Budget PC for brother-in-law

[Fulmar]

So my brother-in-law wants a new computer.  Mainly for audio recording for his band.  He won't be playing any games really so I went with an onboard video motherboard, but I left that option available to him with an available PCI-E slot.  Anyways, the catch is to do it for about $500.  He has the software and the other essentials for recording.

We are going to reuse the following:  Tower, keyboard, mouse, monitor, case, CD/DVD drives.

Here are the following items:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Windsor 2.4GHz Socket AM2 89W Dual-Core Processor Model ADA4600CUBOX - Retail $79.99

GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $79.99

A-DATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model ADQVE1A16K - Retail $42.99-$15 Rebate

Rosewill Stallion Series RD400-2-SB ATX V2.2 400W Power Supply - Retail $36.99***

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM  $69.99

M-Audio Delta 1010LT Audio Card ~ $200

***It pains me to use such a cheap power supply, but since I'm on such a tight budget to build this for him I had to go for it.  I really looked at Customer Feedback on the PSU and its 88% 5 stars on Newegg.  He knows if he wants a video card down the road, he'll be putting in a better PSU.

At first though, I was Intel C2D plan all the way, but after looking at benchmarks (even audio compressing) of the 4600+ and its price, I couldn't go wrong with it.  This would be my frist AMD build in almost 10 years.

Any thoughts or feedback are appreciated.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I would build on Intel. Intel parts can be had very cheap these days and Intel has wiped the floor with AMD with anything related to audio/video since day 1.

[Krusty]

Well with sound recording you're going to be storing a lot in memory, and a lot in a HD-based cache file. You've got 2GB of RAM, and a nice Barracuda HD, but if you can (dunno if it's in the budget) it might help his audio scrubbing performance if you can find a 10,000rpm drive.


If not, I don't see any problems with the stuff you've got listed. I'd personally go Socket775, but that's just me

[Fulmar]

Yeah, a Raptor doesn't fit in the budget and for the HD space he needs.  What I'm thinking is maybe go with a smaller drive, say 160gb, but buy two.  It will end up costing more, but I'll use a RAID 0 setup.  This way he can have a much superior read/write speed, 320gb, and still be cheaper than a 160gb Raptor which run about $150 (I estimated $120** for RAID setup).  It won't be Raptor fast yet, but its a lot better than just 1 7200 SATA drive. **$50 over budget

As for AMD over Intel, yeah I know, I had to double check benchmarks and prices.  At least from an audio encoding standpoint, the 4600+ is neck and neck with the E6320, which runs $176.  The 4600+ also benches much better than the Allendales, and E4300 is $130.  I was surprised myself.
So if I was to go over budget by the $50, I'll get a better system with a RAID 0 setup than a $50 faster processor.

If I had $200 more to work with, I wouldn't touch a AMD setup.  I personally do not like building rigs unless its for myself or my wife because I know how much I can spend.  When it's someone elses money, I really do not enjoy it since I can talk myself into $200 more dollars, but I'm not a salesmen (especially to family).

And if his wife asks, its a $400 rig