Building a Computer Over the Summer and Definitely Open to Suggestions!

[mjs1217]

w00t, it's summer time, and i'm building a new computer! However I have a few boundries. The computer that I intend to build is going to be a gaming computer, so it needs to be fast and have an awesome video card. However, it also needs to be 700 dollars or less all-together, since thats all the cash I can spare.
I've heard of a few good places to buy parts at, and, although I intend to buy most of the parts at a computer show, I have decided to use www.pcimicro.com and www.tigerdirect.com for the parts that I cannot find at computer shows.
I have already spent alot of time on this, and assembled everything that I intend to buy, plus the maximum estimated price, in a list.(I have attached this list to my post.)
I am still open to any and all suggestions from you guys! Also, I have never bought from www.pcimicro.com before, so if any of you have, please share your experience.

Pease Note The New List With Suggestions!

[Crimson_Turkey]

Looks good. Pe4rsonally I suggest an Asus A7V333 mobo. Has onboard sound too.

[Mr.Minus]

well...my experience with on board sound is if you want even slightly louder for dvd's and stuff the sound is gonna suck, but if your going for cheap its definately the way to go!

[pbcustom98]

Websites

Check out www.newegg.com for comp stuff..from what my friend tells me the prices are pretty good.

Daniel

[joeyjoe367]

You might want to take the hit and spend a bit more on your video card...

Remember, Doom3 and Half-Life 2 are comming out soon, and you probably want to have the best video card you can afford to get good framerates.

I'd also recommend an NVidia chipset Graphics card. Their Driver support is MUCH better than ATI. Sucks when loading up 3d games makes your computer crash, even tho when it's running you get 2 bajillion frames/sec.

[MarkM]

Ok I may have missed this but why the EXTERNAL harddrive, surely you will create a bottle neck by forcing the data through the firewire card.....and on that why a firewire card, plenty of MB's have a firewire socket, so at least for the short term you can have connectivity.

On board sound is a no no especially with a machine that you will be gaming on as you want as much power being processed by the right components...admittedly it is getting more and more difficult to find a decent bare MB AND still have it a reasonable price. The processor you quote is ok but Athlon 2400XP are around at real good prices....you have gone for that particular ATI card to overclock it , and then you choke up the rest of the system...for the sound card the older Audigy are plenty good enough (if you can find one) and as long as you are prepared to do a little bit of searching for the correct drivers the SB "Live 5.1" is a steal
A floppy drive isn't needed anymore so there a "small" saving to be had...you also haven't allowed in your budget for cooling as you are going to be using this for games I know you are gonna be fiddling with the clockspeeds so the temperatures are gonna rise...the heatsink and cooling fans in the packages are the first thing to dump. to be honest I belive that you are realy not ready to buy a system to do what you want to do because even though "some" of your PC parts are cheaper to buy where you are compared to me, we have stores here selling machines way way more powerful than you have quoted and they are mid priced units for me but they are twice the price you have got in your pocket. Just my thoughts you understand but then you did ask for thoughts

[-Carnifex-]

Give it legs, and missle launchers.

[mjs1217]

Mark, youve brought up some very good points:
First off, IEEE (Firewire) harddrives are only made external, and I was told that Firewire can go anywhere between 40% and 100% faster than IDE's. However, I hadn't considered your bottleneck theory.
Also, the case I intend to buy has 2 fans already installed, so cooling is pretty well taken care off since I have been told that the system I quoted won't need more than 2 fans (I will also have the sides of the case off, and on humid days, which are frequent here in Florida, the computer should cool even faster).
Then there is the issue of the processor. I have chosen this processor because it is extremely cheap in the combo with the motherboard. Perhaps I will upgrade it eventually, but I don't have the ash for it right now, nor will I for at least 4 months.
and finally we have the issue of the sound card, which I have opted not to buy just yet due to my lack of funds.

I really do appreciate your input though, and I will consider perhaps changing my harddrive as to avoid a bottleneck situation. Thanks!

