Building a PC...Need help

[painball]

I am trying to build a PC for around $1000 total including a monitor. I have tried going to newegg.com and adding items to my shopping cart but I keep on going over my budget.

I am mainly worried about performance over looks, but I want a sturdy case. Probably this one.


Heres the main outline of what I want and if you guys could suggest parts it would help me out a lot!

M-board: I dont know
Vid card: ATI Radeon 9600 Pro probably
RAM: At least 500mb
Drives: DVD/CD, Floppy
Monitor: At least 17" black
Mouse: optical
Sound card: something
Hard Drive: 40GB

And thats all I can think of now. I know there's all those misc. cables and stuff but I dunno what I need.

Thx

[PyRo]

You should buy the 17" moniter that I have laying around, ill even paint it black for you :)

[MantisMag]

Re: Building a PC...Need help

Originally posted by painball

I am mainly worried about performance over looks, but I want a sturdy case. Probably this one.

and yet your case is black with a window.

[painball]

it's cheap. amd yet looks cool still

[pbzmag]

Don't forget about power supply if the case doesn't come with one. You will needs at least 300watts. Go with AMD for you processor, it's much cheaper. Check out www.pricewatch.com for parts. It gives a list of websites and their prices.

[CasingBill]

check out directron

awesome prices....good service. I use them all the time.

[painball]

I've got a quick question. Do most of the parts come with the cables needed?

[CasingBill]

yes

[gibby]

Originally posted by pbzmag
Don't forget about power supply if the case doesn't come with one. You will needs at least 300watts. Go with AMD for you processor, it's much cheaper. Check out www.pricewatch.com for parts. It gives a list of websites and their prices.

If you go with AMD and a Radeon type card, you want at least a 400W power supply. Also, most motherboards come with an onboard audio so maybe you can trim the fat a little by not worrying about the sound card. If you can find a ATI Radeon 9500 Pro...get it. That's essentially a 9700 with a few pipes locked...but you can unlock it with a program so your 9500 Pro performs like a 9700(no overclocking involved). You should be able to build yourself a really nice computer if your budget is $1k. Good luck!

[sps16]

Okay lets do this,
if you have a 1000 bucks thats plenty for a very good system:
ASUS P4P800 (112)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=13-131-459

Intel P4 2.6 800 fsb (211)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=19-116-159

ATI Raedon 9600 PRO Retail (237)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=14-102-316

OCZ DDR RAM 512MB PC-3200 400Hz Basic Series Memory OEM (104)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=20-146-815

Hitachi 80GB SATA (97) *Maybe not this Hitachi, i on't like hitachi as a brand, i only buy maxtor hard drives. Buy A SATA HD its worth.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=22-145-049

ASUS CD-RW BLACK 52x24x42 (42.99)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=27-135-012

SONY Black Floppy (9)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=21-103-116

That all equals $812.99 w/o shipping, although most of those items have free shipping or reduced shipping rates. That is one sweet computer, you could probably shave off a 100 bucks by downgrading certain items but why? You probably not going to be building another computer for a while and why not buy the best so its not out of date right away. With the money left over you could buy a decent case and monitor, but i wouldn't skimp on the monitor because everything you do on your comp will go through it and a crappy one will lose performance.

[sps16]

Originally posted by gibby

If you go with AMD and a Radeon type card, you want at least a 400W power supply. Also, most motherboards come with an onboard audio so maybe you can trim the fat a little by not worrying about the sound card. If you can find a ATI Radeon 9500 Pro...get it. That's essentially a 9700 with a few pipes locked...but you can unlock it with a program so your 9500 Pro performs like a 9700(no overclocking involved). You should be able to build yourself a really nice computer if your budget is $1k. Good luck!

escentially you could run an ati system off a 300, i've seen people do it. You wouldn't be able to overclock anything, so then again whats the point? I would go with at least a 440w just to have more then enough powa! or maybe a 600w would be better

[painball]

Originally posted by sps16
Okay lets do this,
if you have a 1000 bucks thats plenty for a very good system:
ASUS P4P800 (112)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=13-131-459

Intel P4 2.6 800 fsb (211)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=19-116-159

ATI Raedon 9600 PRO Retail (237)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=14-102-316

OCZ DDR RAM 512MB PC-3200 400Hz Basic Series Memory OEM (104)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=20-146-815

Hitachi 80GB SATA (97) *Maybe not this Hitachi, i on't like hitachi as a brand, i only buy maxtor hard drives. Buy A SATA HD its worth.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=22-145-049

ASUS CD-RW BLACK 52x24x42 (42.99)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=27-135-012

SONY Black Floppy (9)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...ion=21-103-116

That all equals $812.99 w/o shipping, although most of those items have free shipping or reduced shipping rates. That is one sweet computer, you could probably shave off a 100 bucks by downgrading certain items but why? You probably not going to be building another computer for a while and why not buy the best so its not out of date right away. With the money left over you could buy a decent case and monitor, but i wouldn't skimp on the monitor because everything you do on your comp will go through it and a crappy one will lose performance.

Will the RAM work with the Mobo? I thought I saw somewhere pc-3200 is the same as DDR400

[sps16]

yep that ram will work great, its actually made by a really good ram company

[DaosBeoulve]

I built a nice computer over the summer, but I already had a case, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc., so I didn't have to worry about those costs. I don't have exact costs sitting in front of me since it was about 3 months ago now.

I think mine ended up costing between $700-800.

Abit NF7-S V2.0 motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
Enermax 350 Watt power supply
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

That all came to $513.99

Western Digital 40 gb hard drive - I dunno, got it on sale at best buy

two sticks of Crucial 512 MB PC3200 DDR - $89.99 a piece

It's a sweet little set up, and does absolutely everything I need it to. The only problem I had is that the case I have is an old one my friend gave me, and it only has room for a single fan, so I had a good bit of heat issues. It's been temporarily remedied by leaving the side of the case off, but I also ordered a new case. Should be here this weekend when my mom brings it to me. I can't wait. Gotta love Lian Li cases ^_^

(the case with 2 new fans is costing me $152.98)

[gibby]

Originally posted by sps16

escentially you could run an ati system off a 300, i've seen people do it. You wouldn't be able to overclock anything, so then again whats the point? I would go with at least a 440w just to have more then enough powa! or maybe a 600w would be better

True, you could probably do it but then you might suffer instability problems because you don't have enough juice to power up all those devices that he may add later on: number of hard drives, cd-roms/burner, etc. Because Radeon cards require you to hook it up to the power supply, that does take a bit away from the whole system. But like you said, if I were to try and build a powerful computer, why skimp out on the power supply?