Can I build a decent PC for $300-$400 for a family member?

[Puddle Jumper]

I have the Elite 330 on another build and it has ok airflow. I have never had a problem running Vista smoothly on 2gb of ram.

 

[zmatt]

4gig isn't necessary. I went 4 gig and it didn't change a thing.

 

[philbar71]

i noticed a diff from 2gb on vista to 3gb. things ran a lot smoother. that was back on my old pentium d rig. on 4gb i love it. multi tasking powr! i can easily alt+tab out of crysis and in to wmp or firefox.

 

[King$nake]

Looks like I am about to place the order on behalf of my cousin. Total comes to $477.85

I just want to confirm one more time that all the parts in this list are good-to-go and completely compatible with eachother?

I am one click away!

Thanks guys, this will be alot of fun to assemble

These parts come to $407 . It should have no problem with general usage and would be pretty good at gaming. I assumed they could reuse the optical drive(s) from their old system.

Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER Elite 330 RC-330-KKN1-GP Black SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3320613AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GV-R467D3-512I Radeon HD 4670 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Newegg.com - Antec True Power Trio TP3-430 430W ATX12V Active PFC Power Supply with Three 12V Rails - Power Supplies

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EG41M-S2H LGA 775 Intel G41 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

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

 

[saltynay]

I would reiterate getting the motherboard I suggested the G41 is the budget version of the intel *4* series of northbridge chipsets. the P45 which I suggested is the standard enthusiast and second best. For the price of $8 I think its worth it.

 

[Ethan_Kaizer]

4gig isn't necessary. I went 4 gig and it didn't change a thing.

I noticed a difference on Vista. When I idled Vista was using just under half of my 2gb, but once I got 4 gigs things were much smoother.

 

[zmatt]

Yo may want to check for some bloat then. I have Firefox with 4 tabs and songbird open and I have around 1 gig in use.

 

[saltynay]

I am running firefox, Itunes, msn, fallout 3 (minimised) plus background avg, spybot, Magic iso and internet dl manager (idle). Using 48% of 3gb ***** you 32 bit vista*.

 

[zmatt]

That's pretty good. I would imagine fallout 3 eats a lot of memory.