Some input, please.

[tRaptor]

The best part about beeing in college. Academic software prices:

EX: OfficeXP for me: $200


You could get the WinXP Pro upgrade for like $100, compaired to the $200 it'll cost you otherwise

 

[subdismal]

I found this one site once that was all about academic software. I lost it when I reformatted and didn't back up my bookmarks or anything. It had discounts for high school students and everything. All you had to do was mail in a report card or something (from my memory) and you got discounts. That site owned...but I lost it.

Maybe you could hook me up somehow?

 

[tRaptor]

Fortunately HS students can get academic prices on most software. Unfortunately microsoft dosent let them. Everywhere i've seen has said that "HS and college students can order" but that HS students dont qualify for the MS stuff.

~Tyler Try looking on googl for Accademic stores, there are lots of them
Like: http://www.journeyed.com

EDIT:

College Students:
Matriculating college, university and career school students qualify.

High School Students:
High School students can order all of the software we offer with the exception of Microsoft software. (Graduating seniors who can show proof of college acceptance may order Microsoft software.)

Faculty/Staff:
K-12 as well as all post-secondary faculty and staff members can order software from Journey at the same student educational pricing.

Schools:
To place school orders, fax a school Purchase Order to 972-245-0502 or call our School Sales Department at 1-800-874-9001.

Non Academic Customer:
Customers not affiliated with an educational institution may purchase any of our non-academic products. To determine which products are non-academic the product order code will end in a "N". Any order received for educational products will be canceled unless academic verification is received.

 

[subdismal]

I wonder what proves you are a college student? I technically am a college student, I have an I.D. and everything. My school has the Cisco Networking Academy program, which is a dual-enrollment course (get high school and college credit for the course) so I got to register with the local community college that our school is affiliated with. I wonder if that would work?

 

[DannyBoy]

Go for an nForce board and a thoroughbred B Athlon XP 1800 or sumthin & oc the thing.

Dan

 

[subdismal]

I'm pretty set on getting a Athlon XP 2100. What's the price range on one of those motherboards? In case you haven't read the previous threads, I'm in an $800 price range.

 

[tRaptor]

Originally posted by: subdismal
I wonder what proves you are a college student? I technically am a college student, I have an I.D. and everything. My school has the Cisco Networking Academy program, which is a dual-enrollment course (get high school and college credit for the course) so I got to register with the local community college that our school is affiliated with. I wonder if that would work?

That might just work.

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: subdismal
I'm pretty set on getting a Athlon XP 2100. What's the price range on one of those motherboards? In case you haven't read the previous threads, I'm in an $800 price range.

If you hold on about 10 mins mate, im feelin lively and have 5 hours of nighttime to pass until work, slept all day cuz i was ill so im staying up and going in without sleep.

Moving back on topic, i will get you My personal opinion on what you should have and a final price.

Hope i can help you out.

Like i said give me about 10- mins

THanks
Dan

 

[subdismal]

That's excellent. You're going to give me a run down on all of the hardware and everything and the price? You're just cutting my labor and time and helping me out a lot. I really appreciate it, in advance.

 

[DannyBoy]

Ok so heres my opinion:

Case: CHIEFTEC Server Chasis (Aluminum Workstation Tower with Plastic Front Cover) Silver w/acrylic window No Power Supply - $79.00

Motherboard: Epox EP-8RDA+ Socket A / DualDDR / Onboard 6.1 Soundstorm Sound / ATA133 - $112.00

Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2100+/266 FSB Thorougbred Processor CPU 2100+/ 1.73GHz -OEM (Currently on Sale) - $93.00

Memory: 2 x CRUCIAL MICRON 512MB 64x64 PC 2700 DDR RAM - OEM (Also currently on sale) - $88.99 x2= $177.98

Hard Drive: WD WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 80GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # WD800JB - OEM, DRIVE ONLY (Again....On sale ) - $107.00

PSU: Antec 430W Power Supply TRUE430 ATX Form - $78.00

Ok so in total all these items cost a wonderful $646.98!!!!!! (At time of posting) which gives you $153.02 to spend on your Operating system (WinXP)
All of these items are on NewEGG & as you can see, at the MOMENT 3 of them are on sale, 3 of the most important parts of your machine (Which is very lucky)

I hope this will help you out.
This machine should be LIGHTNING quick should you get this setup, as the Epox nForce2 board is EXTREMELY quick anyway, but with a dual DDR setup of 2x 2700DDR 512mb Crucial memory & a nice Overclockable B revision Thoroughbred Athlon XP 2100+ it should be blindingly quick.

