattsandersuk -
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...uct_uid=123447

includes vista, 19" monitor, dual core athlon, 1gb ram, peripherals and speakers for £450

[DanceswithUnix]

Chicks do indeed dig shuttles, and that looks very nice indeed.

I have to ask: the shuttle has built in graphics. Lose the graphics card and you are back into budget. Is it worth saying "try this, we can upgrade if needed" ?

In a similar vein, I bought my mum one of these combined TV/monitor jobbies. She loves it. It was 135 quid on Today Only.

[directhex]

I have to ask: the shuttle has built in graphics. Lose the graphics card and you are back into budget. Is it worth saying "try this, we can upgrade if needed" ?

it looks like there are WDDM (aero) drivers for the onboard graphics, so you might be right

i had assumed there weren't, since there aren't for my laptop's onboard ()

[Dreaming]

Well it should be coming together in april I think so we're not quite there yet. Yea an upgrade to AM2 isn't all that expensive, and the dual core processors are pretty cheap . Holding off on the Vista for the time being, to keep the costs down, and will just use an existing licence for XP.

Will ask her what she thinks about the shuttle

[directhex]

Well it should be coming together in april I think so we're not quite there yet. Yea an upgrade to AM2 isn't all that expensive, and the dual core processors are pretty cheap . Holding off on the Vista for the time being, to keep the costs down, and will just use an existing licence for XP.

Will ask her what she thinks about the shuttle

she has an existing retail xp license?

[Dreaming]

she has an existing retail xp license?

I've got one for a now dead laptop that's waiting to be used.