Newbie 'what should I buy' post

[dadoph]

Pardon the newbie post, but I figured that this was the best place to ask.

I've built PCs in the past, but over the last 5-6 years we've bought only Dell/HP/IBM for the office, so I've lost that component knowledge.

I need to upgrade my home computer and am thinking about building one. I already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, floppy and CDRW drives so I don't need to buy those again.


Linkworld A319-C2628-P4 Black/Silver Metal ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 400W Power Supply - Retail

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380817AS 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

CORSAIR XMS 512MB (2 x 256MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model TWINX512-3200C2PT - Retail

EPoX EV-X30ELD8 Radeon X300SE 128MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3000BPBOX - Retail

EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Total from Newegg.com = $461.99

Thanks for the opinions!

 

[Oyeve]

I would at least double the memory and HD and also get a better vid card. But thats just me.

 

[xXgambitXx]

welcome to anandtech !

The biggest thing that would help us is: What do you plan on doing with the computer ?
Do you just browse the internet, use Office, Desktop Publishing, Gaming ?
Those answers would tell us how beefy a system you need

If you plan on gaming like a lot of the other folks here then i'd agreew/ "Oyeve" about the memory and vid card. Also, 80GB is pretty small by todays standards. This all depends on your needs though.

 

[drsafety]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
I would at least double the memory and HD and also get a better vid card. But thats just me.

bump. what's your budget, and what will you be doing on this comp? we need this info to give you a good reccomendation.

 

[dadoph]

Here's the extent to which we would use the computer:

It's replacing a Compaq Prosignia w/Celeron 466, 128mb RAM.

That should tell you what the extent of my home computer use is! Really, it's for general internet browsing, kids homework, some basic games, digital photos, Itunes, stuff like that. Also, VPN and pcAnywhere back to the office computer. Nothing really heavy duty.

But, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot either and have to start upgrading in a year either.

 

[xXgambitXx]

based on what you're doing then yeah, your list is nice. Except maybe upping the capacity of the hard drive.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: dadoph
Here's the extent to which we would use the computer:

It's replacing a Compaq Prosignia w/Celeron 466, 128mb RAM.

That should tell you what the extent of my home computer use is! Really, it's for general internet browsing, kids homework, some basic games, digital photos, Itunes, stuff like that. Also, VPN and pcAnywhere back to the office computer. Nothing really heavy duty.

But, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot either and have to start upgrading in a year either.

based on that i woudl say save money and get a Sempron, ram is fine for what you do as well as the video card and HDD

 

[Kaifu]

I actually think he's fine where he stands with the exception of the hard drive capacity. Try looking for something in the 160-250GB range and you'll be fine, storage-wise, until you decide to upgrade. Since you're probably only going to run a single drive for a while, just go PATA/133 instead of SATA/150. Also remember that the ePoX board supports SATA-2 (aka SATA/300) so you could wait until SATA II become more cost-effective from a $/GB standpoint.

The Socket 939 3000+ venice is a much better upgrade path, IMO, than going sempron. The ePoX board is the same one I've got and I'm very happy with it.

With this setup, you don't have at least half the amount of RAM and nowhere near the video power you'd need to run a lot of contemporary games, but as you stated, that's not what you'd use it for)

IMHO the motherboard is at the core of all upgrade paths and you can always throw in a new video card and more ram (4GB max, and in most circumstances, you can do very well with only 1GB these days) when needed.

 

[JD Anderson]

Originally posted by: Kaifu
Try looking for something in the 160-250GB range and you'll be fine, storage-wise, until you decide to upgrade.

Check slickdeals.net
I think I saw a 250GB HDD for about $60 after rebates. Also, they are showing McAffee Virus scan free after rebates.
I'm probably off a little on the HDD numbers, but it is in that ballpark.

JD

 

[Kaifu]

Also check Anandtech's RTPE system for prices on all of your components. As far as PATA goes, it only shows PATA/100, but you can find some decent price comparisons. You can also determine if you really should buy every component from NewEgg.