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Originally Posted by pacaveli
think im gonna stick with APG, but im kinda pissed because new egg deleted my shoping cart  |
A rather smart choice in my opinion. AGP is not going anywhere fast, and will be around for several more years.
As for your motherboard/CPU choices, To me the idea here is to choose a motherboard that does not just have what you need now, but things you may want in the future. USB ports for example. Adapter cards are never as efficiant as onboard USB. I'd say a board should have a least four ports. 7.1 or 8 surround sound from a good onboard soundcard (as in built into the motherboard) is also reasonable to expect nowdays. As for hard drive connectors, I see SATA as required on whatever you buy. A good board has both IDE and SATA onboard, so that both type of harddrive's can be attatched and mixed. I'm on the fence about onboard networking, but you might as well look for a board with it, as most have it nowdays. Thats less money spent to get a network card later.
In your case, I'm less concerned with AMD vs. Intel as both meet your needs. I call your minimum CPU speed at 2.5ghz. Both types of chips are too inexpensive not to get at least that.
Your video card choice seems great to me, and I actually kind of like the first case you suggested more. But I don't like my cases to be big fashion statements. Antec power supplies are great, but as long as the supply is a name brand, I don't see the problem. None of my PS's are well known brands, and none have ever failed. That said, stick with the recomendations here, as you depend on a PSU to have a computer work.
Make sure to get a good fan for the CPU. Remember that CPU's run at between 100-175f degree's. The stock fans made by Intel and AMD for their chips work fine. You shouldn't have to spend more than 25.00 for a fan, otherwise you paid to much in my opinion.
XP home or Pro work fine, as does Win2000. Just don't touch ME with a ten foot pole.
Also, instead of a DVD drive, get a combo CDR/DVD-Rom drive. They cost between $40.00 and $60.00 and then you have both a cd burner and can watch DVD's. You really don't need a DVD burner. few people actually need them. If you don't have need to back up 7gb's of data daily, you don't need one.
Running the calculations in my mind, your around $600.00 for parts
The Motherboard/CPU combo and your video card are the two most expensive parts. If you spend $350.00 - $375.00 on those, and then $300.00 for everything else, that seems like a decent balance in pricing to me.