Advice on building a system

[Joshatdot]

Not sure if this belongs here, or in Chillout.

I am looking into building a system form my sisters husband. I gave her an estimated price of $450 to $500. He is going to be using it on their new 32" LCD TV as the monitor. This is mainly going to be a web surf/flash gaming, and not a lot of 3D gaming. She wants it to be a nice little computer, and not a big-ish tower type, so I figure a Micro-ATX should be just right.

Newegg.com - BIOSTAR TH55B HD LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI Micro ATX Intel
Newegg.com - Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156
Newegg.com - A-DATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Newegg.com - XFX HD-567X-YNFC Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood) 512MB
Newegg.com - Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.2
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Newegg.com - HEC 6T Series 6T10BB Black 0.7mm SECC Steel MicroATX
Newegg.com - ASUS Black 2MB Cache SATA 24X DVD Burner

It's a bit over the budget, but overall what do you think? I know Core i3's are not considered 'Gamer' CPUs, but like I said this will be mainly a web/flash system, and some 3D gaming.

 

[Fumz]

Hit that buy button man... what are you waiting for?

 

[Joshatdot]

Just waiting for any opinions on what I listed, pros/cons, suggestions. I think its a very decent web/media/light gamer system. Mobo is i3, i5 & i7 compatible, so it could upgrade quite well.

 

[Fumz]

It's perfect for its intended use.

 

[Night Hawk]

I may not prefer Biostar for a board and run AMD here but it's not a bad selection just by a look at the names of the links themselves. The one other item I would wonder on however is the make of hard drive since I typically recommend WD or Seagate as the two leading manufacturers especially with the summer promos going on them at this time.

I just ordered a new board for a start on another micro atx build being planned here for a family member myself to replace an older 939 build. That will see 4gb of OCZ Gold DDR3 1600 memory and already ordered the WD Blue 500gb drive for it showing we are on key as far as drive sizes go!

 

[Fumz]

Samsung F3's are excellent drives.

 

[Joshatdot]

I may not prefer Biostar for a board and run AMD here but it's not a bad selection just by a look at the names of the links themselves. The one other item I would wonder on however is the make of hard drive since I typically recommend WD or Seagate as the two leading manufacturers especially with the summer promos going on them at this time.
~snip~

I know what ya mean...NE has some Gigabyte micro ATXs, but the one I was interested in had spotty reviews:

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H LGA 1156 Intel H55

edit: there is this one too, but doesn't says i3 support
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55

 

[Night Hawk]

A few years back there was one rave review about a DFI micro atx model that took on the full sized boards on a few different things. That was back then however.

For a basic and "small" build which was the main concern by a family member a new micro atx case seeing a 3ghz Atholon II without any gaming saw an Asus board selected since the one seen previously with USB 3.0 sold out fast. Newegg.com - ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

That may see a few hours daily if that for the intended 7 case to replace an older mid tower XP Pro build I ran for a bit for testing the Vista RC1 at the time when newly built to make sure everything was all set. TOO BIG to move around was the complaint and why a new micro was needed. Can't win them all!