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My manager (and friend) is wanting to build a PC for his son for Christmas. He showed me what the shop down the road was going to build and it was pathetic for what he was going to be spending on it. I offered to create a build for him for the same money that would be way better than what he would be getting. If you see anywhere that I can save some money, please let me know. I was trying to be as frugal as I could, but still getting decent components. I would say his budget is ~$800 but wants to spend less.
CPU:i5 3570K $169.99
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Pro4 ATX $69.99
Ram: G.Skill Ripjaw DDR3 1600 8GB (2x4GB) $39.99
GPU: GIGABYTE GTX 660 Ti $269.99
PSU: Corsair CX500 500W $29.99
Case: DiabloTek EVO Midtower ATX (His son wants this one so no changing this) $39.99
Hard Drive: 1TB Seagate Barracuda $69.99
Optical: ASUS 24X DVD Burner $19.99
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit $99.99
Total comes out after all rebates and discounts to $808. The question he keeps asking me is how much I am going to charge him to do this. I have never build PC's for anyone and have no idea where to begin money wise. I told him it would take 2 days for me to do this right with memtest86 and Prime95 stability, etc... He wants to buy these parts today so we can have it ready for his son by Christmas. Thanks in advance for the help!
Topics I've Started
HTPC Build
17 January 2012 - 12:33 PM
Well my laptop I used to stream movies from my desktop to the TV decided to take a crap last night. It was the HP Pavilion series that was plagued with GPU overheating issues from several years, and I get nothing but artifacts and it's way out of warranty this time. It did the job (barely) but now it's time to build something a little better and that I can actually use.
My plan:
- To eventually have it replace the TV tuner box from Comcast with a tuner card, but that isn't important at this very moment till I get the TV's upgraded around the house.
- Do some light gaming, most likely just racing games like DiRT3 where I can use a controller on the couch.
- Possibly have 3D support? Still waiting to see if 3D is going to be a flop or not, but I figure it's always good to be future proof if I ever do go that route.
- Not have a big impact on my power bill is a big one.
- Still stream content from my desktop, or since HDD are so expensive still, move the HD with all the movies over to this build and get a small SSD for the OS. Ever since I hooked up the SSD I won here for the desktop, I am hooked.
- Think I am going to try one of the XBMC user interfaces instead of Boxee this time which was easy to use, but pretty limited.
- I want to stick with Intel and a mATX MB with a smaller type case (similar to the size of a cable box).
- Needs to be super quiet. That was the most annoying this about the laptop was the fan was constantly running.
- Looking to spend in the ~$500-600 range? Negotiable though depending on the tax return and birthday money.
That is all I can really think of at the moment here at work. This all just happened last night so I really haven't looked around very much yet about building. I wanted to get a little input from the OCC community. I will be building this whenever my tax return gets in hopefully next month, but the latest will be in March. Thanks ahead of time.
P.S. Has anyone seen Bizzlenitch?
My plan:
- To eventually have it replace the TV tuner box from Comcast with a tuner card, but that isn't important at this very moment till I get the TV's upgraded around the house.
- Do some light gaming, most likely just racing games like DiRT3 where I can use a controller on the couch.
- Possibly have 3D support? Still waiting to see if 3D is going to be a flop or not, but I figure it's always good to be future proof if I ever do go that route.
- Not have a big impact on my power bill is a big one.
- Still stream content from my desktop, or since HDD are so expensive still, move the HD with all the movies over to this build and get a small SSD for the OS. Ever since I hooked up the SSD I won here for the desktop, I am hooked.
- Think I am going to try one of the XBMC user interfaces instead of Boxee this time which was easy to use, but pretty limited.
- I want to stick with Intel and a mATX MB with a smaller type case (similar to the size of a cable box).
- Needs to be super quiet. That was the most annoying this about the laptop was the fan was constantly running.
- Looking to spend in the ~$500-600 range? Negotiable though depending on the tax return and birthday money.
That is all I can really think of at the moment here at work. This all just happened last night so I really haven't looked around very much yet about building. I wanted to get a little input from the OCC community. I will be building this whenever my tax return gets in hopefully next month, but the latest will be in March. Thanks ahead of time.
P.S. Has anyone seen Bizzlenitch?