Another nice thing which my good friend Garry (Confused) explained to me about this board (Seeing as hes got one now :|) is that the board unlocks the multiplier automatically so overclocking is as simple as changing a setting in the bios (No need to mess around with the physical structure of the processor)

One thing that concerns me, is that i know the 2100 palamino's are different when it comes to unlocking them, but im not sure about the thoroughbreds. Hopefully someone can back this up?

EDIT: You will probably have to buy a better HSF if you are going to overclock, seeing as a B revision Thoroughbred will overclock a HELL of a lot, but a good one shouldnt set you back by much at all, and im sure you can live with the EXTREME amount of power you will get from a setup like that for the time being until you feel fit to start oc'ing.

Anyways happy shopping, let me know how you get on

Regards
Dan

 

[subdismal]

Sweet mother of God. Thank you for that so much and I will more than likely buy everything just as you listed them to me. Wow, I still can't believe that you were nice enough to set everything out on the table for me like that. Thank you so much.

I have one concern. I'm pretty new to some hardware terminology as it pertains to a board like this, what exactly is overclocking? I hate to sound like a newbie or anything, but I'm more of a software person and wouldn't talk about hardware if it wasn't for me getting a new PC. I really hope the sale items listed on there stay on sale for about three more weeks because that's when I'm planning on buying everything (I won't have the money until then).

If I understand what you listed me correctly, I'm going to have 1GB of memory? Excellent.

Thanks again.


Edit: What about sound and video cards? I never looked at the board, but does it have onboard sound and video or would I use my current sound and video cards?
Edit2: Nevermind. I quit being lazy and looked for myself and saw that it plainly said it had onboard sound and video.

 

[DannyBoy]

The onboard sound is quite sufficient unless your really looking for EXPENSIVE sound quality. Its about equiv to an Audigy card, maybe slightly less from what i have read, but either way it is decent.

What graphics card do you currently have? With this nForce2 board it doesnt have onboard graphics, but an AGP 8x Slot
Depending on how good your current graphics card is, you may or may not need to upgrade it. (I need to know which one youve got first )

As for overclocking, if you are not aware of overclocking, how its done, or have never done it for that matter, i HIGHLY recommend you continue reading up on it in the forums & on other sites too, as if you were to do something wrong, it could be at a big loss.

Try posting in the CPU/PROCESSORS AND OVERCLOCKING forum when you actually get the machine built up. Post up your machine specs & ask someone (Maybe ill be there ) how to do it, what the risks are etc, as there are people here that know a hell of a lot more than me.

So what graphics card are you currently using anyway? And whilst on the topic what sound card do you have at the moment?

Thanks
Dan

p.s. Your welcome

 

[subdismal]

Alright, my current computer is a Packard Bell I bought in about 1998 or so (it's been a pretty good one) and the sound card is factory on the computer. From what I gather from my Control Panel, it's a Yamaha DS-XG. As for the graphics card, I would assume it would be the item found in the Display Adapters category of my Device Manager (I'm using Windows 98); it shows it's a "3D Rage Pro AGP (English) (DirectX)." Not to sure if the items in parenthesis are important, but there you go.

What do you think? Can the graphics card be used?

 

[DannyBoy]

My Personal Overclocking Definition: Processors are made to run at different speeds, hence the different clocked processors available (i.e. 1900+ 2000+ etc etc)

Processors are designed to run at Full load 100% of the time & (According to Garry a.k.a. "Confused") Have an average Lifespan of 20 years.
Each processor however can run faster. By increasing the FSB of the processor & by lowering the multiplier (or other way round, although increasing the FSB increases performance) you can increase the clock speed (The speed the processor runs at) thus gaining more performance & speed

Provided that cooling is sufficient when overclocking you should not lose much off the lifespan of the processor (Although at the end of its lifespan it will probably be in the bin)

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: subdismal
Alright, my current computer is a Packard Bell I bought in about 1998 or so (it's been a pretty good one) and the sound card is factory on the computer. From what I gather from my Control Panel, it's a Yamaha DS-XG. As for the graphics card, I would assume it would be the item found in the Display Adapters category of my Device Manager (I'm using Windows 98); it shows it's a "3D Rage Pro AGP (English) (DirectX)." Not to sure if the items in parenthesis are important, but there you go.

