My First Build: Suggestions

[thesoffish]

Here is what I've picked out so far:

ASPIRE Turbo Case X-Dreamer Silver ATX Mid-Tower Case with Window and 350W Power Supply, Model "ATXB3KLW/350"
Sony Internal 16X DVD+/-RW / Double Layer Drive Black, Model DW-D22A-B2
Alps Beige 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive, Model DF354H068F
GIGABYTE "GA-K8NS" NVIDIA nForce3 250 Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 754 CPU
AMD Athlon 64 2800+, 512KB L2 Cache, 64-bit Processor
Mushkin 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200
SAMSUNG 160GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model SP1604N
SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9600XT Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "ATLANTIS RADEON 9600XT"
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 PCI Sound Card

Any suggestions?

 

[AristoV300]

I would suggest going Socket 939. Why not go with a Nforce 4 board?

 

[thesoffish]

After looking at some Socket 939 processors and Nforce 4 mobos, I have come up with a reason why not: they are more expensive. While I don't want a crap system for $300, I also don't want a great system for $900. I would get them if I had a bigger budget, but the payoff can't be all that great.

 

[akugami]

One of the reasons to pay the slight increase with these lower end NF4 boards is that they use PCI-E which means that your board is protected from being outdated. CPU's don't seem like they will be seeing a huge increase in speed. Instead they're going dual core so you should be ok for 3 years or so with an Athlon64 3000+ regardless of whether it's S754 or S939. This is pending some early rumors of some incompatibilites between some of the current S939 mobos and dual core chips.

At the very least, S939 will have a longer lifespan because more higher speed CPU's will be released for it than for S754. So 2-3 years down the line you should be able to plug in something along the lines of a A64 4200+ in terms of speed for minimal cost. This in the long run is cheaper than having to scrap a mobo, CPU & RAM to upgrade later on. If you go with S754, your next upgrade 3-4 years down the line will most likely be the new M2 socket, DDR3 and PCI-E.

Non Ultra or SLI versions of the NF4 based mobos run under $100. And if you want something with more bells and whistles for $120. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-268&depa=1

If you get a PCI-E mobo you can then go with a Geforce 6600 video card which can be had for $110-$140 depending on features. This is a better card than the Radeon 9600XT and is in the same price range.

 

[Amplifier]

Never saw why the descrete sound card was necessary. My onboard 7.1 sounds great .