Make me a pc... go ON! Hi i have $850 to spend on a new pc, im not lookin for the best. just something fast and reliable. doesnt have 2 be amazingly fast.. just really nice hardware.. thats reliable and compatible i can build it myself np.
You could go for the simple Asus A7n8x Deluxe with an Athlon XP 2500+, and an ATI R9600 Pro. That would be a prety solid machine.. as long as the other components you got with it were not to bad... ~Temporal~
I beleive the clock speed for the Athlon XP 2500+ is 1.83. Of course you could always go higher, but that is quite a chip for quite a price. ~Temporal~
what hardware do you already have? I think what you need now is a motherboard, graphics card, cpu, hard drive and a powersupply? assuming you have the mouse etc you should be able to get a very nice system with Asus A7n8x Deluxe (around £85), Athlon XP 2500+ (overclocked to over 2GHZ, around £70), and an ATI 9800 Pro (around £222 or 9700 pro for around £160, which would leave more money for memory and hard drive), you should be able to pick up a 120GB hard drive for around £70-£80, same applies to some decent ram and not forgeting the case and dvd writer. look at http://www.komplett.co.uk/ | http://www.aria.co.uk | http://www.microdirect.co.uk and http://www.tekheads.co.uk you will find some reall good deal, though you might have to wait for bit.
this is a system someone else built for under £300 which is quite good! XP 1700+ @ XP2600+ 333FSB 1.55v £36.50 (overclocked) 512MB DDR RAM £47.00 Skta Asus A7V8X-X KT400 5.1 sound & LAN/NIC £49.00 128MB GeForceFX5200 £52.29 (change it to a 9700 Pro) 60GB ATA100 HD £48.50 (change it to at least 80GB) LiteOn 40x40x24 £25 300W MidiTower Case £19.50 MMKeybd £6.00 wheel mouse £5.87 bought from http://www.dabs.com and http://www.refreshcomputers.com
yeh alot of people have told me to go with a the 2500+ barton amd cpu. i've got a nice case + power supply for £85. i'm going to get the: Asus A7n8x Deluxe as i was already looking at it i want: 512mb DDR pc2700 / 60 - 140gb hhd 7200rpm with 8mb cache / LAN card / DVD-Rom / KeyBoard common guys.. what would u get!? and depending on how much this comes to either 9800 pro or 9700 pro.. cheerz
I like Samsung RAM, and that mostly what I use in my boxes, but Kingston and Crucial are good stuff as well. If you think you might want to get into the overclocking scene, these can work, but if you're serious, you'll want to look at Corsair's XMS or Kingston's HyperX DDR. That Asus board already has LAN on it. The Deluxe actually has 2 NIC's built in, so you don't need to buy another NIC. The plain A7N8X (not the Deluxe), lacks the 2nd NIC, SATA, and (I think) the nForce 2 MCP-T and only has the C-Media audio controller. DVD drives...I've had my Toshiba 6x for several years now. Are you going to buy the retail CPU or OEM. If it's the latter, you'll need to purchase a 3rd party heatsink. Thermalright makes some good coolers if you're willing to spend the money. I have heard of their SLK-9000/9000U having some clearance issues with that Asus board, but they've got other coolers that should work fine.
DVD drive anything by Pioneer or Toshiba should serve you well. Keyboard & mouse I'd go with either Logitech or Microsoft. Apart from that I'd say BigB's advice is spot on.
Here's the system i'm going for: CPU- AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2500+ 333FSB (Socket A) CPU - Retail £71.62 Mobo- Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 (Socket A) - £84.31 Network- integrated 2 x Lan Sound- integrated Nvidia SoundStorm / Dolby Digital Audio Graphics- Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB - £125.43 Case/Power- Antec Plus 660AMG Metallic Gray Mini Tower 330W - £88.07 Memory- Kingston PC3200 DDR 512MB 400MHz - £51.00 CD-Rom- Samsung SD-616QBB 16x48x DVD-ROM - £26.51 HardDrive- Seagate 80GB Serial ATA 7200rpm 8MB - £46.00 Floppy- Teac 3.5" Black Floppy Disk Drive - £15.26 it comes to £518 which is good, but i'd like to have it lower.. and i know i can.. someone tell me if i can get better for cheaper and where? if not what u think of the system..
