desertfox04
Member
This is the first computer I've built, and needless to say it was a good learning experience. I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned and some of the mistakes I've made.
First up, my main problem was a budget of $900 to build a gaming computer. My parents are brainwashed by all the Dell and Gateway commercials offering "performance" PC's for $500. It's been very hard "justifying" spending $900 on a computer, and I'm the one paying for it!
Anyway, I ordered all my parts from Newegg, they all came intact, no damage, and a day early. Just one more satisfied newegg customer. This is what I bought...
AMD Athlon 3000+ with Retail HS $220
Chaintech VNF3-250 $90
A-Data PC4000 Ram $110
Powercolor Radeon 9800 pro $210
Floppy Drive $10
Dvd-Rom $30
Aspire X-Infinity case $60
Antec 400 watt PS $60
Microsoft XP Home $90
This comes out to $890
I had a $100 dollar gift card from Best Buy and I bought a 120gb WD pata 7200rpm 8mb hard drive. I would of preferred SATA, but they didn't have any. But my HD runs just fine, no complaints.
I got the 3000+ processor instead of the 2800+ simply because it'll be easier to overclock.
The Chaintech vnf3-250 is a good board. Although, it has very poor documentation. The manual made no reference to how to install the standoffs and I had to do some searching on the Internet before I found out how to do it. Also the explanations of the bios options aren't that good. But hey it's a good solid board for $90 without all the frills.
I had a little trouble deciding on the RAM. I chose to go with the A-data pc4000 because I'm hoping to overclock my cpu to 2.3ghz later this year, once I get a decent heatsink. The timings 3-4-4-8. These are very conservative for ddr400. I'm pretty sure I could get them down to 2-3-2-5 but I don't know if there will be any noticable increase in performance. Also, I sure wish I had another 512 sticks because UT2004 load times are almost unbearable, and it gets a little choppy in large levels.
I'm pretty happy with my case. It's black, very shiny, and the lights are very pretty. Comes with 2 led fans but case temps are a little high, 96 degrees (the room temp is 80 though). I'll probably get a third 120 mm for the back. My biggest gripe with this case is that there is a sodered bolt right next to the AGP i/o panel. I had to bend the metal where the screw goes in to make it fit. I'm going to have to file it down so i can screw in my AGP card. Terrible oversight, considering that this is branded as a gaming case and they make it so you can barely put a AGP card in!
My powercolor Radeon 9800 pro works just fine. Lackluster bundle though.
My case came with a 350 watt turbo link power supply, but I didn't trust it so I bought an Antec and played it safe.
Windows XP has been out for 3 years and they haven't lowered the price a dime!!! grrr... shelling out $90 really pissed me off. Oh well, next time I guess I'll have to go with Linux 😛
So I'm very satisfied with my purchase. I only wished I had more money to buy that extra stick of ram.
Any comments are welcome.
First up, my main problem was a budget of $900 to build a gaming computer. My parents are brainwashed by all the Dell and Gateway commercials offering "performance" PC's for $500. It's been very hard "justifying" spending $900 on a computer, and I'm the one paying for it!
Anyway, I ordered all my parts from Newegg, they all came intact, no damage, and a day early. Just one more satisfied newegg customer. This is what I bought...
AMD Athlon 3000+ with Retail HS $220
Chaintech VNF3-250 $90
A-Data PC4000 Ram $110
Powercolor Radeon 9800 pro $210
Floppy Drive $10
Dvd-Rom $30
Aspire X-Infinity case $60
Antec 400 watt PS $60
Microsoft XP Home $90
This comes out to $890
I had a $100 dollar gift card from Best Buy and I bought a 120gb WD pata 7200rpm 8mb hard drive. I would of preferred SATA, but they didn't have any. But my HD runs just fine, no complaints.
I got the 3000+ processor instead of the 2800+ simply because it'll be easier to overclock.
The Chaintech vnf3-250 is a good board. Although, it has very poor documentation. The manual made no reference to how to install the standoffs and I had to do some searching on the Internet before I found out how to do it. Also the explanations of the bios options aren't that good. But hey it's a good solid board for $90 without all the frills.
I had a little trouble deciding on the RAM. I chose to go with the A-data pc4000 because I'm hoping to overclock my cpu to 2.3ghz later this year, once I get a decent heatsink. The timings 3-4-4-8. These are very conservative for ddr400. I'm pretty sure I could get them down to 2-3-2-5 but I don't know if there will be any noticable increase in performance. Also, I sure wish I had another 512 sticks because UT2004 load times are almost unbearable, and it gets a little choppy in large levels.
I'm pretty happy with my case. It's black, very shiny, and the lights are very pretty. Comes with 2 led fans but case temps are a little high, 96 degrees (the room temp is 80 though). I'll probably get a third 120 mm for the back. My biggest gripe with this case is that there is a sodered bolt right next to the AGP i/o panel. I had to bend the metal where the screw goes in to make it fit. I'm going to have to file it down so i can screw in my AGP card. Terrible oversight, considering that this is branded as a gaming case and they make it so you can barely put a AGP card in!
My powercolor Radeon 9800 pro works just fine. Lackluster bundle though.
My case came with a 350 watt turbo link power supply, but I didn't trust it so I bought an Antec and played it safe.
Windows XP has been out for 3 years and they haven't lowered the price a dime!!! grrr... shelling out $90 really pissed me off. Oh well, next time I guess I'll have to go with Linux 😛
So I'm very satisfied with my purchase. I only wished I had more money to buy that extra stick of ram.
Any comments are welcome.
