new cheapo rig

TwoBills

Senior member
Apr 11, 2004
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Like the heading says, I'm building a new cheapo rig. It's just for basic stuff, no games or graphics. Just an everyday machine. The one exception is my daughter, she's a bit of an artist, but nothing too intense. My old machine, w/a barton 2500, a cheap Chaintech board w/1G of ram, and a cheap video card is still doing the job. But I've got 2 daughters and a young son and dad needs his own machine. I've also have an older machine w/a 1.2 t-bird chip and 3/4 G of ram. Still does ok.
What I've come up with for a new machine is:

- Athlon 64 x 2 Brisbane 2.1GHz retail $66 egg
- Gigabyte GA-MA69VM-S2 mobo $64 egg
- 2 x 1G pc2-6400 ram $80 Directron (seems like good AR prices over there right now)
- 80G Seagate HD $45 Directron (I've got a faster 160g I'm gonna use, the 80g will replace my external)
- Lite-on cd/rw dvd rom $30 anywhere
- xp pro os $140 anywhere
- s510 wireless keyboard/mouse $30 ebay
- 2.1 speakers $30 anywhere

I'm running a 24" sony crt, and will be adding a 19" crt, so I'm going to pick up an APC BR1200 ups for $140 or so. My 2 smaller upses are maxed. That should cover me.

My concern is my power supply. I've got a Chenbro matx case w/a fortron 270w ps that I'd like to use. It has a solid 16 amps on the 12v rail. I'm pretty sure this is going to be enough, but I figure I'd check w/you guys. My backup plan is to switch cases w/my t-bird machine and add an Enermax 350w ps w/28a on the 12v, but I'd like to wait on that until I need more than the on board graphics.

Any input w/b appreciated.
 

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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It should be enough but if it isn't it is not gonna kill your PC, so you can at least try. But I reckon it's going to be enough power. Btw, I'd much rather spend 30$ extra and get a 320-400gb HD. I mean, not even double the price, but qaudruple the space.
 

User5

Senior member
Jul 24, 2004
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for a better deal on the ram, check out the $69.99 crucial ballistix 4 cas with 40$ m.i.r.
 

TwoBills

Senior member
Apr 11, 2004
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Marc......The 80g is just a cheap replacement for my 160g external, that I'm going to use in this new rig. I don't have much use for large harddrives, my original 25g is only 1/2 full and the 120 in my Barton machine is hardly touched.
The one thing, re harddrives, is sata. The ones that I have are seagate ata 100s. Might be time to go sata. Are there any real advantages to sata, for a machine like mine? I like fast boot times. Would sata help w/that?

User 5.....Thanks for that link. Burning my cc as we speak.
 

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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Well newer SATA drives run cooler and make less noise and have higher transfer rates then older HD's, which happen to be IDE / PATA hd's. Besides, cabling on IDE drives sucks, whereas SATA drives are 10 times better/smaller/easier.
 

TwoBills

Senior member
Apr 11, 2004
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hm, this mobo is sata ready. Think I'll shop around in that direction. What's a sata ready power supply look like?
I'm seein' sata optical drives, too. Those round cables would do wonders for my Chenbro case. I think I have more homework to do.

user 5...I found some OCZ ram over at Directron for $72 AR shipped. This would allow me to save $4 on my os. Nickel/dimin' here.