Rate this build.

[Street_Kings]

Suggestions? Budgeted $800 for a friend of mine.

LITE-ON 20x SATA burner - $37
-It's a burner. Fast + Lightscribe + <$40 = win.

Sammy Spinpoint T 500gb 7.2k RPM 3g/s SATA - $110
-Never used sammy's, but love their memory chips =) Any good?

XFX 8600GT - $130
-Futureproof attempt; XFX overclocked, 8600 supports DX10 too.

g. Skill 2GB (DDR2 800 / Dual Chan / 2x1024) - $90
-Never personally used. Seen good results, lifetime warranty. Anyone have first hand experience?

MSI P35 Platinum Mobo - $170
-P35 chipset is hawt. That, and the heatpipe setup is crazy looking.

E6600 - $223
-running one of these personally at 355X9, nice lil 3.2 kick =D

Ghetto $25 case from Micro Center - $30
have monitor/PSU/keyboard mouse/speakers

Total: $790

[Bedlam]

Looks like a pretty decent list there, for the price I'd say you are doing pretty well..never really anything good or bad with samsung hdd's so I'd just stick with maxtor or WD?

In all the computers I've built still have mixed feelings about MSI mobos..sometimes they are just meh..quality issues all over the place. I've always convinced people to fork out a little more money for OEM intel or Asus myself. Make sure your power supply is good for all that gear and he should be set. :)

[Street_Kings]

Looks like a pretty decent list there, for the price I'd say you are doing pretty well..never really anything good or bad with samsung hdd's so I'd just stick with maxtor or WD?

In all the computers I've built still have mixed feelings about MSI mobos..sometimes they are just meh..quality issues all over the place. I've always convinced people to fork out a little more money for OEM intel or Asus myself. Make sure your power supply is good for all that gear and he should be set. :)

I'm donating my old FSP 500w to the build, not the best but 500w should hold fine =)

I think i'm going to give him my Asus P5N and take the MSI for myself, just to experiment a bit. DDR2-1066 sounds fun to play with, and the P35 being a brand spanking new chipset from Intel i'd like to see how far i can push things =)

edit:
cool, just noticed the P35 chipset supports 1333 MHz FSB's (coming on the 45nm Penryn cores). Def a nice future upgradable board to drag the most life outta this rig.

[HondasTrail]

Wait for the intel price cuts and get the 6750 or 6850. Both of those will have a 4meg cache, ship with 1333MHZ FSB, and g0 stepping which means they will overclock like crazy. Dump the FSP as they tend to have ripple under heavy load, get yourself a corsair or other reputable company.

Ditch the MSI and spend an extra 20 bucks on this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188012)

The lite-on isn't typically my taste but I'll let it slide. I generally tend to lean toward plextors. The sammy's are great drives from what i hear.

[HondasTrail]

Actually keep the power supply I didn't see the budget, but tell your friend to upgrade to something better as soon as he can.

[Street_Kings]

Wait for the intel price cuts and get the 6750 or 6850. Both of those will have a 4meg cache, ship with 1333MHZ FSB, and g0 stepping which means they will overclock like crazy. Dump the FSP as they tend to have ripple under heavy load, get yourself a corsair or other reputable company.

Ditch the MSI and spend an extra 20 bucks on this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188012)

The lite-on isn't typically my taste but I'll let it slide. I generally tend to lean toward plextors. The sammy's are great drives from what i hear.

he's extremely anti-Nvidia chipset for some reason. It was either P35 or 975 chipset, and P35 is massively more future-proof than the 975 chipset. Seeing as his ex-wife took his last rig, he needs a comp now, so waiting for the 6700+'s is a bit outta the question for the budget at hand.

I actually convinced him to ditch the G.Skill (which is really not a bad brand, using samsung chipsets) and drop another $40 into OCZ Platinums, so i don't think ram is an issue anymore. I ordered the G.Skill for myself though to mess around in my rig and basically just push to it's outer limits though, so i'll let you know how that goes and how long it holds up before it shits itself in my test bed. $90 for 2 gigs of DDR2-800 Dual Channel using samsung chips is too good of a deal NOT to fuck with.

As for the drives, optical media is basically a non-issue really. 20x DVD-R authoring is nice, but in reality media will hold drive speeds back, so it will be just like any burner out there. The sammy we decided to give a go and see how it does, with the promise that if it takes a shit within 2 years i'll give him one of my raptors. Great to hear about the sammy drives though, I've always been a huge fan of their memory chips, so I assumed that their hard-drives were top notch as well. Nice to have confirmation though =D

He's a very basic PC user, so i think pushing the E6600 to 333x9 to get a 3 MHz will be good enough for now =)

Everything was ordered this morning and will be here on monday, i'll do some preliminary benchmarking, and i'll beat the shit out of that G.Skill to let you all know how well it holds up. I honestly expect to destroy both sticks by friday.

As for the FSP, his budget is maxed, and after upgrading my old supply to a 1KW OCZ ProXStream, it's all he has left to scavenge from =) I figured the rig is not going to be very power intensive, so the flaky FSP 500W should hold up fine for his day to day tasks. Also donating my crappy old Corsair Nautilus 500 water setup to this rig so if the need arises that should provide more than enough cooling to OC the system a bit more.

I'll def give you guys a heads up on the G.Skill and the P35 chipset in a week or two when i've had sufficient time to beat on it, though.

[HondasTrail]

G. Skill is a very good brand, you won't be disappointed with it. In fact I've got a pair 3200's running 250 right now.