More "soon to be rig" help!

Pringleprime

Member
Aug 30, 2004
31
0
0
Finally have my part of the money for a new computer(parents offered to pay for half, so sibling could have this one), but I can't decide on acouple of parts. First off, my budget.. i'd like to keep it under 800-850 with shipping, it's at that rightnow, but for some reason I think i'm missing something, or such. Have keyboard and mouse, but need everything else, and black is definitely a bonus, to match the new desk. So far, i'm looking at..

Case

CD/RW

Hard Drive

RAM

Monitor

Motherboard

Processor

Speakers

Video Card

Then the assorted accessories(zip ties, fans, hsf, thermal grease)

Should also mention that rightnow, I have an 8mb TNT2, AMD Athlon 750, 12gb no-name HD, 192 pc100 RAM. ANYTHING almost, is an upgrade for me. I'll probably be putting this together myself, mainly be used for gaming(EverQuest rightnow, World of Warcraft soon, UT2k4, maaaaybe HL2 once I order a second stick of RAM later on, etc), and that's about it.

Will this be fine? It's kindof going to be the family computer, but mostly for my brother and myself, so I don't plan to do much overclocking, so I was thinking the processor might hold be back again. Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated, first time build :)
 

dmw16

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 2000
7,608
0
0
Overall I think you have a nice set of parts there. A couple of things I would change:

1) The CD/RW drive. YOu may either want to get a combo CD-RW/DVD reader or even a DVD+/RW. They can be had for about $30 after mail ins if you check around the hot deals forum. Reason I suggest that is because I think more and more stuff will be coming out on DVD and having a DVD drive would be nice.

2) Like said above, try and get a gig of ram, but you seemed to be aware of that.

3) The Cpu. I know you said you didnt want to overclock, but people have had a lot of luck getting 2500+ bartons to pretty high speeds on stock cooling. So maybe bump up from the 2400+ to a 2500+ and OC a little bit to strech some life outta the CPU.

OTher than that it all looks good to me. Enjoy.
 

dickie1900

Member
Aug 17, 2004
34
0
0
I picked up a 2500 barton 333 and a beefed up fan/heatsink combo it's OC'd with no problem. The other thing I'd think about is the monitor, just 17"s? I'd look into maybe a 19" if you're going to be gaming. I don't know if you've checked but www.pricewatch.com usually has some pretty good deals. Another HUGE factor in price is software that you need to buy, XP is a big chunk out of budget. But I recently put together a rig for my grandma with the Sonata case, A7N8X-E deluxe, a WD 80GB SATA HD, 512MB 3200 DDR, lite-on DVD burner, 9600XT, and barton 3000 400fsb proc all for under $800. I haven't upgraded her monitor yet, I'm still looking. But it worked great for her, and the grandkids!