New AMD system, request for opinions.

[lumen]

Greetings!

I've been reading through the forums for the first time tonight, I've gotta say, seems these boards are populated by a good many highly intelligent people. So kiss-assing aside (hah) I was wondering if I could get some opinions on my first DIY system (coming off of a HP pavillion, let's hear a collective sigh for my misfortune) Anyway, here is my situation, this will be my first DIY obviously so I've been doing copius amounts of research on everything from monitors to power supplies. I'd like to get all of this done by mid-Febuary if possible and staying in the range of $800-1000 not including monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse as these components seem to have been supplied by my lovely girlfriend for Christmas (lucky me eh?) but I'll include my choice just for discussion's sake, just dont include them in the budget, since I'm not paying for them afterall.

So here we go:

Ahanis Noblesse Case
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73 GHZ)
Corsair 512mb PC2700 DDR333 RAM
Western Digital 80Gig HD WDD40088
VisionTek Xtasy nVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 - 128 MB
Teac 3.5 Floppy
Verax FSP300-60ATV Power Supply (390w)
Toshiba 16X DVD/48X CD ROM #1712

and the stuff I'm not paying for:

MAG Flat tube monitor 19"
Logitech Elite Keyboard
Logitech Optical Mouse MX300


in case you're wondering, I'll be using the onboard sound in lieu of a soundcard, which should suffice until I get the dough to stick one in there... trying to save some cash on startup...

Anyway and all opinion/advice quite welcome and very much appreciated!

edit: by the way, i'll be doing a good deal of gaming and some photo editing, nothing hardcore, but enough for it to be a concern.

 

[halkebul]

Hello.

Enermax EG465P-VE(FMA) 431 Power Supply $91
Albatron TI4280P Graphics Card $156
Western Digital 80GB Special Edition Hard Drive$115
Two OCZ PC3500 Enhanced Latency (EL) memory modules $220

Use at least DDR400 memory in order to be better prepaired for a probable 400MHz DDR FSB Barton Processor upgrade. Need two memory modules in order to benefit from DualDDR - doubles memory bandwidth. Both memory modules placed in the BLUE memory slots. No need for sound card. Cheers!

OCZ PC3500 Enhanced Latency (EL) memory Reviews
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TechZone
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[tbates757]

Welcome to the Anandtech Forums. I hope my post will be of some help (well I would think so because I basically spend my free time dealing with hardware and reviews). Before you get started, make sure you buy from vendors with good ResellerRatings, don't be fooled by the lowest price from PriceWatch. Or you can just avoid that altogether and order from NewEgg

Prices are estimates.

Motherboard: Epox 8RDA+ ($130) nForce2 -You listed the Asus Deluxe nForce2 board, and based on the rest of your system I doubt you would benefit from the extra features from that board.

CPU: AthlonXP 2400+ ($175) - Much more overclocking headroom than the 2100+ and just a better choice all around in my opinion.

RAM: 512MB (2 sticks of 256MB) OCZ or Geil PC3500 ($200)- Corsair is overrated and overpriced. Their XMS2700 line was particularly disappointing. You will probably see an alarming amount of OCZ haters and bigots who have a vendetta against them for their shady past, but I can speak from experience that they now put out top quality memory products that can overclock extremely well, or just run very reliably at stock speeds, whatever you are into. Geil also makes very overclockable chips.

Hard Drive: The one you chose is fine. Western Digital 80GB Special Edition 8MB Cache ($110)

Video Card: ATi Radeon 9500 Pro ($175) - Very fast (similar to Ti4600) with top notch image quality. You choose VisionTek Ti4200. I would recommend against buying from companies going bankrupt. If you insist on getting a nVidia video card, then I would recommend a MSI Ti4200, because they overclock the best.

Power Supply: Anything Enermax or Antec 350W+. ($60) I have never heard of Verax and this component is too crucial to skimp on.

Floppy: Whatever, doesn't really matter. I am partial to Mitsumi.

ROM: Pioneer 16X DVD Slot Load. ($50) - Hey. It's slot load

You may go a little overbudget with my recommendations, but since you are planning on getting this in February, the prices will come down and most likely fall within your budget range. This system will not let you down, I can assure. If you think I am not an idiot, and would like to discuss in further detail don't hesitate to send me a private message, I wish somebody helped me when I put my rig together. I learned from trial and error, which I guess was a good thing because I really know what I'm talking about now (or so I tell myself).