Not to blow smoke up your buns, but if this is the first time you speced a system, you did pretty well IMO. Appears to be a good all around mid to high end system. Not the absolute fastest thing available, but competent and a whole lot less cost-wise than the fastest. Should handle anything out there now in the way of games. I build/rebuild 2-3 systems a year and have since the mid 90's or so. I'm not into it as much as some people though, but I've done my share. Asus is my #1 choice in motherboard makers. They just seem to work with less hassles. Antec is my #1 case maker (as long as they are using Antec power supplies).
I'll assume you are using the onboard sound. Don't know much about that ADI AD1980 sound chip, but Analog Devices has been around for a long, long time. From the spec sheet at
Analog Devices, it sounds pretty decent. You can always add another sound card later. (Just as an FYI, I've recently sworn off of Sound Blaster Live! though. Seems to be a lot of people - myself included - who have crashes with it and Via chipset motherboards. I went from crashes every hour or two in a game to maybe once a week.)
I'll ditto Amish on the floppy drive. It's only $9. Get pretty much any brand Teac, Panasonic, Mitsumi. Buy a spare - it's only $9.
🙂
LAN connection is onboard. Will you need a modem? (Going external perhaps?) (Going cable modem or DSL - even better!)
There's a 120 mm fan in the back of that case. Looks like room for another one in front. You might want to get that. I recommend a speed adjustable one. Enermax makes some nice ones. Others swear by Panaflo fans. (I've not used the latter.) You'd install the one in the front to suck air in. Not necessarily a good thing if your computer sits on carpet. (But I still do it. I just clean it out a few times a year.)
If the CPU you're buying is OEM rather than retail, buy a CPU fan/heatsink combo. Personally, I always go OEM, because I find the manufacturer's heatsink/fan typically weak. Especially, if you want to overclock down the road. There probably won't be a need to overclock this for a while. Also, you tend to get longer warranties with retail than oem, but the CPUs are getting obsolete faster than their warranties, so I've not worried about that. Properly applied Artic Silver III is a thing of beauty and it really does seem to cool down those CPUs better.
A lot of people are saying to go with 1 GB of RAM. I'm still at 512 on my systems and am having no problems. Heard there are a few games in the works with a requirement for 512 MB. I guess Battlefield 1942 is a whole lot faster with 1 GB for example. I'm running UT 2003, Splinter Cell, No One Lives Forever 2 with very good frame rates. You can always buy more RAM later. Just buy a good brand now. I've had good luck with Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, and Mushkin.
Get a good set of surround sounds speakers. I still remember the first time I heard a head crab sneaking up from behind me in Half Life - and I could tell it was behind me. There's quite a few brands to choose from. I have Klipsch's myself and love them. They're not cheap though. On the plus side, speakers move from system to system as do monitors, keyboards, and mice.
About all I can thing of. Really though, I wouldn't mind having the system you've speced out there.
-cap
