Edit: Kids PC- thanks for impute, bought components today $400 (see inside)

[tjbiscuit]

I am building a PC for my kids to play their stuff on. They are both under 10, and I know the oldest will never be into computers, so I am not worried about them outgrowing it too quick. They have been using the Cyrix P-150 I had (ew), but alas, it cannot run DX8 that is needed for even the youngest of kiddie games (hey, cannot play Bob the Builder without DX8!).

Here is what I am considering building/buying, but I would just like some advise from those more knowledgeable. The 2 key elements for this PC are cost and stability.


Currently have:

17? monitor
6 Gb 5400 hard drive (hey, it?s the kids computer, they don?t need state of the art yet)
DVD/CD player
300 Watt power supply from a friend
Panaflo fans as needed


Would be buying (Newegg):

$24 BLACK EVERCASE E4252B005 No Power Supply
$89 Asus A7N266-VM NVIDIA nFORCE 220 Chipset 266/200MHz FSB Motherboard
$78 AMD Athlon 1700+/266 FSB XP PROCESSOR CPU- OEM
$73 CRUCIAL MICRON 256MB 32x64 PC 2100 DDR RAM - OEM
$6 Arctic Silver III
$7 Thermaltake VOLCANO 5

Total cost for this setup right now would be $277 + s/h, so around $300 total I think.

I will most likely be running Win98SE on this to ensure capability with some of the older programs I have (that I know run on SE), but might upgrade to XP Pro one day. Once I upgrade my PC I will most likely put the geforce2 GTS card I have into it. The sad thing is my kids will have a more powerful PC then I do, but I am pretty happy with my current setup until I have the $$ to upgrade my stuff right!

Currently everything I plan on running on the PC runs on my wife?s celeron 566 with integrated sound and video without any problems, so I think the the integrated sound and video in nforce board should suit me fine.

This will be my first build, so please let me know if I have over looked anything obvious, or if you have any recommendations on something I should consider changing.

Thanks?

Biscuit

 

[murphy55d]

You can get a 1ghz Duron for half the price of the 1700+. I am pretty sure the 10 yr old won't notice much of a difference.

Good choice w/ the nForce board..and I can vouch for that case as well, I have the beige version. Very nice.

 

[NeoMadHatter]

yea, he's right. go duron. cheaper and might be able to get a cheap decent video card with money left over.

 

[amdskip]

Case is very nice. I would personally build the new system for myself and give the kids the older system.
Getting a 20 gig hard drive would probably be a good thing too.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I think if you're going to bottleneck yourself on the HDD like that you might as well step down to the Duron. Use same mobo though.

 

[tjbiscuit]

Hey, thanks everyone for your replies.

I?ll give the Duron a thought. I was going to go with the 1.7 Athlon so when I decided to drop my video card into the machine, it would already have a processor that would be more then a match for it. I am sure the Duron would not be a slouch either.

I do not want to buy a hard drive at this time for a couple reasons?

1) I don?t want to spend the extra $60 (would be less then $60 if I got the Duron)
2) The 6GB HD they use now still has plenty of space on it, even with all that is loaded on it. Many kids games actually leave most of the files on the CD and very little gets loaded to the HD.
3) I personally do not have a HD that large, why would they need one? Note: I am not a MP3 fiend, and tend to delete my unused files. Next PC will have a big HD though.
4) I don?t want to spend the $60 right now (most important reason)

I have thought about building the system for me and giving the kids my PC, but that would mean I would have to buy at least an additional video card since I am not ready to use the integrated GF2MX graphics included on the nforce board. Doing this would raise the overall cost of the machine. Besides, I am patient and am hoping to maybe upgrade and build a new computer after the clawhammer is released getting either a cheap Athlon once the prices are lowered, or get a clawhammer chip if they really kick butt. Gotta save my money now so I can spend it later.

I figure too that even if I gimp a 1700 Athlon system with a 5400 rpm HD for now, it will be cheap to upgrade later and the 1700 processor should buy me an extra year or two upgrade wise over the Duron for only a $35-$40 up front investment.

Thanks again for the impute, still willing to get any more out there.

Biscuit

 

[CrazySaint]

Looks good to me, except I don't think the gF2 MX supports DX8, and you forgot a HS/F for the CPU

 

[tjbiscuit]

Crazy,

You might be right about the DX8 thing. I am not so sure that it is important that it supports all the features DX8 has, but rather that DX8 will not install on the pentium class PC I have. I think I will be ok, but if not I'll have to spend a few more bucks for a video card.

I think I did have a cpu heatsink/fan in the: $7 Thermaltake VOLCANO 5... pretty sure this one will work with this combo, but I might need to research it a bit more to be sure.

Thanks for the impute.

Biscuit

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: tjbiscuit
Crazy,

You might be right about the DX8 thing. I am not so sure that it is important that it supports all the features DX8 has, but rather that DX8 will not install on the pentium class PC I have. I think I will be ok, but if not I'll have to spend a few more bucks for a video card.

I think I did have a cpu heatsink/fan in the: $7 Thermaltake VOLCANO 5... pretty sure this one will work with this combo, but I might need to research it a bit more to be sure.

Thanks for the impute.