I dunno, those prices seem to be pretty good from what I'm seeing over at Dabs. RefreshComputers has some slightly cheaper items, but not that much cheaper. You can get a Samsung 16x DVD/48x CD-ROM drive for just over L22 (no "pound key" here) with VAT at RefreshComputers. They also have a Sapphire Radeon 9600 (non-Pro) running L 90.36 with VAT. The Pro version sells for over 140 with VAT. I'm that familiar with online shops in the UK, but if you want to drop the price a little, try checking out the non-Pro version of the Radeon 9600. You can also see about dropping the floppy drive altogether. You will need one if you stick with an SATA drive to feed the drivers in for the SATA controler during your Windows 2k/XP install. After that, it's getting to a point of you not needing it. And in that case, you could just as well borrow one for your install or reuse one for the time being. Asus has had a program to flash your BIOS from Windows now for a while anyway, and that's the most practical app I can see for a floppy drive anyway.
so u rekon drop the pro? for standard 9600 and drop the floppy drive and the Serial ATA for a standard IDE HHD? not bothered about the HHD or floppy but, i would like 2 have a good grphx card 2 play HL2.. as its the only game i play (HL) and i dont want 2 have 2 upgrade my grphx for a while..
well i'm dropping the floppy and sticking with the 9600 Pro & changing from 80gb 8mb cache 7200rpm SATA to 80gb 8mb cache 7200rpm IDE.. but this is what i am going 2 get: CPU- AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2500+ 333FSB (Socket A) CPU - Retail £71.62 -overclockers.co.uk Mobo- Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 (Socket A) - £84.31 -overclockers.co.uk Network- integrated 2 x Lan - "" Sound- integrated Nvidia SoundStorm / Dolby Digital Audio - "" Graphics- Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB DDR - £125.43 - overclockers.co.uk Case/Power- Antec Plus 660AMG Metallic Gray Mini Tower 330W - £88.07 - overclockers.co.uk My Case: Memory- Adata 512MB DDR PC3200 - £65.68 - overclockers.co.uk CD-Rom- Samsung SD-616QBB 16x48x DVD-ROM - £22.00 - refresh computers HardDrive- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB 7200RPM ATA100 - £55.23 - overclockers.co.uk =£512.32 what u think?? ur help so far has been really helpful there is a £20 difference between the SATA and IDE (the latter being the cheaper option) which 1 is better? or "worth" it?
SATA vs IDE SATA is much better, with faster speeds and *BETTER CABLES*. SATA cables are small & slim, almost like a phone cable. Compare that to a bulky IDE cable. Even if you braid your IDE cables like me, SATA cables are still so much more desirable it’s ridiculous. IMO, it’s worth the extra $20. Regarding the rest of your configuration: looks good! Barton core CPU and R9600 both good choices. Just one question -- no need for a burner?
already got 1 in my old pc.. memorex 12x32x10 i'll use that in my new pc until january. i have limited cash atm, and decided to get the best hardware i could get for my money.. that would allow for good upgrading later on.. when i get back from australia 30th december, i'll have around 300 pounds, so i'll be ditching the current ram and getting 1gb new corsairXMS, get a decent CD-RW 52x or something and be getting some good cooling kit. until then i just wanted a very nice basis of a system that i can make V.nice after xmas i'll be donating my old 1.3 duron / 640mb sd ram / ati radeon 8500 64mb to my younger brother of 11 i'm hopin he'll like his first pc (getting a new case for it so he'll think its new lol)
Ahh, well in that case you certainly will have a pretty nice system to get started with. If you haven't got to play with a Barton core CPU yet, I think you'll be impressed. That's also nice for your brother, and quite a first PC. I'm sure he'll like it.
yeh should be nice i've cleaned it up for him, using it atm got a nice smart cheftec red kiddy gamer case for him with see through panels and i've got some illuminous lead covers. he only plays HL e.t.c and a few rugby games. but its enough. his 1st pc.. soon i'll take him to the pub for his 1st pint
