I may be building a new computer for a friend in coming weeks. I've settled on most of the components. When choosing, the main requirements were value and future-proofness. The most taxing thing this will need to do at the moment is run Sims 3, so it needn't be a speed demon...

This is what I have chosen so far. I intend to buy the parts from Aria.co.uk as they have pretty decent pricing, they deliver by courier fairly cheaply and I already have an account with them :P


Case: Arianet Colossus Midi Case @ £21.79 (includes a PSU)

MoBo: ASRock NF6-GLAN AM2+ DDR2 ATX @ £34.74

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ 2.3GHz AM2 OEM @ £34.21

RAM: Arianet 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM x2 @ £7.42

HDD: 160GB Maxtor Diamondmax 22 SATA 8MB @ £30.99

GPU: Gainward GeForce 8400GS Graphics Card 512MB PCI-E VGA/DVI-I/HDMI @ £27.03

DVDRW: Samsung 22x DVDRW IDE, Black

CPU Cooler: Arianet ValuePlus AMD Fan (Socket 754, 939, 940, AM2) @ £4.54

Case Cooling: Nexus Real Silent 80mm Case Fan @ £4.54


TOTAL: £172.68


Does anyone see anything particularly wrong with this build? It'll be running WinXP and, as I said, it won't be doing anything too demanding so it needn't be very powerful. The only thing that I'm really considering looking ionto more is the Graphics Card. The GEForce 8400 is fairly entry-level. A better card wouldn't cost much more but I just can't decide what to replace it with. Also does anyone know whether or not this board comes with any SATA and IDE cables? I know most boards do these days but you never know...

Anyone have any recommendations on any improvements etc?

UPDATE:

Done a little more searching in the way of graphics cards. I've come across a rather interesting little card.

Asus ATi Radeon HD 3450 256MB PCI-E @ £27.20

A better choice?

John_N Wrote:

PSPkiller Wrote:Also does anyone know whether or not this board comes with any SATA and IDE cables? I know most boards do these days but you never know...

Accessories
- Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
- Floppy/ATA 133 Cables
- 1 x SATA Data Cable (optional)
- 1 x SATA 1 to 1 Power Cable (optional)

Good... Where did you find that? I've done some Googling but I couldn't find any mention of accessories...

Spoon. I obviously didn't look very hard then...

An 8600GS should be cheap and still run Sims3 perfectly, whilst being marginally future proof, as a better card than the one pictured, and its still under £200...

this is about £15 more, but provides a better quality of gaming than an 8400