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my aunt bought a computer a year ago for about $20. Needless to say it is very outdated. Probably from about 1995-6. Now she wants an upgrade to something within the budget of $600-800(including shipping) with the monitor, keyboard mouse and speakers. She only needs it for emails, web surfing, and pictures, but she doesnt want to upgrade for at least 4 years.

Will something like this do the trick?

AMD Phenom 9600 2.3GHz quad core
Foxconn 720a mobo
Patriot 2Gb(2 x 1GB) DDR 800
WD 320GB HD w/ 16Mb cache
EVGA 9500 GT
Antec 430 watt w/ 3 12v rails
samsung 22x drive
rosewill card reader
ATOP decorative red chassis
Logitech wireless keyboard & mouse
Acer 19" monitor
logitech 2.0 speakers

Will cost about $620

looks fine. You really dont need a video card.

Yeah, something like that will do the trick nicely.

With what she's been used to, any recent machine is going to be a massive upgrade, and for the things she will be using it for performance doesnt need to be top of the line.

Dan

I would drop the quad get a cheap dual and get a quite heatsink and some quite fans with the leftover money. i agree graphics isnt really needed, something like a geforce 8200a chipset will do nicely

martini161 wrote:I would drop the quad get a cheap dual and get a quite heatsink and some quite fans with the leftover money. i agree graphics isnt really needed, something like a geforce 8200a chipset will do nicely

That or get a nice 780g chipset. I really like that Asus one for 79.99 with free shipping at the egg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131324

Yep. Get a dual-core and ditch the video card. For her, I'd just go with an Athlon 4850e + AMD 780G. Not only are you saving her money, you're also reducing her electricity bill. If you want, you can even passively cool it with a Scythe Ninja Mini for quiet computing, but the stock HSF is quiet enough and good enough for cooling a CPU running at stock speeds.

I'd also go with a lower wattage power supply. PSU's run at their rated efficiency from 20~100% load. Beyond that, 80 Plus PSU's can be as low as 65% efficient. Since the things she does with the PC is what you'd consider "idle" usage, you want to get a power supply that's efficient even at, say 50~70W load. I don't know how her hearing is but maybe a quieter case might be good, too?

Is the $620 based on before or after rebates? If it's after, I'd say compute it on the cost before rebate. Lol, if you can convince your aunt, maybe she'll give you the rebate checks as thank you for building her a PC.

Oh yeah, remember to add the XP/Vista license on there, unless she fancies going with Linux or similar or you have a spare license lying around.

If there's still money left-over, I think what most people would appreciate is a larger screen. She likely won't notice a faster processor or a better graphics card, but a bigger monitor is fairly obvious.

I think you need a good videocard maybe 8800gtx

then you can set yourself up folding on her system

You may want to get a budget Intel system instead. My rig in sig costed me about $700 after tax and shipping. So if you take away the OCZ Vendetta 2, switch the E7200 for like an E5200, get a cheaper graphics card, you could probably save around $150.

Don't forget that America has pretty good specials for hardware. Couple weeks ago, a 9600 GSO was like $40 AR, which is a super smoking hot deal.

geokilla wrote:You may want to get a budget Intel system instead. My rig in sig costed me about $700 after tax and shipping. So if you take away the OCZ Vendetta 2, switch the E7200 for like an E5200, get a cheaper graphics card, you could probably save around $150.

For a low-end, non-overclocked system, going with AMD offers better value.

geokilla wrote:Don't forget that America has pretty good specials for hardware. Couple weeks ago, a 9600 GSO was like $40 AR, which is a super smoking hot deal.

Not when you factor in the additional cost to the electricity bill. For someone who only uses the PC to browse the internet, why pay $120 for motherboard and video card when $80 gets you a motherboard with fairly decent integrated graphics and uses less power to boot? Also, rebates are useless until you actually receive them. I'm a pessimist so when buying parts, I always look at the total price before rebates. When I receive a rebate check, then I have extra money that I didn't count on. If I don't receive it, then at least I didn't go over my allotted budget.

8200a would be my choice

780G + 4850E would be mine. I have two HTPC built with this setup and it softly chews and spits out any HD files I have. SeaSonic have some pretty good and quite power supplies. That what I use.

thanks for all the replies. I see now that a dual core would probably be more efficient. I just thought a quad core for $120 was too cheap to pass up!

I am back and forth on the graphics card, mostly she only buys computers about once every 10 years, and i don't think integrated graphics would be able to cut it after about 6-7, even just using web, email, and such.

the AMD 5400+ probably would be a better choice, it's dirt cheap and if combo'ed with a evga 9500 GT it's like $40 off, so win-win

If I have any leftover money ill upgrade the monitor, the bigger the better, really