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Originally Posted by xepherys
I'd vote for the GeForce if these are the cards you're looking at. Is your heart set on the MSI board? MSI is a good brand, but their boards are not generally as efficient and fast as Asus or Tyan or a few others. With the type of work you listed, bus efficiency is important to not sitting around waiting for things to happen. Also, do you need the bluetooth? I assume this is a home system, so the security concerns aren't too great, so I suppose it's not a problem. Working with system and network security everyday, my company strongly recommends against bluetooth currently... but again, in a home environment it shouldn't be an issue as blutooth doesn't have too great a range (unless you make one of those BT rifles). Can you reuse your existing case? I assume you're already reusing CD drive, floppy, sound, etc. Can you just keep using your exisitng HD? As for OS, you should be able to transfer your OS license from one machine to another. When you buy a system with Windows pre-loaded, you still own that copy of Windows, regardless of what the manufacturer may lead you to believe. $500 is plenty for a computer... but often not a very good one. I'd say $750 would get you a great PC for what you do. If you can maybe skip the HD upgrade and such for now, you might save yourself a bit now and be able to upgrade later. Just a thought.
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Thank you for the advice Xepherys.
My mind is set on the MSI board based on previous experiance in system building. The Dual-Net card is in fact a big point to me. In our house we have two palm's and two cell phones, all of which sync their Phone Number Databases with the computer for business and personal use. It also lets me eliminate a wire snaking along the wall in the Parlor room of the old Victorian we live in by placing the router & modem at the back of the room.
MSI tends to be good at Bios and Driver updates, and has one of the best integrated Bluetooth/WiFi ideas around right now.
I like the board, and the combo is a good deal for the price. The board alone is $130.00 from either Tiger or Newegg. If I could find a better proccesor that still keeps the combo price under $275.00 I would grab it in a second.
I can pick up either a 250gb SATA drive or a copy of Windows Xp Pro OEM via a credit I have at Tiger. Which is more worth the use of the credit? I do need a copy of Xp Pro, to replace Windows 2000.
I did find some
DDR2-800 (6400) Memory for $55.00. Is that a fairly good price for DDR2 right now?
I'll probably end up getting the Combo at this point, so the question now is such:
What else can I do with $200.00 plus a $150.00 Tiger credit to make a good system?
I need the following:
-Power Supply (Case / Power supply would be even nicer so at some point I can revive the current machine as a server with a flavor of RedHat)
-Video Card
-Either 1 or 2 drives of fair storage capicity. 1 larger drive, or two smaller drives to use as RAID with one mirroring the other. SATA only needed.
-Xp Pro w/ SP2
-I would like a CDR to replace my CD-Rom, but that can be taken care of later or via Ebay.
Assuming I used my credit for XP Pro; I need to find a HDD, Case, and Video card for 200.00. What if anything would you suggest?
The best I've come up with so far (@ Newegg) is:
-MSI P4N Sli-FI, $119.00
-Intel P4 630, $181.00
-Dual-Net Card, $26.99
-512mb DDR2-800, $55.99
-Maxtor 200gb Sata-150, $84.99
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Total: $464.98
That still leaves me without a Case/PS
Suggestions are most welcome
