Help With New Build

[JIMBOB73505]

I have been away from computer building and this site for some time and need some help selecting parts for a computer for my 17 year old granddaughter. She will use the computer primarily for school (word, excel, etc.), internet and some photo editing. I have monitor, DVD drives, floppy drive, keyboard and mouse. I would like to spend around $600 but could go higher. What I have selected is probably overkill for what she does now, but I am looking forward to next year when she will be in college. Here is what I have come up with based on limited research.

Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply - Retail ($100)

ASUS P5K SE EPU LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail ($90)

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80571E7200 - Retail ($120)

CORSAIR Dominator 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-8500C5D - Retail ($45 after rebate)

EVGA 256-P2-N751-TR GeForce 8600 GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail ($50 after rebate)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM ($60)

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP3 English for System Builders 1 Pack CD - OEM ($90)

Total $555 not counting shipping.

Are parts compatible? Can I get more bang for the buck? Is video card okay? Etc???

Any and all comments and recommendations are appreciated.

[Alaron]

Looks like a great list to me.

The RAM is overkill. A set of DDR2-800 would be fine.

[Brian2MN]

Originally Posted by Alaron Looks like a great list to me. The RAM is overkill. A set of DDR2-800 would be fine.

I would agree that the RAM may be overkill and faster than you need, but $45 after rebate may be tough to beat price-wise anyway if you go down to DDR2-800, and you might waste a lot of time trying to save 5-10 bucks if at all.