New PC for girl

[Psymon]

Back story: (skip to 'Intresting stuff' if you don't care ) During my summer work I had a battle of gaming knowledge with some total noob (sorry) and he didn't even know what steam was. The person who I was actually talking to before he threw me into geek mode was a girl I made friends with on day one. She asked "what's steam" so I told her and said that there's also free games like track mania. That night she installs steam and TM on her home pc and gets her foot well in the door of gaming. The same night she makes full use of the friends list and steam community and manages to find some of her friends from RL. One of these friends has a spare HL2 and ep1 and just gives them to her. When I hear this, I demand she doesn't play them until I'm there to watch, since she'd never played an FPS before and in my experience watching girls play an FPS for the first time is just hilarious. Turns out her PC is a 3Ghz Pentium 4, 512MB of RAM, 20GB HDD (if that) and an ATI 7000 (barely does DX7). Still, valve are nice people so HL2 just about ran on her PC, and it was just as funny as I expected move forward a few weeks and shes completed HL2, ep1, HL, blueshift, and (using my pc because her's couldn't handle it) portal. She's got to go back to uni soon but she can't take that PC with her since it's her Dad's and her laptop is practically dead. I offer to build her a gaming rig and she's well up for it. To just get an idea of what it's going to cost, I scan dabs for (imo) the best value for money hardware and come out with a guess of £550 without monitor. 'OK' she says, not phased by the cost at all. So, here's what I bought her.

Intresting stuff:







(her choice)


(her choise, but it was too late before I realised she chose a PS2 and not USB. nevermind)


Total £690~

Funny because it's significantly better than the previously mentioned noob's new PC that cost him £480~ including monitor and the difference is only that of a high end GPU. Less funny is how much better it is than mine and the difference in cost from 2.5 years ago

I'll be keeping a record of how things went like I did with my dad's PC. The building may be a week from now because she wants to be there to learn a thing or two.

A case of sod's law with the GPU. Just after everything has been shipped, a new 4850 from gigabyte appeared on dabs. These had 1GB instead of 512MB and a custom fan that was cooler and quiter, all for the same price >:( however, they would only be in stock after '1-2 weeks' and we didn't have that much time anyway. Ah well...

[venney]

Pretty snazzy computer for the price si, sounds good. She will appriciate xp over vista as well, seeing as all the pcs seem to be vista now.

[Psymon]

When I asked her if she wanted XP or Vista, she shouted XP before I could even finish my sentence. The noob from work tried to make a point that I'd done a very wrong thing, but the best he could do for an argument was 'She'll have to move to Vista or 7 eventually' so I just said 'she can just do it when she "needs" to then'.

I really see no need for anyone to move to vista, especially when the next M$ OS is only 2 or so years away. If you pay for something, you agree with it.

[venney]

The only people who argue that vista is much better is people who like you say, already paid for it.

I made a partition on my new hard drive for vista, but only for alan wake

[Psymon]

I really hope it's not going to be another 360 to PC port. They're really starting to p... annoy me. Mercs 2 just came out and while i looked alrite from trailers, reviews have been poor and the obviousness of a lazy port is pathetic.

[Psymon]

forgot to take photos, but it wasn't anything new.

before:


after:


exposed:


Running:


Small moment where we bricked it. There's a 4 pin power socket near the CPU, but we didn't have a 4pin plug coming out of the PSU, only 8 pins. Just before Laura started crying, I found that one of the 8 pins could be split into two 4 pins and the day was saved.

All the games we installed ran very very well. But then the newest we did was a year old. I know it could happily run Crysis on very high since it worked damned well when I stuck that 4850 in my rig briefly.

One things that's bothered me with both the PCs I've built. I'm using the 'HD' audio that's built into the mobo. when I go to the audio options for mic there's nothing like a mic boost, so things are quiet and I can't do anything to help

[venney]

is the gpu quiet?

i want a new gpu sometime, and quiet is good i think. mine is way two loud, i dont want one that takes up two pci slots anymore.

[Psymon]

yeh, it was quiet. though we didn't get much of a chance to put it through its paces. installing everything took so much time we barely got a chance to play. I only jumped into a few games to make sure they were actually working before sending her on her way. Check some online reviews, they should mention noise if they're any good.

I'm still holding out for what'll be around when GTA4 is out. I've decide to pass on buying Mercs 2 because its a shoddy 360 to PC port

[venney]

Yea i was thinking of maybe waiting for alan wake, and i will probally get gta 4 in all!

[Psymon]

lol, even though you've got it on PS3? look into using your PS3 controller in your PC. I hear theres an unofficial way of doing it.

[venney]

I had a brief look and you have to use an xbox 360 program, but i found it wasn’t worth it. Seemed a lot of effort so i couldn’t be bothered.

And yea, i have all the gta games on my pc. and lets face it, its not as if i don’t have the room

[Psymon]

not a problem anymore, haha. I look forward to owning you in multiplayer

[liljim]