Critique this comp (aka DOES THIS COMP HAVE AIDS?)

RE: Duo vs Quad. Depends on what kind of computing you're going to do... Honestly, for most users Core 2 Duos are more than enough for regular use/gaming. Quads produce quite a bit more heat than Duos but if you're planning to use your computer for stuff like a/v editing, encoding, etc., the C2Q's are worth it.
 
also note, that as nice as quads are, intel discontinued them. Very few programs are optamized for quad cores and since quads are no more, that list wont get any bigger.

TL:DR: quads dont have an overwhelming advantage over a dual core. They're still better but not as much as you would expect.
 
Quads are GREAT, if you do video encoding like I do. If all you do is normal PC stuff and game, you dont need a quad core.
 
Critique this comp (aka DOES THIS COMP HAVE AI

If you want an honest opinion:

CPU: Piece of shit at this point in time, bad all around

Mobo: I wouldn't touch that motherboard with a 10 foot pole

GPU: A 9600GT is not bad. It's usually only around 10% slower than an 8800GT/9800GT (which are the exact same card). Just don't expect it to run any modern games at 60fps at maximum detail on higher resolutions like 1680x1050 to 1920x1200. Unless you really play games on the PC a 9600GT should be just fine. These days for PC gaming I wouldn't recommend anything lower than a GTX 260 216/Maxcore.

PSU: "600 watts" means jackshit. Often el-cheapo power supplies are advertised at their peak power rather than what they can constantly sustain. One of the most important things these days with a power supply is how much amperage it has on the 12v rails since parts like video cards often rely directly on the 12v rails. When you buy a PSU make sure you know how many watts it can constantly sustain and know how many 12v rails there are and how many amps each one has. Never be stingy on the PSU, it'll come back to haunt you.

RAM: Bleh, DDR2-800 is kinda the standard but I don't know specifically what IC type that RAM is (you didn't specify exactly what RAM it is) so I don't know how much it can overclock. Usually it's no problem at all since any non-shitty BIOS has a ton of options but with a motherboard like that you may have some problems if you plan on overclocking (a motherboard like that isn't going to overclock much anyway). You didn't list the timings of the RAM. DDR2 is so cheap these days that if you build a PC yourself you might as well buy DDR2-1066.

Building a PC these days can be cheap if you can find a good overclocking motherboard and throw in a Core 2 Duo then overclock the shit out of it. Clock for clock K8 CPUs are ridiculously slower than even first generation Core 2 Duos... AMD Phenoms are even slower clock for clock than first generation C2Ds.

For example you could buy a "Celeron" E1200 (which is actually a Core 2 Duo with crippled L2 cache) for like $60 which is 1.6GHz and overclock it to 3GHz with air cooling on a cheap overclocking motherboard like the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L or whatever the modern counterpart of that is.

Long story short, if you're going to buy a computer as a whole and not build one piece by piece then I guess that's not too horrible. However if you build one yourself you can build a significantly better PC for around the same price give or take like $50.
 
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