Sorry your browser is not supported!

..for my girlfriend. Her laptop has been so beat up, USB ports are sinking in and battery connectors are failing. So, I've decided to replace it with a nice, well-grounded PC .

The PC she wants should be quick, and able to play low-intensity games (like WoW, for instance) at high settings. She spends a lot of time on the internet and moving pictures about and what-have-you, but we also like to get down with a little gaming every now and then.

So far, I've set up a wishlist on TigerDirect for the following system, and would like your input on it.

Motherboard:
Asus M2N-SLI Motherboard - NVIDIA nForce 560 SLI, Socket AM2/AM2+, ATX, Audio, PCI Express, Gigabit LAN, S/PDIF, USB 2.0, Firewire, Serial ATA, RAID

CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.60GHz Black Edition Socket AM2 Processor

Memory:
OCZ Platinum Revision-2 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 x 1024MB)

(all three bundled here)

Hard Drive:
Western Digital WD2500AAJS Caviar SE 250GB Hard Drive - 7200, 8MB, SATA-300, OEM

GPU:
NVidia GeForce 6800 XT (I just bought a new 9800 online, so I'm giving her my old card)

Optical Drive:
AOpen DVD1648PA IDE DVD-ROM Drive - 16X DVD-ROM, 8X DVD±R, 8X DVD±RW, 48X CD-ROM

Case/Power Supply:
Diablotek CPA-802 ATX Mid-Tower Case with Ultra LS500 500-Watt Power Supply

So far the total comes close to 400 USD, which is good as I want to try to stay below 500 for this system. Do you think these components will work for what I am aiming for?

Also, a big question. I need to purchase a license for an operating system. The laptop she has right now is running Vista Home Premium, but is there so much of a difference between that and Vista Home Basic? Premium is about $20 more expensive, but the more I can save, the better.

Thanks for your input!

Yeah there's a big difference between premium and basic, for example no aero, no media centre and pretty no of everything that makes vista.. well vista. If you were going to install basic you might as well just install XP, there really is almost no difference. As for the PC, it would be great to run WOW on and most games that came out around the same time as oblivion would work well. All in all that's a great system for less than $500.

Thanks, anon. I talked to her and it seems that the only thing she wants out of Vista Premium is Aero. If it were my system, well XP Pro hasn't failed me thus far I'll probably go with Premium anyway as it's what shes used to, and with my luck, she'll probably need something exclusive to Premium anyway.

I'm glad to hear that the system will work for what she wants though! I don't really follow up on hardware, so it's good to hear I picked out a good system for the price!

Would any of you recommend perhaps a better deal on some equivalent hardware? Thanks again!

That sure beats my PC, so I'll give it a passing grade.