Another Budget gaming system

[Poncherelli]

I'm helping my friend build a budget gaming system soon, trying to stay around 600 dollars and this is what i have so far, any critic is appreciated.

800mhz Duron
Epox8k7a or MSI K7 Master
Enlight case
256 DDR
Kyro 2 or Geforce MX
20 gig IBM hard drive@ 7200
Sound Card...??? need a suggestion
12x Toshiba DvD
Floppy

Speakers and Monitor will come later, although cheap suggestions for a 3piece set and 17" are also welcome, thanks.

 

[Fenix793]

for sound get either an sb live value or one of the hercules sound cards. Both are pretty good choices. As for your video card choice forget the gf2 mx. The Kyro 2 owns the value videocard market. Its about as fast a gf2 gts in most tests and at about the same price. Also for your mobo Epox has a new mobo, the 8KHA out that looks quite good. Pricewatch shows it at $116 so you might want to check it out. The rest of your system looks pretty good. Remember a heatsink for that duron 🙂

 

[Poncherelli]

150 is a bit much for the video card, so we'll prob take the kyro 2 since performance will not change much to the pro. The HSF will be a Taisol cgk760 with some AS2. Also, the sound ards you mentioned are a bit expensive, is there anything in the 50ish range?

 

[zoom8112]

definately get an iwill kk266

best darn amd solution out right now imo

 

[MrBond]

You'll be hard pressed to find a sound card for $50, unless it's a SB Live, which will give you a lot of problems. Same with Vortex2 based cards. Check the ForSale/Trade forum, you should be able to pick up a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for ~$65 (what I paid). It's as good as the Herc Game Theator. Hercules has a newer card out for the value market, but know nothing about it.

 

[krogoth]

I built my current rig in the last couple of months on around 1400 USD - including a 5-port hub and other stuff you may not be putting in a budget system. If you look around in the right places you can find some great stuff - if you're in Canada the first place to go is http://www.computers-canada.com, it's a search engine for canadian online vendors with a rating system that I used for most of my later purchases.

Another thing i'd suggest if you don't have a very specific idea of what you're going to be paying is to start with the unchanging things (like the case) first, and buy the things you would like to upgrade (like CPU and video card) last, so if you end up spending less than you expected at first you can get a better system (of course if you have a hard limit and you spend too much at the start, you would have to downgrade).

 

[kernelmonster]

Get a Iwill KK266 board and use the onboard Cmi8738 sound (wich is pretty good, personaly i dumped my sb live for to gain som free space in the computer after i had tested the onboard sound)...

 

[LuNoTiCK]

How u going to say get an iwill. The epox would be a better choice because u get ddr and it will be easier to upgrade in the future.