Bulding a new computer, would like some input

[LaCabra]

Hey everyone, I'm going to start building my first computer soon and I finally figured out how much I'll be able to spend (~$1000-1200). I already have a monitor, but I need everything else (case, drives, etc.) I plan on buying a P4 2.26 Ghz with 533mhz bus speed and a G4 Ti of some sort (4200, 4400 or 4600). I also only plan on buying one CD/DVD drive now, a Plextor (can't remember the exact product name) that does CD R/RW and plays DVD's, so I don't need two drives yet. I plan on buying a DVD writing kind when they figure out what format will be used (I don't want to stick myself with the equivalent of a Betamax). I will also buy a 250mb zip drive because I have one at work, which will make it easier to bring files home (powerpoint, etc.) Other than that, I'm not really sure what else. Probably at least 512 MB RAM, an 80 GB HD, a modem (unfortunately only dial-up here). Some kind of Audigy sound card also. I guess I have it more figured out than I thought. Anyways, the main items I need advice on are the case, motherboard, and type of memory (DDR or RAMBUS?) This is my first build and I will be ordering the parts from overseas so I don't want to order memory that doesn't match the mobo, or a case that doesn't match the mobo, or have a big enough power source, etc. Any and all advice will be appreciated, thanks!

 

[Zugzwang152]

Give us an idea of what you will be using it for: gaming, Divx/DVDs/other video viewing, basic internet, surfing, email, etc? This will give us a better idea of what you'll need, and probalby save you lots of money in the process.

 

[LaCabra]

I guess that would help. Some games, FPS and RPG's mainly. Web surfing, but with a dial up it obviously isn't going to be anything great. I don't plan on watching DVD's on it, I would just like the capability in case they start putting programs on DVDs instead of CD's sometime in the next decade. I also use MS Office quite a bit, mainly Word, Powerpoint and Excel. Hopefully this helps some, I guess I should have thought of that in my first post.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Sounds like a pretty light load. I think you could probably save a little more money and downgrade to a 2.0Ghz P4, 512MB of PC2100 should do fine, and a Ti4200 will be fine. As for your mobo, just grab anything with an Intel chipset and you should do nicely. Have fun

 

[gf4200isdabest]

I just spent $1911 on my complete system (including shipping). At least 225 of it was for a monitor. Check out its specs under the my rigs section. (Goliath; not my old Crap-puter). It is based off the 2.26GHZ Northwood. I got a couple of luxury parts (lian li case, sweet looking speakers). Between those two, you can save another 130 bucks off the price I paid if you get normal parts. So that's about 370 bucks right there. I like my overclocking memory (Corsair XMS pc3200; the best DDR available) but you could get a lower grade than that and save another 100 bucks on that. I got 2 80GB HD's. Minus one and you save another $114. That brings the system to about 1300 bucks. I got a geforce4 4400 128MB video card. If you got a 64MB gf4 4200 (more than enough for RPG's at any setting and even new first person shooters as long as you don't go overboard with AA and such) you'd save another 80 bucks.

Well there you have it. I've stripped my system down by about 700 bucks an gotten it in your price range. You ca figure out the rest. If you wanted to save another 100 or so dollars you can get a 1.6A northwood and overclock it

 

[LaCabra]

Thanks for the advice everyone, it is greatly appreciated!

 

[Earwax]

I just spent about $1000 on a brand new AMD Athlon XP based system. But if I had the extra 200 to work with, I might have gone with a P4 and a 533 MHz bus. Instead I settled on the MSI KT3 Ultra ARU, and XP1800+ cpu. The two combined only run about 200 bucks shipped. RAM is damn expensive though, it was 130 for 512MB of PC2700. Also, the Plextor Drives are great, but I remember their DVD and CDR combo being a bit pricey. It might be cheaper (or about the same) to pick up one of their faster 40x CD burners, and get a cheap 16x DVD drive on the side. I dunno how well the Plextor reads DVDs, but I'd be interested in finding out. If you are looking to get a G4 Ti, like you mentioned, the extra P4 muscle will help you out a bit on fps. My system is bottlenecked by the cpu, if you get a higher end P4 you probably won't have that problem, but the way they're priced, it might not be worth it to go 200 MHz faster for $80 or whatever it is. I would definitely agree with purchasing a 2.0 Ghz, and the ti4200. They're both plenty fast, and much more reasonably priced than the 2.26 and the 4400, or 4600.