A build for a friend, again :)

[Tenenbaum]

My friend has a 700$ Budget limit, I am looking to build him a computer, I just don't know what to choose, I've been left in the dust in all of this.

Any help?
Hes saying AMD, but I've been suggesting Intel.
But if anyone could help, that'd be great.
Thats without a monitor.

 

[hikaricloud]

What is he going to be using this for? Gaming? Or just everyday stuff?

EDIT: Here's what I got so far, very basic, but solid. No video card yet though.

Newegg.com - Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases

Newegg.com - Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU 500W ATX 12V 2.0 Power Supply - Power Supplies

Newegg.com - Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg.com - OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

Newegg.com - LG Black 22X (CAV) DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 16X DVD+R DL 22X (CAV) DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD±R DVD Burner - CD / DVD Burners

All that is 470 before shipping/rebates. 60 bucks in MIRs.

 

[NightSurge]

Sadly, I would recommend Intel for even budget builds these days with the E5000 series CPUs they have. I built a computer and purposely used AMD because they have a great motherboard and I wanted to try a Black Edition since I have never overclocked one before. It runs great and decently cool at 3.22GHz, but the Vista rating is still only 5.5 (the limiting factor of my build, all else are 5.9), while an Intel cpu clocked much lower than 3.22GHz would already be 5.9 because of other factors like cache and just a faster architecture.

My build was around $525 ($700 after OS, speakers, wifi adapter) and I use AMD obviously. I could have easily made the same build using an E5200 and an LGA 775 mobo, though, and it probably would perform slightly better especially after I overclocked it.

 

[hikaricloud]

Sadly, I would recommend Intel for even budget builds these days with the E5000 series CPUs they have. I built a computer and purposely used AMD because they have a great motherboard and I wanted to try a Black Edition since I have never overclocked one before. It runs great and decently cool at 3.22GHz, but the Vista rating is still only 5.5 (the limiting factor of my build, all else are 5.9), while an Intel cpu clocked much lower than 3.22GHz would already be 5.9 because of other factors like cache and just a faster architecture.

My build was around $600 ($700 after OS) and I use AMD obviously. I could have easily made the same build using an E5200 and an LGA 775 mobo, though, and it probably would perform slightly better especially after I overclocked it.

The way I see it is if you want to game, go ahead and grab an intel. My desktop upgrades are going to be just over 200 bucks after MIRs for a x2 7750 BE, 4gb DDR2-800, and a nice 780G chipset mobo. It has a good enough onboard video for what I need it for, as well as some gaming at lower resolutions. But it's useless if you have to buy a video card too, all the money you saved goes out the window performance-wise. Otherwise, I'd grab an E5200 myself.

 

[NightSurge]

The way I see it is if you want to game, go ahead and grab an intel. My desktop upgrades are going to be just over 200 bucks after MIRs for a x2 7750 BE, 4gb DDR2-800, and a nice 780G chipset mobo. It has a good enough onboard video for what I need it for, as well as some gaming at lower resolutions. But it's useless if you have to buy a video card too, all the money you saved goes out the window performance-wise. Otherwise, I'd grab an E5200 myself.

I'd just like to note that my build will be used for gaming, and will do quite well given the 4830 is better than a 9800GT or 8800GTS 512MB. It doesn't necessarily have to be Intel to game, but like I said in my first post, for around $525-600 budget, you can make an Intel build very similar and it will probably out perform the AMD build slightly. I merely chose AMD to use as a personal experiment and gain experience with a wider variety of hardware.

 

[hikaricloud]

I'd just like to note that my build will be used for gaming, and will do quite well given the 4830 is better than a 9800GT or 8800GTS 512MB. It doesn't necessarily have to be Intel to game, but like I said in my first post, for around $525-600 budget, you can make an Intel build very similar and it will probably out perform the AMD build slightly. I merely chose AMD to use as a personal experiment and gain experience with a wider variety of hardware.

Oh, I get it, it doesn't have to be intel to game. I'm just saying money-wise, it makes more sense to get something that will perform better if you're going to grab a video card anyway. I'm just saving scads of money because I'm not picking up a video card.