[digitard]

Stay with ABIT or ASUS ...

I do tech work for Insight.com and we get Soyo calls all the time ... I get the fewest from ABIT/ASUS (Except for basic turn the FSB to 133 stuff)

But thats just my advice

Dave

[MarkM]

Ok, something else...I have heard and know of external hard drives...but to be honest never as the Primary Drive....can an external drive even be configured as such?

Even though you live in a warmer (bastard !! )area, I have a "alleged" slower machine than you and my case came with 4 fans plus I have a fan on both of my hard drives plus an extra exhaust fan......and nothing on my machine is overclocked....and you don't wanna feel the heat coming out of my machine . Stock motherboard bundles are really underpowered in the cooling dept, I'm not suggesting a water cooled system or a refridgeration unit but at the very least a fan adapter and an 80mm fan for the chip, my case is an Ally Lian-Li and I have added the window and the lights (lights aren't fitted at the moment) but then that was just for show not performance, I have ram cooling fans together with heatsinks attached. All the IDE cabling is the smooth high airflow type and all the extra cables are wrapped in cable wrap. All this air flow routeing adds to the costs, although it does really help with reducing internal temps, actually the flat IDE cables are basically the same cost as these so called "trendy" parts, crazy.

I am actually considering changing the CPU fan/heatsink with a 120mm unit but time will tell, I will probably do that on the next system I build.

Your graphics card I think is a great choice....very lucky to find that model, the 9500 pro is the same board as the 9800 so it can be seriously fiddled with, and as such they have gotten very very scarce...just do a search and you will find the hacks to open the card up...but then I guess you already knew that hence your choice , you will however still have to consider aftermarket cooling for the card once you have fiddled.

Not that I play games on my PC, well does Solitare count :o, But you want to get the sound card 'cos how are you going to play games without sound? kinda defeats the idea of playing games, blow the big boss up and hear him go bang that sorta thing

[mjs1217]

Hmm... I hadn't even considered going with a primary harddrive internally and making the IEEE a secondary...

Howeverr, most likely the computer will stay as is when I buy it and then over the next year I will begin to upgrade it, including heatsinks and water coolings if I see fit.

I'm rushing right now so sorry if this post is a lil short, but i'll be back on later.

Thanks for the help Mark.

[maximum]

Good spot for computer Hardware

This is where i order all my computer hardware from.

http://www.directron.com

[xmetal2001]

DONT go with a external harddrive as your primary, and the firewire being faster than IDE, Well, I've never heard that, and it doesn't really make sense, and in my experience it isn't true.

[SatansGun]

i would recommand
Motherboard Intel Desktop D865GLCL $133.00 $133.00
AsusTek V9560/TD 8x AGP 128MB DDR $185.00 $185.00
Box Intel Pentium 4 Celeron 2.4GHz CPU $93.00 $93.00
Hard Disk Maxtor 6E040L0 40GB IDE $63.00 $63.00
UNEEC Aluminum Tower + Side Windows, Silver $73.00 $73.00
Kingston 512MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM $65.00 $130.00
Sound Blaster Live! Value! 5.1 $33.00 $33.00
8 Sub Total $710.00


if your gonna keep anything form your old computer ie: keyboard monitor speakers cd rom/ other rom and i would get round cables they are much neater than the flat ones

(these Prices are from http://www.pixelusa.com/default.asp
ive got all my comeputer stuff there for 10+ years)

[Miscue]

I prefer getting my hard drives at Costco, and motherboard/CPU in town... although it might cost a bit more. Reason being... it SUCKS when these parts break if they do... and you don't have to wait for stuff to get shipped. Costco will credit you if they don't have your drive, so you can use that money to get a bigger drive.

Most other parts don't break very often... or are cheap enough to toss and replace. Gives an excuse to upgrade.

Screw the Celeron. AMD or P4.
Screw Intel boards. Get ASUS, MSI, or ABIT.