BleepingComputer.com: Cheap Build For A Friend

My friend needs a new computer. So after looking at dell, and some other places he didn't like the price, and I didn't like the computers. So I made a build for him on newegg, for about 450$, that I think is a pretty good deal. Here it is:

Processor . My only worry is if the thermal paste on it is good? For another friends build, the paste included with his pentium D was making it overheat.

DVD burner

Hard Drive

Case + PSU . I believe the power supply is good since my other friend is using the same one with a pentium D, 2gb's of ram, and an 8600Gt.

Motherboard . I liked the integrated graphics in it since he will be doing some light gaming.

Ram I've used this brand before in my computer and was very pleased.

Vista Basic

Is all this good? Also, I noticed the motherboard doesn't come with an IDE cable for the dvd burner, but I can find one around here easily. Thanks for reading this!

Not to shabby! My biggest concern is the power supply....I'm a stickler for a good psu-which I've learned the hard way. Even if you get a small, name brand psu, it's much better than a high wattage, no-name psu. Might want to get a different case and order the psu seperatly....just MHO.

As for the thermal paste, if you're worried about it, order some name brand stuff. It's inexpensive and well worth the price. Oh, and the thermal paste doesn't cause the cpu to overheat, actually if it's applied right, even cheap thermal paste will do the trick-->I've got the cheap thermal paste that came with my 2.93ghz celeron, which is now overclocked to 3.3x and isn't running hot. Of course, good case ventilation is always helpful

Note that the mobo that you picked is a micro ATX....hope you have small hands with really skinny fingers

My only other catch is the onboard (shared) graphics. I'd go with a cheap gfx card before I'd rely on integrated....even for "light gaming". A decent graphics card can be purchased for about $100 USD (not sure what the conversion would be if you're overseas). Again, just better to have something nice then to have something sucking the resources from your mobo and ram from your machine.

On the flip side, I don't see why this stuff can't get put right together out of the box and be up and running with a handsome new computer in no time flat! Nice build!

Looks good, I agree with steve about the power supply, too many people take it for granted. Also, are you sure about Vista? Seems like I've read you need 2gig ram to make it do as good as XP does with 1 gig.

Thanks for the replies! By light gaming though I mean maybe like one old game. Also, that board has pcix16 slot anyways so if he wants to play new games he can. Also, my other friend has a nice new thermaltake psu laying around (bought by mistake), so if that power supply doesn't work he said he will sell it for only 20$.