Help build an AMD for under $500

[Mr. NoOne]

->This is a continuation to my previous post: "Pent.4 or AMD 2400 ? Help decide" (Pent.4 or AMD 2400 ? Help decide)

To sum-up:

I gave up buying a Compaq for aprox. $450
I'm gonna custom build my own AMD Athlon XP 2400

Things I have:
CD-RW, Mouse, Keyboard, Floppy, Monitor, Printer, Speakers, Video AGP NVidia 3DForce III Ti200

Things I need:
Motherboard, CPU, Cooler, Memory, Case, Hard Drive, Modem

Easy stuff I can pretty much decide & install on my own: Case (300W), Hard Drive, Modem

Kind-of-hard stuff (I might need help configuring): Motherboard, CPU, Cooler, Memory

Some suggestions I've had:
Motherboard: 'nforce2' based (Expox 8rda+ or Asus A7N8X)
CPU: Athlon XP 2400
Memory: 256 Mb PC2700 DDR333

Finally, in some places (like MicroPro.com) when you buy a motherboard 'kit' (motherb.+fan+cpu+memory) they setup & test (for free) before shipping. So I'd rather buy from a place like that, unless you guys are very good teachers!

The computer is gonna be used for some gaming + college stuff + internet (dial up).

One last thing...I dont wanna OC.

I'm also trying to keep the price reasonably low.

Thanks for the help!

[jmebonner]

I would recommend 512 MB of Ram if you're using XP. 256 is okay, but for the extra $25 go with the 512. The burn-in from some of those companies is nice, but tnot really necessary. You can do it all easily. The nForce boards are good, but if you're looking at super inexpensive you might check out the ECS K7S5A on newegg, it's <$60.00, but only uses pc 2100. If you're not overclocking you can pick up an AMD retail package that includes the heatsink. Some will try to get you to use a thermal take or something and it's a better fan, but the stock fan has lways worked for me. www.accessmicro.com also does burn-in configs. I got one from them and was very happy with it.

[HaroldW]

Mr. NoOne:

If you do decide to consider the ECS K7S5A motherboard, I suggest you research it thoroughly. With the K7S5A there seems to be a love-hate relationship. Many people love it, they seem to think it's the "next best thing to sliced bread". Other people have hated it and have reported problems getting it to work right. There are many posts on many websites pro and con for the K7S5A.

What others initially told you basically sounds good. Here is my recommendation:

Motherboard: Expox 8rda+
CPU: Athlon XP 2400 Retail (includes HSF) I agree with Jmebonner, if you are not going to overclock, the retail HSF should work fine
Memory: 256 or 512 Mb Crucial PC3200
Hard Drive: Western Digital 120gig 7200 RPM 8meg cache

Total (w/256 meg RAM) at NewEgg $381 (including free Fedex saver shippping on each of the components)
an additional $47 to make it 512 meg Crucial RAM

Modems, I don't keep track of anymore.

The case, I'm not going to bother to recommend one, many people end up going for looks and secondarily consider functionality. Just make sure you get a good, "high quality" power supply 300 watts or greater. Many cases come with "low quality" power supplies. Just because a power supply is rated at 400 watts does not necessarily mean it is of "high quality."

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

I will agree with all items, except for 2 things, I'ld go with Epox, not expox (sounds like a M$ gaming thing)

Also for HD I will suggest Maxtor over WD, and that's based on 2 things.

Maxtor has generally outperformed WD drives (but at the price of slightly higher CPU overhead)

Maxtor does better math.

WD 120Gig = 120,000,000,000 bytes
Maxtor 120 = 128,849,018,880 bytes

At least this is true with my 2 40Gig drives, the Maxtor shows as 38.3Gb Whereas the WD is 37.3Gb.

(an extra 1,078,104,064 bytes on the maxtor)

So the Maxtors are a bit bigger and a bit faster (also their RMA service was 1.5Weeks faster then WD's when I sent in for a drive from each company at the same time.)

Also I'ld recommend 1 256Mb stick, then at will you can add an additional stick to use dual DDR.

[JPMiller]

I have to agree with everyone elses ideas but mine is to look at the Biostar M7VIP, as a combo off pricewatch from accubyte it is about $150 and it has upgrade potential in 333 fsb, usb 2.0, nice board for money....freind has one he is very pleased with.
Just my 2 cents worth.
BTW... I am the proud owner of a modded, fussy, K7S5A and even though I love mine, I would suggest not getting one nowadays because of its obvious limits and general "out of the box" issues.

[Peter M]

K7S5A is getting a bit long in the tooth - makes sense if you have piles of SDR RAM to give a new home.

Otherwise, if you need a bargain board for DDR RAM, use the ECS L7S7A2. This has everything you need, FSB333 support, LAN, USB 2.0, 4-channel sound, and in its better version even FireWire.

Oh, and with an XP2400+ and a GeForce card you DEFINITELY want a stronger power supply than 300W.

[Omardeth]

i agree with pretty much all here , one thing is to buy from a good online vendor ...... newegg or bananapc would be where i would tell ya to look , both have 9+ resellerrating .. as far as a mother board . if your not gaming or not tinerkin with it the ecs k7s5a pro board isn't that bad . true it can be alittle tricky to set up but not that bad . i have 2 running ( fry's combo deal ) and they both are fine . if you were thinking of getting a compaq then i don't think gaming or oc'n is what u are looking for . if u want cheap that ecs is nice .

nforce boards are nice and if u got the money i would go there abit or asus would be my pic .

if u got someone online that lives near a frys you can get them to pick one up and ship to ya . they have a xp2200 and ecs k7s5a pro board for like 109$ right now .

[Peter M]

Well, as I said, since there's L7S7A2 now, there's no need to go K7S5A anymore unless you got SDR RAM to recycle. The former board uses a brandnew chipset with modern features, while the latter has been around for two years now.

[jmoore2001]

the Abit NF7-M is also an nforce2 motherboard, and comes with onboard LAN, sound, and video (geforce4 mmx400, i think). i'm running it right now and it works great!
i agree on buying a retail athlon xp (comes with stock heatsink and works fine)
colorcases.com has extremely low prices on cool cases!

[jmoore2001]

by the way, www.pricewatch.com is good for find the cheapest prices! also checkout www.newegg.com they are always good and for memory go to crucial.com (a very good brand and very cheap!)