What do you think? Can the graphics card be used?

If you want to play games that are new then NO NO NO NO NO WAY!

I will now run around the web again finding you the best deal on a decent graphics card.

Regards
Dan

 

[subdismal]

I don't play that many games. Some of my games I play somewhat regularly are The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon. They both lag. However, if I had a nice system that could handle some somewhat major gaming, I would be playing things like EverQuestion, Diablo II, or Warcraft III probably.

You're my hero.

 

[DannyBoy]

Are you going to want to play games?

If so what type of games?

Now you see, you can get a Ti4200 for around 100buck but that only leaves you with 50 for winxp

Are you definately needing to buy windows xp ?

Reply
Thanks
Dan

 

[DannyBoy]

Ok scrap what i just said, in that case you should be able to settle for a gf4 mx card or a gf3 which will bump the price right down

Again hold on a few mins ill get ya one

Ill try and find a gooden on NewEGG save you buying from different stores

Dan

 

[DannyBoy]

Hmm well you can get summink like a GF3 Ti200 which is overclockable in future to a Ti500

GAINWARD/CARDEXPERT GeForce 3 Ti200 128MB (NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200 GPU), Power Pack Golden Sample, ( 4ns 128MB DDR. - Is a pretty quick card & will easily be able to play things like warcraft III + Unreal Tournament 2k3 / Unreal 2 etc

If you were to get that as well as everything else your total rounds up to $751.98 which leaves you with $48 for WinXP

Again is there anyone who could get you a cheap copy of XP or could you find another way of aquireing it cheaply? Or even better yet could you increase your budget an extra $50 for a copy of XP?

Hope im helping you out here
Thanks
Dan

 

[sukhwinder21]

or u can just get linux for free, and scrap the $200 or so your spending on winxp

Mr. Fitty, you seem to be pretty smart, can you take a look at my computer list and offer some suggestions

$243 AMD® Athlon?XP 2400+(2.0GHz) w/266Mhz FSB Box
OR $163 AMD® Athlon?XP 2100+(1.73GHz) w/266Mhz FSB Box
OR $93 AMD® Athlon?XP 1700+(1.47GHz) w/266Mhz FSB OEM
$39 Volcano 9 CPU Fan 4800rpm (Up To XP2600+)
$225 Asus A7N8X-Deluex nForce2 Chipset 5PCI/1AGP8x/3DDR w/Sound Dual Lan SATA Raid USB 2.0 Socket A & ATA-133
$86 LiteOn 52x24x52 IDE int CD Writer w/Software OEM
$139 MS Wireless Optical Desktop Pro Keyboard & Mouse Combo (Retail)
$375 Samsung 19" 957MB .22(H) 1920x1440 Magic Bright

Those are all Canadian prices, about the same as newegg, but newegg doesnt ship to Canada so i cant buy from them.

Im still debating on which athlon xp to buy. A couple people have suggested to just get the 1700+ nd overclock that to the max. Which one would you sugguest? Ill be using this system for occasional gaming, but mostly just for regular application work in windows and linux. Also, I currently have a Radeon 7500, a maxtor 60gb ata/100 hdd, and i dont need a sound card, since the onboard on the asus a7n8x deluxe is quite good. I need suggestions on which case to get (and powersupply if its not included) and type and quantity of Ram(eg, should i get 2 sticks because of the dual ddr thing?)

Thanks

 

[subdismal]

Alright, let me reply to all of this.

Hrm, I think I answered your gaming question. Next, I don't see where there is going to be a problem in me getting an extra $50 or so, therefore I think I'll still be in the clear. I guess that does it, right? That's everything I need? Man, you have been more help than anyone I've ever met on the Net. I can't thank you enough.


sukh, I would just get Linux for free, but I've never actually used it. I saw my friend using it for a brief second or so when I was at his house, but we didn't have time to really mess on the computer or anything. So, therefore I wouldn't feel comfortable just having Linux. I guess I'm sort of a junkie for Microsoft products. ::looks around computer desk:: Most of my computer-related products are Microsoft.

 

[sukhwinder21]

MrFitty: Can u look at my above post

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: sukhwinder21
sub: i can probably tell you a place where you can get windows xp with just using your internet bandwidth but its probably against the rules of anandtech

I came off a four week ban just yesterday for saying something like that about Norton Antivirus :|

 

[subdismal]

edited

 

[sukhwinder21]

MrFitty, look at the post 5 above this one