Need recommendations for new parts

[The_Lurker]

Well, i'm thinking about getting the following parts to replace mine. Course it's hard for me to get Barton CPU's and what not because im' up in Canada and don't want to ship from the states. I was wondering whether the following specs would give me a good Gaming machine, or are there better alternatives?

Athlon XP 2400+ Retail
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe NVIDIA nForce2
512MB PC-2700 DDR333 X 2
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9700 128MB DDR OEM
LiteOn 52x24x52 Retail
LiteOn 16X OEM
Panasonic 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive OEM
Enermax 430W EG465P-VE DuAMD

Also, right now i'm using a Volcano 7 with a YS Tech TMD Fan, and i'm very happy with the noise level. Is there any Headsink/fan combo that would provide a good amount of cooling and oc'ing but quiet as well? Would a thermtalright SLK800 with a TMD Perform well?

Thx

 

[Mrpilot007]

Did you read the review on the nforce2 boards? I just ordered the Epox 8RDA+ and an XP2400 because this board will overclock this chip without modifying the chip. They ran it stable for over 24 hours at 194mhz FSB. Check it out.

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1759

 

[Mrpilot007]

I just reread it and any of the Nforce2 boards are great. The ASUS A7N8X Deluxe won the Editor's Choice Silver Award for best high-end motherboard for the Athlon XP platform. The Editor's Choice Gold Award for best value motherboard goes to the Epox 8RDA+. And they have the best support from the manufacturer.

 

[BigJ]

Seems like you have a pretty good setup picked out there. Are you going to be overclocking? Is the Sapphire a Pro or Regular Radeon?

As for fans, an SLK-800 and either a Panaflo or Zalman adjustable fan would be super quiet if not overclocking.

 

[KidChaos]

Looks good. I strongly suggest ya go with Abit NF7-S rev 1.2 for motherboard though. It's awesome! May also want to get a Pioneer slot-load DVD drive instead of the lite-on dvd drive.

 

[KidChaos]

Originally posted by: BigJ2078

As for fans, an SLK-800 and either a Panaflo or Zalman adjustable fan would be super quiet if not overclocking.

 

[Budmantom]

That's a nice set up, the only thing you should do differently is get your rig all set up and buy the video card last. Get all the bugs worked out then instead of the 9700 go with the 9700pro for about the same price. You should see some price drops around mid march when ati announces the 9900.

Good luck,
Tom

 

[The_Lurker]

Hm.... well, looks like the 9700 is a normal 9700. Of course up here in Canada, the 9700 is $368 and the 9700 Pro is $489 so it is about $100 dollars difference (about 70 US), now, is it worth it to get the 9700 instead of the 9700 Pro? Or just get the 9700 and oc it? Btw.. instead of the Mobo and the PSU, i might spring for a Shuttle SN41G2, so i'd get a Combo drive for the CD-ROM and keep the rest of the config... a tad more expensive and not ocable.. but would be better if i go to a Dorm room situation or something.

 

[BigJ]

For your combo drive I would suggest this: SAMSUNG 48X/24X/48X CD-RW and 16X DVD-ROM Drive
$82.95

As far as 9700 vs. 9700 Pro goes, unless you're gaming at 1600x1200. There's only about an 8% difference in performance, which you could probably overclock to make some of the difference up. But as you go to higher resolutions, at 1600x1200, the difference is as great as 19%. Don't really think its worth it for almost 70$ US. Here in the States its only about a 45$ difference.