new system

elninyo821

Member
Aug 10, 2002
29
0
0
hey guys,

i have like $500-$600 to build a new system for college. even though this is for "school" im of course gonna want to do a lot of gaming, as well as video encoding etc... heavy duty stuff...

but like i said i only have about 500-600 to work with...

naturally i'll wanna go with an Athlon XP to get the most for my money.

basically, i wanna know if its worth the money to go to a kt333 system, or just take a step back to the kt266a?

what's the best motherboard for both chipsets? overclocking isn't that big of a deal to me, as i have never done it, but i would like to keep my options open. but i do want a stable, fast board, with some good features on it too...

i like the kt333 boards because of their usb 2.0 support... onboard sound isnt a problem for me, and the onboard lan is just fine. i'm gonna want to get a decent video card... i have a gf3 ti200 on my current system, and it works more then well enough for me, so that's probably the way im gonna go for video.

so basically, here are the things im going to want on the system, whether i can get it down under 600, thats the real challenge

Athlon 1600+ or above
kt266a/kt333 mobo
512 MB DDR PC2100
GeForce 3 Ti200
40GB HDD
24x burner or above
12x dvd

any thoughts? more importantly, reccomendations for motherboards?!
 

Boonesmi

Lifer
Feb 19, 2001
14,448
1
81
i would get:
epox 8k5a2 via kt333 based motherboard ($85) by the way this board has the usb 2.0 you wanted
512mb genuine samsung pc2700 ($160)
any gf2ti200 or gf4ti4200 ($100 and up)
maxtor 7200rpm 40gb hdd ($80)
lots of good cdrw drives, i like lite-on (around $50)
same for dvd.. lots of good drives (around $40)

by the way the prices are based on memory (so wont be exact) from newegg.com and mwave.com