my wife decided to have me make her a computer.. she finally made it down to the "Man Cave".. and

[sam sarrha]

saw what i had built.. she was really impressed. i had given her my 8 year old Compaq Presario to replace her 14 yr old HP Pavilion..bought refurbished. i built a

ANTEC 900 Case.
ASUS Rampage Formula X48.
Intel Xeon 3110 3MHz Core2 Duo.
VISTA 64bit & XP 32bit Home Premium.
Silent Knight2 CPU cooler.
8GB OCZ Reaper HPC DDR2 1060
3x Western Digital Caviar 500GB HD .
VisionTec Radeon HD 3870 X2 1Gb
PCI Express X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series
Cosair 750 watt PSU
OPTI UPS Battery Back Up
Samsung SyncMaster 2253bw 17"
MicroSoft LifeCam VX3000
MX Revolution Mouse
Green Ice pad

so she wants a "Real" computer now also.. she wants me to show her what to do, and she will put it together so she can tell her friends she built it.. i had expected the worst, but the Compaq is not doing well these days.. it is really really slow. i have some hardware and it looks like i can build one for about $400.

she wants a 'nice' midrange computer.. she thinks since i work in 'Aerospace' i know what i'm doing, i was on disability for a year and a half and did a lot of research, learned a bit, but the Field of motherboards is ASTOUNDING.. and not many of them seem worth buying when you look at the comments on Newegg.com. i have narrowed it down to probably a

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358
popular board, good reviews..nice features... i am unhappy with ASUS.. i was told to not use the set up manual,it's crap, probably just a bad Chinese translation... i managed by joining about 8 overclock fourms.. nice helpful people.. got the MOBO going first boot. i havent found a reason to overclock it, but it set the 1060 Ram at 1400 and the 1Gb graphics card is Factory OC'd, big fans too, it plays all the Vista 64bit games at highest settings and great ping in the multiplayers i hang out in.

all i need is Ram/PSU/case/CPU.

anybody ever hear anything about the.. GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

or have any sugestions

i wondering about the
Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 Wolfdale 2.8GHz 3MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115206

i have an e8400,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036
the computer booted up runing the OCZ Reaper HPC 1060 Ram at 1400.

i will probably play some games on it when it's too hot or cold downstairs, otherwise she will just hang out at Facebook and read her mail with it.. show it off to her friends. watch her Netflix DVD's on it.

it will be an XP 32bit OS... probably update in the future

[canetoad]

1. That's some series 'puter porn there Sam

It's fabulous that your wife wants to build her own computer; she will be much more confident diagnosing hardware issues and will kick herself when she realizes how easy it really is.

I think I've come to a small portion of self-knowledge regarding the computers I own. The venerable Blue Devil (so called because of the fairground lights shining forth from all sides of the case) is now four years old. In anyone's terms that is an old computer. Brand new, it was a compilation of the highest-end gaming components I could assemble; not because I play high-end games, but because I need to work on A1 size layouts, use 3D cad programs, work with video.

I've increased RAM to 4gig and have extra storage hanging off it, but in essence, it still does the work I want it to do. My computing needs have not changed much in those years. Performance wise, I don't see a lot of difference to the E8500 I use at work.

This, I think is the crux of your question. You said your wife will play movies, email, Facebook. Are her computing needs going to change during the life of the new computer? Ok, lets allow for a little fanciful stuff that she may see and want to do too, but in general, she won't suddenly need to make 3D renders or edit full length movies.

My call is that you wind back on the specs and go for quality and upgradeability.

[sam sarrha]

2. she just told me she is taking a business class and wants to put 'Office 2007' in it and maybe start

a home computer based business with it..

its already evolving....