build opinions plz

[moonbit]

So I'm upgrading my husband's computer. I guess he deserves it, since I built it almost four years ago.

What he mainly wants it for is multitasking - running Word, Thunderbird (or Outlook, if he ends up getting it), iTunes, and several Firefox windows/tabs at the same time. He also wants to watch high quality (like HD quality) video. He's going to run it all on XP. I'm not going to OC it, as he's uncomfortable with that.

Here's the parts I'm looking at getting

Intel E4500
Asus PK5-E
Sapphire HD2600XT
A-Data Value Series 4x1Gb (lots of RAM makes him feel important )

No particular budget, I just picked all of this out going for a price/performance sweet spot.

The old parts I'm intending on keeping are:
DVD burner, floppy, & card reader
Case & Fans - Antec P160 w/ 2 120mm fans
Maxtor 160Gb SATA150 HD
Antec 450W SmartPower 2.0 (came out of my Sonata II about eight months ago)

So does all of this sound ok for what it's going to be used for? Should I upgrade anything else?

Thanks!

 

[MegaVovaN]

Not bad...I was going to say consider 2180 but that chip has to be O/C'd...

 

[DSF]

Looks fine. For what he's doing, you certainly don't need anything more than what you've picked out.

If he wants the RAM, it's fairly cheap these days, but 2GB is really plenty for his usage. And honestly, I disagree with MegaVovaN. A 2180 really doesn't need to be overclocked to handle what your husband does. Heck, my old P4 would do all that without breaking a sweat, and I didn't even have 2GB of RAM.

 

[Andvari]

Just an opinion, but I would try to stick with Seagate or Western Digital for hard drives. Maxtor has a terrible reputation with failures.

Of course, Seagate owns Maxtor now and they say that Maxtor drives are just rebranded Seagates... But I wouldn't take the chance. =p

 

[moonbit]

Thanks all. I may throttle back on the RAM since I'm reading that 32bit XP doesn't necessarily play nice with more than 2Gb of RAM. If he needs it after the initial install, it won't be anything to get it.

So the 2180 would be fine for HD? I'm fuzzy these days on how much video depends on the vid card and how much it depends on the CPU. I know the lion's share is in the card, but I don't want any sort of bottleneck.

Originally posted by: Andvari
Just an opinion, but I would try to stick with Seagate or Western Digital for hard drives. Maxtor has a terrible reputation with failures.

Of course, Seagate owns Maxtor now and they say that Maxtor drives are just rebranded Seagates... But I wouldn't take the chance. =p

That's funny, 'cause the HD is four years old. Maybe I got lucky.

Here's a question - I remember reading way back when that the XP license is linked to the hardware after registration. Is this true? If so, I don't look forward to calling Microsoft and saying "pretty please don't make me upgrade to Vista."

 

[DSF]

Whether or not the HD is handled by the video card depends completely on the video card. With the HD2600 series, I'm pretty sure it's all GPU-based.

Personally, I wouldn't build a new computer and stick a 4-year-old hard drive into it.

As far as XP, if the last time you installed it was more than 6 months ago (maybe even 4 months?), you should be fine.