Trying to build my first PC, looking for some advice.

[Firebrand]

Okay, I’ve never built a PC before, and my current one is of poor quality. So I’d like to get a new one. Here are the specs I’m looking at, I pulled them off of gamespot.com’s hardware section for a value PC.

Athlon 1900+ (1.6GHz) Street Price: $108.92

Motherboard KT266A Street Price: $57.00

Memory 512MB PC2100 DDR Street Price: $105

GEFORCE 4 TITANIUM T14200 RETAIL PACKAGE : $134

Hard Drive Maxtor 40GB ATA100 Street Price: $60.95

CD-ROM 52x CD-ROM Street Price: $ 19.99

Speakers Altec Lansing AVS500 Street Price: $45

Monitor Samsung SyncMaster 700 NF Street Price: $230

Mouse with scroll wheel: Street Price $25

Generic keyboard Street Price: $25

Floppy 1.44MB 3.5 inch Street Price: $8

OS Windows XP Home OEM Street Price: $84

Case Generic mid-tower case 300W Street Price: $50

Cooler CoolerMaster DP5-6I31 Socket-A cooler $15

Total: A little under $971

So, I’m looking for any advice on any of the parts, i.e. better parts or places where they are cheaper, I used pricewatch.com to find all of the prices. Also opinions on any of the parts, if they are of poor quality, please tell me.

Any advice at all would be helpful.

-Firebrand

[KenKun]

Hi ..
I would invest a little more on the power supply unit .. it will save you a lot of headaches with your AMD system ...
Usually the PSU in a cheapo case is not a high quality one .. i recommend EnerMax, AOpen or Antec 300W+ ...

Also, i wouldn't use the retail HS (heat sink) .. it will fail to keep your CPU at temps under 50C .. Therefore, if you ever wanted to OC your CPU, then the HS will be a big reason for major heat problems ...
Get Tt Volcano 7, Volcano 7+ or CoolerMaster HHC-001

BTW, Welcome to TechIMO
Good luck and Regards

[fyxxer32]

First of all WELCOME to TECHIMO!


My only comment is you might want to research your case a little more thoroughly. I have read more than a few comments about high speed CPU's and generic power supplies causing problems. And a friend told me he had a problem with that video card sucking some power,it wouldn't boot, changed the ps to a 400 watter and it was fine. Just my 2 cents.

KenKun you BEAT me!!!!LOL

[sven222]

hi there, here are some thoughts about your potential pc.
how about a kt333 motherboard? and a dvd-drive rather than the cd-rom, the price difference isnt much at all.

[KenKun]

Yahooo fyxxer32

I didn't notice about the CM DP5-6I31, it is not bad for default speeds only .. but getting Volcano7 for about the same price is better, IMO

If you can, get Crucial memory .. 256MB stick is for $65 Free shipping on their website .. getting two sticks of quality RAM is better than cheapo generic 512MB stick .. trust me, one of the worst things is having unstable memory ...

Edit> I found this on Newegg ... OCZ DDR RAM 512MB PC-2400 266HzOCZ300512 CAS 2.5 Performance DDR OEM, Lifetime Warranty. $125.00 Shipped.
The above stick is 150MHz DDR which should give you a nice room for OCing.

[Jeordiewhite]

Not bad, but your hd may be lagging. Now day's a 60 gig to 80 would be the choice of most of us. It's well worth it, especially on DSL or cable.