Helping a friend build a new rig.

It is actually just an online friend that I am assisting when he has questions and what not.

He is hoping to be building it late May. He says he has about $1,000 to work with.

He wants to get a P4 3.0/3.06 (He wants the Hyperthreading).

That's about all he knows. He isn't too hardware savvy.

As far as a motherboard. I am an Asus fan and told him he should either go with them or Abit, or possibly even Gigabyte.

I know he is gonna want/need a board that can handle some speedy ram (No less than 3100 for sure).

That's about all he has said. He is building the full rig from scratch (Minus probably the CD ROM/R/RW drives).


I'm just looking for some suggestions. Any good input/insight to give him...

Thanks guy, you are always a big help.
Dave

all of the new canterwood mb's is what id be lookin at.. they come in various flavors from 140- to 400 bucks... make sure he has a good ps.. thats overlooked alot each 128 stick uses about 8 watts of power not to mention the cpu and video card...Id also be lookin into the 2.4 800 fsb chips,if they clock anything like the sl6rz's you can get alot of bang for the buck...

It's going to be hard to build a complete rig for under $1,000 if he wants a 3.0/3.06 CPU. The processor alone will eat up more than $400 of the budget. Maybe by late May they will have hyperthreading CPUs in the lower speeds? A Canterwood Abit IC7 mobo is about $158 or if he wants to get a 845PE mobo, the Abit BH7 is $84. A good case and P/S will cost $60 to $200 depending on how fancy you get (Cheiftec is a great case at a good price and often come with a 450 watt P/S for under $70). With RAM you'll need two sticks with the Canterwood or just one with the BH7. If he can get by with 512 meg, then he can expect to pay from $120 to $150 for PC3500 (less if he goes with PC3200 since Kingston HyperX PC3200 is $85 for a 512 meg stick). Good 80 gig HHD are under $100 and for another $40 he can get a DVD-ROM drive. That don't leave much left over for a good video card, but with some shopping around he might get under his $1,000 budget or at least close to it.