Biscuit

Oops, hehe, I missed that

 

[CubicZirconia]

I think I will be ok, but if not I'll have to spend a few more bucks for a video card.

The geforce 2 mx will be fine with dx 8. It won't support dx 8 features (like you said), but it will function fine.

 

[MrDudeMan]

i would also get mushkin pc2100 ddr from their website. it is 81 dollars for 512mb and if you arent getting a 7200rpm hard drive you dont need crucial ram. you might as well get more.

 

[Wingznut]

<-- Parent of two small boys (8 and 4) who use the PC quite a bit.

That being said...

You don't need a better video card, you don't need a bigger hd, and you don't need 512mb of DDR. As a matter of fact, I'll bet that you'll get along just fine with some real cheap RAM. Also, if you have some SDRAM laying around, you could easily build a system around that.

Consider a printer. Kids love to print stuff.

You could save a few bucks and use whatever thermal compound is the cheapest, instead of AS3. (Unless you need some AS3 around the house anyway.)

Might want to consider a crossover cable or router to network your PC's.

And if you are considering WinXP, do a dual boot w/Win98. There are more kids apps than not, that won't run on XP.

 

[KickItTwice]

I have an idea. How about getting a cheaper motherboard, something like this for $48 and put the $41 saved towards a geforce3 ti 200 which can be had for $86 shipped as seen on pricewatch. Then put the Gefoce3 in your computer and your old video card in theirs.

 

[tjbiscuit]

MrDude said:

i would also get mushkin pc2100 ddr from their website. it is 81 dollars for 512mb and if you arent getting a 7200rpm hard drive you dont need crucial ram. you might as well get more.

Good idea, but I see I can get the 256MB Mushkin BASIC PC2100 for $65, which sounds more like what I would consider (cheap is the driving goal). Free shipping, how can you go wrong too!

KickIt said:

I have an idea. How about getting a cheaper motherboard, something like this for $48 and put the $41 saved towards a geforce3 ti 200 which can be had for $86 shipped as seen on pricewatch. Then put the Gefoce3 in your computer and your old video card in theirs.

I have considered doing something like this, but decided against it for a few reasons:
1 - The GF2MX will be more then enough for the software they will run (they are using a celeron with integrated video at this time, so the nforce is a step in the right direction already).
2 - I do not want a GF3 card... when I finally upgrade my system, I will get a GF4 or better
3 - Again cost is the issue... $40 is a large percentage of this setup considering how low the cost will be. Rather buy the kids more software for that $40, or better yet, buy me a game!!

Wingznut said:

That being said...

You don't need a better video card, you don't need a bigger hd, and you don't need 512mb of DDR. As a matter of fact, I'll bet that you'll get along just fine with some real cheap RAM. Also, if you have some SDRAM laying around, you could easily build a system around that.

Consider a printer. Kids love to print stuff.

You could save a few bucks and use whatever thermal compound is the cheapest, instead of AS3. (Unless you need some AS3 around the house anyway.)

Might want to consider a crossover cable or router to network your PC's.

And if you are considering WinXP, do a dual boot w/Win98. There are more kids apps than not, that won't run on XP.

Thanks for your imput, nice to see a fellow parent come forward and say what they think on the subject.

Printer is a good idea, so is the crossover cable. If I get the cable at some point it iwll give the access to our networked printer. I try and limit what they print though since my oldest would print every "work of art" she makes, and I do not want to keep buying ink refills. I need to look into refill kits one day (lexmark z31). Whether I get a printer for them or connect to our network for printing, that would come further down the road (xmas gift sounds good!)

I really will not have much a need to duel boot on thier computer for anything yet, so I will prpbably stick with 98SE for now, but it is a good idea for the future.

ASIII versus whatever might come with the H/S-fan. I'll give that one some thought.


Thanks everyone for the impute so far, still willing to read more if there are any other opinions out there.

Biscuit

 

[Wingznut]

Originally posted by: tjbiscuit
I try and limit what they print though since my oldest would print every "work of art" she makes,

Heh, I hear ya there!!!

I'm not a networking expert, by any means... But I'm not sure if a crossover cable will work with two very different OS's. Maybe someone else can lend their voice here.

 

[tjbiscuit]

Well, I bought the components today, thanks for everyone impute. here is what I finally decided to get:

$89.00 MB ASUS NFORCE A7N266-VM Retail 1
$70.00 HD 20GB|WD 7200R U/100 WD200BB % 1
$67.00 DDRAM 256M|32X64 PC2100 NANYA-K RTL 1
$31.00 CD-ROM 52X ASUS CD-S520 RETAIL 1
$11.00 CPU FAN AMD|1.5DBB VOLCANO 6Cu RT 1
$78.00 CPU AMD|1700+266 ATHLON 1.47G XP % 1
$28.00 CASE EVERCASE|P4ATXMD NPS E4252B00A 1
$5.00 ABOVE OEM CPUs HAVE 1 YEAR WARRANTY 1

Subtotal $379.00
Tax $.00
Shipping and Handling charge 21.00
Total $400.00

Decided to throw a few more bucks into the mix and get a HD as well.

Getting ACIII, panaflo fans, and a PS from a friend in addition to the above items. Time to build me my first PC.

-Biscuit-