My First Homebuild - Rate It if you please
 

After about 12 or so hours of reading reviews and checking prices, here's what I've come up with for my first system. I'll be using it mostly for gaming and web surfing. Almost all prices are from Googlegear.com. Please let me know if I'm making any awful mistakes before I place the order.

Motherboard - Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 AMD Athlon XP/Duron, Socket A, ATX, 3GB DDR-SDRAM, 333MHz FSB
$125.99

Case - Antec 1080AMG Performance Plus ATX Tower $118.99

Processor - Athlon XP 2500+ (1.83GHz, 512KB, 333MHz, Socket A) $98.00

Memory - Kingston 256MB PC2700 DDR DIMM $32.50 (x2)= $ 65.00

Video Card - Radeon 9000 PRO AGP 128MB DDR 2D/3D w/TV $ 87.00

Hard Drive - Maxtor 30GB (EIDE, ATA/133, 7200 RPM) $81.51

Sound Card -n/a (onboard sound on the mother board is supposedly really good)

CD-RW Drive - 52x/24x/52x Lite-On (Internal, IDE/ATAPI) $50.50

Monitor - Samsung Samtron 78DF 17in Flat CRT Monitor Retail $104.50

Operating System - Windows XP Home Edition (OEM) $93.00

Modem - XFX Pine CONEXANT 56K Modem V.92 PCI V.92 CONEXANT 11242 $18.43

Keyboard -Microsoft Internet Keyboard & IntelliMouse Combo OEM $25.50



TOTAL = $ 871

Get a USRobotics hardware modem if your doing dialup. Win Modems are a slow but constant drain on resources. A real hardware modem costs around 45.00 for an oem version but is always worth it. USRobotics is one of the few compamies in the world still in the business of making these.

It's not the biggest and the baddest out there, but seems solid enough and will give you plenty of good times.

I would get an abit instead of asus. But everything else look pretty good. I would ditch the vid card. With such a powerfull system Cpu/Mem/Mobo why put such a slow vid card in it?

I chose that video card cause it seemed like the easiest way to keep the price down. I figure the prices on the 9800 or 9600 will drop pretty drastically in the next couple of years. Mainly I just want to be able to play any game out there (just PLAY, without lockups, not necessarily with all the graphical flash turned on), and not have to worry about system requirements, at least for a couple of years.

Having said that, am I spending too much? Maybe I should downgrade the processor and mobo to save $....

2 recommendations.

1) go w/ mid tower, you dont need a tower at all.

2) you can get a way better deal on hard drive.
buy oem hardrives, you dont need retail for hardrives at all.

i bought a 60 gig 7200 maxtor for about 65 bucks.

At Googlegear, you can get an 80GB, 7200RPM Western Digital for $80.

yeah, and ALWAYS check www.pricewatch.com, and search for the exact same item, you prolly can find stuff for cheaper.

the item boco said, the same thing OEM (which i'm betting googlegear is also) is $76.79!

1) I have a USR v.Everything 56K for ~$25 but it's ISA. I can't remember if the ASUS board has an ISA slot--if you want it let me know. A PCI USR is going to cost you ~50-100 but it's worth it.

2) I have the ABIT NF-7s. It kicks ass (but doesn't have an ISA slot).

3) If you decide to go AMD you can pick up a 2100+ for half of what you are going to spend. It's a monster and, last I heard, the best overclocker. Mine's clocked at ~3 GHz right now (~$200 savings =) ). Make sure you read up on the right boards to find out which one to buy. I got mine from newegg but I don't know if they are still guaranteeing delivery of the chip I have.

edit:
4) The Sony CRX220A1 is a rebadged lite-on. All you need to do is flash it with the lite-on firmware (grab it from http://kickme.to/sony195) and the turbo button is always enabled, the lights work (red when burning instead of green), and Mt. Rainier support. It kicks ass, too.
Review and $20 dollar rebate

Pretty good setup, I would have gotten a bigger hard drive, but good non the less.

Only Thing i would recommend is getting rid of windows Xp hE and getting Win2k... :)

OK,

First: bigger hard drive. 30G wil only hold a few games and your OS, plus all the other stuff that ends up on there. Just do it. Get an 80G.

Next, dump Windows XP Home. Get XP Pro. The extra security measures and such are well worth the price. Home is just so...scaled down.

Fire up that vid card. Really! You mentioned that you wanted to be able to play games for the next couple of years. You'll be pushing it! Get the fastest, baddest car you can right now. Like a 9700??? Maybe. I know you don't really want all the flash and such, but in the next year game technologies will continue to move forward, and your card will be able to do less and less. I know this myself: I still have a GF2 Ultra! (Yeah, me shopping, too!)

Stay with the Asus. Very stable. You might also want to check out prices for 400FSB boards. More is better.

Thanks for letting us spend your money.

juju

looks good. I'd stay with the XP2500, very stable and easily overclockable (but if you don't want to OC, then it's still fast).

maybe a bigger hard drive
the Radeon 9000 should suffice for games for a while, but only get this if you accept the fact you probably will have to upgrade in 2 years or so

A-bit mobo = jumperless = NICE IMO

I got an A-bit board and I love it, I am running the VP-6 i have a Dual P3 Ghz system.

HDD could be a better one for the price, as well I wouldnt trust on board sound.

Some very nice choices. Cant go wrong with Antec, that case looks supersweet. Good mobo for your Barton. Yes, use the Soundstorm onboard sound, its friggin awesome.

Things I would change: Better RAM if you plan on overclocking. A bigger Harddrive definitely. IF you get your processor OEM make sure you get a good heatsink and fan to go with it.

