this is a build for my friends dad, its basically going to be used for emails, home stuff but mainly for music and films. my budget was £500 and ive come up with this. im pretty happy with what ive managed to get for the money but i have a couple of questions:- 1. is the sound card any good? i dont know much about sound cards, is there anything on ebuyer thats better for music/films? he has a nice set of logitech speakers, cant remember if they're 5.1 or 7.1 but he may upgrade so a 7.1 card is needed. 2. will the power supply cope? its not massively expensive but it has good reviews, is made by antec and remember im using onboard graphics here. 3. im fairly confident this will be fine for his needs, but do you think the graphics chipset is good enough for a 1680x1050 screen? there will never be any gaming done on this machine. i cant go over budget here so if you have any ideas for parts they need to be within budget. also im fairly keen on intel 775 as its what im used to and has been rock solid for me in the past, any amd builds will have to have fairly incredible price/peformance to win me over (just being honest, i am in no way a fan boy). any advice appreciated EDIT: just realised i left off the HDD! so ive had to make a couple of changes: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1 OEM PCI Soundcard http://www.ebuyer.com/product/98938 CIBOX C2202 22'' Widescreen TFT http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128036 Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158860 same as above applies, is the new soundcard poo?
i know about the creative driver debacle but i thought it had been mostly sorted? also note i'll be using xp so no vista issues, also im unlikely to find a Xonar that wont completely screw my budget
hmm originally that would have fitted in my budget but i forgot the HDD! as a result my current card is now only £22 (oem) would it be worth scrimping perhaps on the cpu to get an Xonar? or maybe 2gb ram instead of 4?
You could save yourself a few quid by going Vista OEM @ £82.69 inc VAT He'd also be able to use all 4Gb of that RAM.
Or XP MCE http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114051 if you absolutely want XP for £90.68 - it's based on XP pro. Or you could take XP home for only 69.99. Also have you looked at going AMD instead of Intel, it's generally cheaper for a low budget PC.
ok first off vista is out, he's used to XP and i see no reason to give him a slower machine. would mce be a massive interface change from XP Pro? 4gb will be able to be used as i will just set some for graphics aperture (will use almost 4gb)
XP Pro or Media Center (Media Center is just Pro with the Media Center crap) as far as sound cards go, the creative one you linked to is poo. Try the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium (a bit over the top) or the Creative X-Fi Extreme Audio (above normal, but very nice audio). The Extreme Audio is the model above the poo card you linked to... Good Luck
You could use XP Media Center as if it were pro (I think it is missing a couple of features of pro - can't remember what, probably business networking features) and you have the option of using the Media Center program too. It's just an additional program that makes accessing your media easy from distance with a remote control.
ok i ended up getting xp home for about £60 and with the extra got an oem Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio. much happier with that arrangement, delivered by 12 tomorrow, he'll have the pc by the weekend. thanks bit techers
good question, a decent soundcard was specified for the build (the guy is into hi fi) and the board was at the right price point with half decent onboard graphics. capable wasn't good enough in this instance (although if it was my build i wouldnt have bothered)
so hes basically an audiophile? Makes sense then. If so, go with the Xonar DX2 or the Creative cards i linked to before. They have good sound plus good configuration options.
yeah i picked up the X-Fi extreme audio pci oem for a great price, i think he'll be happy since it has the crystalliser etc
