Help (Advice) me build my budget system!

[grifterspawn]

Building this for my sister and family that live in Maine. They are currently suffering through using a dying cyrix system with 64 or so megs of SIMMS in it. These are MY thoughts currently, but would like input, as budget systems arent really my thing.

ECS K7SEM -- on board sound/video, not sure how good the mobo is, but its fairly inexpensive, anyone heard of problems with the integrated video?
Duron 900-1000 -- havent decided on it yet, does this board work ok with Morgan cores?
CDROM -- I need to go budget, but dont want to go TOO budget, any recommendations on an inexpensive but still good cdrom would be nice
Hard Drive -- looking for a cheapish 10-15 gig hard drive, doesnt have to be 7200rpm, would like it to be at least ata/66 though...any advice on where to look?
Case -- this is a micro atx board, so i COULD go with a smallish case, but ive had bad luck with budget cases in the past, so if no one has any good budgets suggestions, i'll go with my tried and true enlight 7237

Any suggestions will be appreciated!

Thanks.

 

[ProviaFan]

I don't know much about most of what you're asking about, but on the hard disk, get at least a 20GB model. Smaller ones aren't even sold anymore at most places, and even if you can find one, I'm sure you can find a 20 or 30GB model for not much more.
As for the CDROM, I'm happy with my Creative Labs 52X, which cost around $40, iirc.

 

[HappyPuppy]

I've built several systems with the K7SEM and never had a problem. It works with Athlon and Duron. It's no screamer, but it will get the job done.

 

[bravesfan258]

If you're willing surf the Sunday sales flyers and deal with mail-in rebates, you can probably find a relatively quick CDRW drive for around $50. I don't know how 'budget' this is, but the ability to archive files to a 10cent disk will add a lot of value to the system. Use this as the primary CD drive.

You may also find good deals on 'obsolete' 6x, 10x etc burners. I only suggest this because the low-end CDRWs I've seen are barely more expensive than most of the CD-ROM drives.

 

[majewski9]

I know you are going for a very very low cost system! Which I have tinkered with my self.

That board is very reasonable, but ECS just released the L7SOM which uses the SIS 740 chipset. I havent seen it at newegg.com yet, but maybe other sites have it. It uses the sis 740 chipset and DDR. It has the SIS 315 video intergrated which is far superior to the SIS 730S.

I do think that the K7SEM is great board and I have heard nothing but good results from it. Get the 1ghz Duron at least since it uses the far superior Morgan core and isnt much more than the 900mhz Duron.

 

[grifterspawn]

I will keep an eye out for that board then...wonder if its for sale anywhere yet...

 

[grifterspawn]

BUMP!!! for more advice.

 

[Athlon4all]

majewski9's got it. If you can get the SiS 740 with DDR (You'll be buying new Ram anyway right?). SiS 740 is just as good as 730S on K7SEM except that it has DDR support. K7SEM is though a solid board. I never used it, but I'd prolly use it for any budget system.

 

[WarCon]

I just finished working on a K7SEM system and it was very stable through the whole install. Have also gamed on one that had a Geforce 2 MX in it and it wasn't bad. It had an Athlon 1g chip in it and ran just fine. It came in a bare bones for $189 (I think). Wish now I just bought the parts separately though as that case feels like a soda can.............

No complaints on that board for me.

..................edit...................
I just built another system that I actually thinks runs much better though. It was on a BIOSTAR M6VLQ INTEL PC133 VIV 686-B 133MHz FSB SOCKET 370 MICRO ATX - RETAIL BOX from newegg, which is currently only $50 and a Celeron 1.0GHz FCPGA form factor (370pin socket) - 1GHz Retail Box $70. This system seemed to run smoother during normal use, with the only real downside of having the Blade3D video. I figured out that you can't interleave the memory as it causes video problems. I built this system for around $730 in parts with a Liteon 24x burner instead of a normal CDrom and a 17" NEC monitor. Other than the video problem that was fixed by putting the memory to non-interleaved (which was default anyway) this system was a dream to load.

 

[m1ke101]

why not just save the trouble and get them one of those dell or gateway pcs for $500 located in the hot deals forum.