As everyone else sadi, dump the HD, I just bought a 120gb WD special edition for $90.00 after rebates at circuitcity.

To find good deals like that goto http://www.morestuff4less.com/

I find a Lot of Great deals on this forum. :D

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/categories.cfm?catid=18

The XFX Pine CONEXTANT Modems like ALL CONEXTANT modems use INTEL HARDWARE BASED CHIPSETS!

THIS IS NOT A WINMODEM!

you're just fine where your at in terms of modem.

I'd recommend anything but a maxtor or seagate IDE drive *preferably something with a 3year warranty*

IE. Wetern Digital Special Edition, Wester Digital RAPTOR (5yr), Samsung OEM, Hitachi OEM.

And the video card could use some beefing if you plan to game a goo Radeon 9600PRO or GeForceFX 4800 depeing on your need for DX9 support

I would use 512 Mb of pc-3200 Mhz RAM.
Not pc-2700..
Video card is your next bottle neck.
I would spend an extra $100..

You might want to get a power supply to go along with all that. It helps a lot.

Also, I agree that you can get a lot more hard drive while spending the same amount.

For a casual gamer, everything else looks fine. As for me, as long as the game runs fine, I don't care or need all that high quality graphics and such.

UPDATE

Belated thanks to everyone for their input. After more comparison shopping, I changed a few things....

1.) I realized that shipping charges on monitor and case were UNREAL, so I bought them local.... and cheap. I found a KDS XF-7b 17" CRT for $88 at Office Depot. The reviews I looked at were mediocre, but hey, $88.
At the local computer store, I got a Superpower 7101 case for $60. Its what the guys there put their custom builds into. It only has a 300W power supply, but I calculate that will be enough to get me started.

2.) Downgraded processor to AMD Athlon XP 2400+, saving $13.

3.) Changed to a Western Digital Caviar WD400BB 40GB ATA/100 7200RPM Hard Drive for $56. Not the biggest, but I'm really trying to shave the price wherever I can.

4.) Upgraded from Radeon 9000 to Radeon 9200 AGP 8X 128MB for $5 more.

Also, I picked up Serious Sam: The Second Encounter for $10. Seemed like a good cheap way to see what kind of performance I'll be able to get.

Anyway, with those modifications, my total price with shipping and tax and everything came to $785 and change.

The case and monitor are here in front of me, and everything else should arrive tomorrow. Wish me luck, and be ready for me to come crying for help on this board this weekend.....

My advice would be to stay with the Barton XP 2500+. That way you can take advantage of the FSB offered by the motherboard and also be able to run the memory is sync with the FSB of the processor, which usually nets you some additional performance.

Secondly, go over to www.newegg.com and price those same components. Bet you will find them cheaper. I have found googlegear to always be higher priced.

Too late, BigBlue, the proverbial chack is in the mail, and the stuff is on the way.

I went with googlegear over newegg mainly because I liked the layout of their site a lot better! The prices seemed close enough to the same, especially consdering free 2nd shipping at googlegear.

I mean the CHECK is in the mail....

Chainsawed...what OS did you go with? XP home or XP pro?

Two years? Half-Life 2 comes out September 30, 2003. Or just go download the Doom]|[ E3 demo and watch your pc be crushed at 20 fps.

Bolshevist, I went with the XP Home.... maybe I'll regret it later, but I honestly don't expect I'll be using any advanced features. I really just want to get a good (i.e. functional) gaming setup started without TOTALLY emptying my savings account.

Luckily there's plenty of kick ass games from the last two or three years I haven't played yet. They should keep me busy until I can save up enough for a half-life 2 worthy video card. :)

Of course this is all dependent upon my ability to actually put all this stuff together properly.... Should be an interesting weekend....

props on the purchase, sounds good. Sounds like you got a bit burned on the HDD... i've been hearing prices along the lines of $100 for 200Gigs lately...

No amount of yelling is going to change this into a hardware modem--

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...ption=conexant

Click on the pictures to see the driver disk and the detailed specs for confirmation (hint: S/W, "Soft" modem, and Windows as a required OS == win modem)

@chainsawred

When you get some more funds and if you decide to stay dial-up a hardware modem is a good investment--especially if you decide to play games on-line (or want to run something besides windows)

Where's the heatsink?

i would have gone with 1 stick of 512, leaves room to upgrade to a gig (im going to 2 gigs in a few weeks

I would've liked pictures (of your case).

..but your computer sounds nice

Three things I would suggest for you I would try to go to a gig of ram 2X512 pc2700 or 3200 your choice. Upgrade your video card at least a radeon 9500 if you like ATI or a Geforce 4TI card of some sort and Bigger hard drive atleast 80 gigs

I did in fact wind up getting one stick of 512 RAM, instead of the two 256's. Same exact price, same manufacturer.

I don't have a camera, but you can see the case here.... not much to look at though really, but it seems sturdy enough for the price...

http://www.superpower.com/Images_U/4...458PM7101A.jpg
http://www.superpower.com/Images_U/4...71%20Front.jpg
http://www.superpower.com/Images_U/4...15PM71back.jpg

http://www.superpower.com/proddetail.asp?ID=131

(no html skills, sorrry)

edit: embeddied hte images for ya. lemme know if you want me to show you how. :D

Have built several PCs with parts from Googlegear. Good company to deal with. Only had one bad piece of hardware and was able to exchange it problem free.

I know someone else who uses Newegg.com and is just as happy with them.

Good choice on getting the monitor and case locally. I always do that to save the shipping costs.

Sounds like a good system, good luck on building it.

your Ps also at 300 might be fine, but unless it is an Antec 300 i wouldn't trust it, an Antec 300 is a GOOD 300 while most other 300's out there are just mediocre.