Opinions on a value machine

What kind of applications does your friend intend to run?

The system you're contemplating offers a very good balance between
price and performance, although for games that Athlon64 will spend most
of its time waiting around for the grafix card to play catch-up (I do
understand that money is tight). On the other hand a cheaper card would
allow you to pump more money onto other areas. Windows (at present)
doesn't need a fast grafix card, but modern 3D games demand them.

For creative tasks like editing large images or sound files, or video
editing I would also recommend 1GB RAM.

The power supplies that come with most cases are pretty cheap - you
ideally need a separate one as well as some decent case cooling.
Believe me it is worth doing the research on CPU and case cooling,
mainly due to the huge variation in quality and noise.

I also use Maxtor hard drives - with 8MB buffers because they care
cheap and very fast although all hard drives get hot.

It's important to establish exactly what your friend wants to do and to
lay down the limitations. After-sales support is difficult and your
friend needs to remember who's done the hard work for him - you

Hope this helps.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/gffx/nv43-2.html


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Buck
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